Ego death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity".^[1] The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. In Jungian psychology, the synonymous term psychic death is used, which refers to a fundamental transformation of the psyche.^[2] In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition,^[3][4][5][6] as described by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey.^[3] It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.^[6]

In descriptions of psychedelic experiences, the term is used synonymously with ego-loss^[7][8][1][9] to refer to (temporary) loss of one's sense of self due to the use of psychedelics.^[10][11][1] The term was used as such by Timothy Leary et al.^[1] to describe the death of the ego^[12] in the first phase of an LSD trip, in which a "complete transcendence" of the self^{[note 1]} and the "game"^{[note 2]} occurs.^[13] The concept is also used in contemporary spirituality and in the modern understanding of eastern religions to describe a permanent loss of "attachment to a separate sense of self"^{[web 1]} and self-centeredness.^[14] This conception is an influential part of Jiddu Krishnamurti and Eckhart Tolle's teachings, where Ego is presented as an accumulation of thoughts and emotions, continuously identified with, which creates the idea and feeling of being a separate entity, and only by disidentifying one’s consciousness from it can one truly be free from suffering (in the Buddhist meaning).^[15]

Definitions

Ego death and the related term "ego loss" have been defined in the context of mysticism by the religious studies scholar Daniel Mekur as "an imageless experience in which there is no sense of personal identity. It is the experience that remains possible in a state of extremely deep trance when the ego-functions of reality-testing, sense-perception, memory, reason, fantasy and self-representation are repressed [...] Muslim Sufis call it fana (annihilation),^{[note 3]} and medieval Jewish kabbalists termed it "the kiss of death".^[16]

Carter Phipps equates Enlightenment and ego death, which he defines as "the renunciation, rejection and, ultimately, the death of the need to hold on to a separate, self-centered existence.^{[17][note 4]}

In Jungian psychology, Ventegodt and Merrick define ego death as "a fundamental transformation of the psyche. Such a shift in personality has been labeled an "ego death" in Buddhism or a psychic death by Jung.^[19]

In comparative mythology, Ego death is the second phase of Joseph Campbell's description of The Hero's Journey, which includes a phase of separation, transition, and incorporation.^[6] The second phase is a phase of self-surrender and ego-death, where-after the hero returns to enrich the world with his discoveries.^[4][5][6][3]

In psychedelic culture, Leary, Metzer & Alpert (1964) define ego death, or ego loss as they call it, as part of the (symbolic) experience of death in which the old ego must die before one can be spiritually reborn.^[13] They define Ego loss as "... complete transcendence − beyond words, beyond space−time, beyond self. There are no visions, no sense of self, no thoughts. There are only pure awareness and ecstatic freedom". ^{[13] [20]}

Several psychologists working on pschedelics have defined ego-death. Alnaes (1964) defines ego-death as "[L]oss of ego-feeling."^[10]}}. Stanislav Grof (1988) defines it as "a sense of total annihilation [...] This experience of ego death seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual [...] [E]go death means an irreversible end to one's philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called skin-encapsulated ego.^[21] The psychologist John Harrison (2010) defines "[T]emporary ego death [as the] loss of the separate self[,] or, in the affirmative, [...] a deep and profound merging with the transcendent other.^[11] Johnson, Richards & Griffiths (2008), paraphrasing Leary et al. and Grof: define ego death as "temporarily experienc[ing] a complete loss of subjective self-identity.^[1]

Conceptual development

The concept of "ego death" developed along a number of intertwined strands of thought, especially romantic movements^[22] and subcultures,^[23] Theosophy,^[24] anthropological research on rites de passage^[25] and shamanism^[23] Joseph Campbell's comparative mythology,^[4][5][6][3] Jungian psychology,^[26][3] the psychedelic scene of the 1960s,^[27] and transpersonal psychology.^[28]

Western mysticism

According to Merkur,

The conceptualisation of mystical union as the soul's death, and its replacement by God's consciousness, has been a standard Roman Catholic trope since St. Teresa of Ávila; the motif traces back through Marguerite Porete, in the 13th century, to the fana,^{[note 3]} "annihilation", of the Islamic Sufis.^[29]

Jungian psychology

According to Ventegodt and Merrick, the Jungian term "psychic death" is a synonym for "ego death":

In order to radically improve global quality of life, it seems necessary to have a fundamental transformation of the psyche. Such a shift in personality has been labeled an "ego death" in Buddhism or a psychic death by Jung, because it implies a shift back to the existential position of the natural self, i.e., living the true purpose of life. The problem of healing and improving the global quality of life seems strongly connected to the unpleasantness of the ego-death experience.^[19]

Ventegodt and Merrick refer to Jung's publications The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, first published 1933, and Psychology and Alchemy, first published in 1944.^{[19][note 5]}

In Jungian psychology, a unification of archetypal opposites has to be reached, during a process of conscious suffering, in which consciousness "dies" and resurrects. Jung called this process "the transcendent function",^{[note 6]} which leads to a "more inclusive and synthetic consciousness".^[30]
Jung used analogies with alchemy to describe the individuation process, and the transference-processes which occur during therapy.^[31]

According to Leeming et al., from a religious point of view psychic death is related to St. John of the Cross' Ascent of Mt. Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul.^[32]

Mythology – The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Hero's Journey

In 1949, Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a study on the archetype of the Hero's Journey.^[3] It describes a common theme found in many cultures worldwide,^[3] and is also described in many contemporary theories on personal transformation.^[6] In traditional cultures it describes the "wilderness passage",^[3] the transition from adolescence into adulthood.^[25] It typically includes a phase of separation, transition, and incorporation.^[6] The second phase is a phase of self-surrender and ego-death, whereafter the hero returns to enrich the world with their discoveries. Campbell describes the basic theme as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.^[33]

This journey is based on the archetype of death and rebirth,^[5] in which the "false self" is surrendered and the "true self" emerges.^[5] A well known example is Dante's Divina Comedia, in which the hero descends into the underworld.^[5]

Psychedelics

Concepts and ideas from mysticism and bohemianism were inherited by the Beat Generation.^[22] When Aldous Huxley helped popularize the use of psychedelics, starting with The Doors of Perception, published in 1954, ^[34] Huxley also promoted a set of analogies with eastern religions, as described in The Perennial Philosophy. This book helped inspire the 1960s belief in a revolution in western consciousness ^[34] and included the Tibetan Book of the Dead was one of the sources.^[34] Similarly, Alan Watts, in his opening statement on mystical experiences in This Is It, draws parallels with Richard Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness, describing the "central core" of the experience as

... the conviction, or insight, that the immediate now, whatever its nature, is the goal and fulfillment of all living.^[35]

This interest in mysticism helped shape the emerging research and popular conversation around psychedelics in the 1960s.^[36] In 1964 William S. Burroughs drew a distinction between "sedative" and "conscious-expanding" drugs.^[37] In the 1940s and 1950s the use of LSD was restricted to military and psychiatric researchers. One of those researchers was Timothy Leary, a clinical psychologist who first encountered psychedelic drugs while on vacation in 1960,^[38] and started to research the effects of psilocybin in 1961.^[34] He sought advice from Aldous Huxley, who advised him to propagate psychedelic drugs among society's elites, including artists and intellectuals.^[38] On insistence of Allen Ginsberg, Leary, together with his younger colleague Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) also made LSD available to students.^[38] In 1962 Leary was fired, and Harvard's psychedelic research program was shut down.^[38] In 1962 Leary founded the Castalia Foundation,^[38] and in 1963 he and his colleagues founded the journal The Psychedelic Review.^[39]

Following Huxley's advice, Leary wrote a manual for LSD-usage.^[39] The Psychedelic Experience, published in 1964, is a guide for LSD-trips, written by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert, loosely based on Yvan-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.^[39][34] Aldous Huxley introduced the Tibetan Book of the Dead to Timothy Leary.^[34] According to Leary, Metzer and Alpert, the Tibetan Book of the Dead is

... a key to the innermost recesses of the human mind, and a guide for initiates, and for those who are seeking the spiritual path of liberation.^[40]

They construed the effect of LSD as a "stripping away" of ego-defenses, finding parallels between the stages of death and rebirth in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the stages of psychological "death" and "rebirth" which Leary had identified during his research.^[41] According to Leary, Metzer and Alpert it is....

... one of the oldest and most universal practices for the initiate to go through the experience of death before he can be spiritually reborn. Symbolically he must die to his past, and to his old ego, before he can take his place in the new spiritual life into which he has been initiated.^[12]

Also in 1964 Randolf Alnaes published "Therapeutic applications of the change in consciousness produced by psycholytica (LSD, Psilocybin, etc.)."^[42][10] Alnaes notes that patients may become involved in existential problems as a consequence of the LSD experience. Psycholytic drugs may facilitate insight. With a short psychological treatment, patients may benefit from changes brought about by the effects of the experience.^[42]

One of the LSD-experiences may be the death crisis. Alnaes discernes three stages in this kind of experience:^[10]

1. Psychosomatic symptoms lead up to the "loss of ego feeling (ego death)";^[10]
2. A sense of separation of the observing subject from the body. The body is beheld to undergo death or an associated event;
3. "Rebirth", the return to normal, conscious mentation, "characteristically involving a tremendous sense of relief, which is cathartic in nature and may lead to insight".^[10]

Leary's description of "Ego-death"

In The Psychedelic Experience, three stages are discerned:

1. Chikhai Bardo: ego loss, a "complete transcendence" of the self^{[note 1]} and game;^{[13][note 2]}
2. Chonyid Bardo: The Period of Hallucinations;^[43]
3. Sidpa Bardo: the return to routine game reality and the self.^[13]

Each Bardo is described in the first part of The Psychedelic Experience. In the second part, instructions are given which can be read to the "voyager". The instructions for the First Bardo state:

O (name of voyager)
The time has come for you to seek new levels of reality.
Your ego and the (name) game are about to cease.
You are about to be set face to face with the Clear Light
You are about to experience it in its reality.
In the ego−free state, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky,
And the naked spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum;
At this moment, know yourself and abide in that state.
O (name of voyager),
That which is called ego−death is coming to you.
Remember:
This is now the hour of death and rebirth;
Take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state −
Enlightenment.
. . .^[44]

Scientific Research

Stanislav Grof

Stanislav Grof has researched the effects of psychedelic substances,^[45] which can also be induced by nonpharmacological means.^[46] Grof has developed a "cartography of the psyche" based on his clinical work with psychedelics,^[47] which describe the "basic types of experience that become available to an average person" when using psychedelics or "various powerful non-pharmacological experiential techniques".^[48]

According to Grof, traditional psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy use a model of the human personality that is limited to biography and the individual consciousness, as described by Freud.^[49] This model is inadequate to describe the experiences which result from the use of psychedelics and the use of "powerful techniques", which activate and mobilize "deep unconscious and superconscious levels of the human psyche".^[49] These levels include:^[28]

• The Sensory Barrier and the Recollective-Biographical Barrier
• The Perinatal Matrices:
  • BPM I: The Amniotic Universe. Maternal womb; symbiotic unity of the fetus with the maternal organism; lack of boundaries and obstructions;
  • BPM II: Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit. Onset of labor; alteration of blissful connection with the mother and its pristine universe;
  • BPM III: The Death-Rebirth Struggle. Movement through the birth channel and struggle for survival;
  • BPM IV: The Death-Rebirth Experience. Birth and release.
• The Transpersonal Dimensions of the Psyche

Ego death appears in the fourth Perinatal Matrix.^[28] This matrix is related to the stage of delivery, the actual birth of the child.^[50] The build up of tension, pain and anxiety is suddenly released.^[50] The symbolic counterpart is the Death-Rebirth Experience, in which the individual may have a strong feeling of impending catastrophe, and may be desperately struggling to stop this process.^[21] The transition from BPM III to BPM IV may involve a sense of total annihilation:^[21]

This experience of ego death seems to entail an instant merciless destruction of all previous reference points in the life of the individual.^[21]

According to Grof what dies in this process is "a basically paranoid attitude toward the world which reflects the negative experience of the subject during childbirth and later".^[21] When experienced in its final and most complete form,

...ego death means an irreversible end to one's philosophical identification with what Alan Watts called skin-encapsulated ego."^[21]

Recent research

Recent research also mentions that ego loss is sometimes experienced by those under the influence of psychedelic drugs.^[51]

The Ego-Dissolution Inventory is a validated self-report questionnaire that allows for the measurement of transient ego-dissolution experiences occasioned by psychedelic drugs. ^[52]

View of Spiritual Traditions

Following the interest in psychedelics and spirituality, the term "ego death" has been used to describe the eastern notion of "enlightenment" (bodhi) or moksha.

Buddhism

Zen practice is said to lead to ego-death.^[53] Ego-death is also called "great death", in contrast to the physical "small death".^[54] According to Jin Y. Park, the ego death that Buddhism encourages makes an end to the "usually-unconsciousness-and-automated quest" to understand the sense-of-self as a thing, instead of as a process.^[55] According to Park, meditation is learning how to die by learning to "forget" the sense of self:^[55]

Enlightenment occurs when the usually automatized reflexivity of consciousness ceases, which is experienced as a letting-go and falling into the void and being wiped out of existence [...] [W]hen consciousness stops trying to catch its own tail, I become nothing, and discover that I am everything.^[56]

According to Welwood, "egolessness" is a common experience. Egolessness appears "in the gaps and spaces between thoughts, which usually go unnoticed".^[57] Existential anxiety arises when one realizes that the feeling of "I" is nothing more than a perception. According to Welwood, only egoless awareness allows us to face and accept death in all forms.^[57]

David Loy also mentions the fear of death,^[58] and the need to undergo ego-death to realize our true nature.^[59][60] According to Loy, our fear of egolessness may even be stronger than our fear of death.^[58]

"Egolessness" is not the same as anatta, non-self. Anatta means not to take the constituents of the person as a permanent entity:

the Buddha, almost ad nauseam, spoke against wrong identification with the Five Aggregates, or the same, wrong identification with the psychophysical believing it is our self. These aggregates of form, feeling, thought, inclination, and sensory consciousness, he went on to say, were illusory; they belonged to Mara the Evil One; they were impermanent and painful. And for these reasons, the aggregates cannot be our self. ^{[web 2]}

Bernadette Roberts

Bernadette Roberts makes a distinction between "no ego" and "no self".^[61][62] According to Roberts, the falling away of the ego is not the same as the falling away of the self.^[63] "No ego" comes prior to the unitive state; with the falling away of the unitive state comes "no self".^[64] "Ego" is defined by Roberts as

... the immature self or consciousness prior to the falling away of its self-center and the revelation of a divine center.^[65]

Roberts defines "self" as

... the totality of consciousness, the entire human dimension of knowing, feeling and experiencing from the consciousness and unconsciousness to the unitive, transcendental or God-consciousness.^[65]

Ultimately, all experiences on which these definitions are based are wiped out or dissolved.^[65] Jeff Shore further explains that "no self" means "the permanent ceasing, the falling away once and for all, of the entire mechanism of reflective self-consciousness".^[66]

According to Roberts, both the Buddha and Christ embody the falling away of self, and the state of "no self". The falling away is represented by the Buddha prior to his enlightenment, starving himself by ascetic practices, and by the dying Jesus on the cross; the state of "no self" is represented by the enlightened Buddha with his serenity, and by the resurrected Christ.^[65]

Integration after Ego-death experiences

Psychedelics

According to Nick Bromell, ego death is a tempering though frightening experience, which may lead to a reconciliation with the insight that there is no real self.^[67]

According to Grof, death crises may occur over a series of psychedelic sessions until they cease to lead to panic. A conscious effort not to panic may lead to a "pseudohallucinatory sense of transcending physical death".^[10] According to Merkur,

Repeated experience of the death crisis and its confrontation with the idea of physical death leads finally to an acceptance of personal mortality, without further illusions. The death crisis is then greeted with equanimity.^[10]

Vedanta and Zen

Both the Vedanta and the Zen-Buddhist tradition warn that insight into the emptiness of the self, or so-called "enlightenment experiences", are not sufficient; further practice is necessary.

Jacobs warns that Advaita Vedanta practice takes years of committed practice to sever the "occlusion"^[68] of the so-called "vasanas, samskaras, bodily sheaths and vrittis", and the "granthi^{[note 7]} or knot forming identification between Self and mind".^[69]

Zen Buddhist training does not end with kenshō, or insight into one's true nature. Practice is to be continued to deepen the insight and to express it in daily life.^{[70][71][72][73]} According to Hakuin, the main aim of "post-satori practice"^[74][75] (gogo no shugyo^[76] or kojo, "going beyond"^[77]) is to cultivate the "Mind of Enlightenment".^[78] According to Yamada Koun, "if you cannot weep with a person who is crying, there is no kensho".^[79]

Dark Night and depersonalisation

Shinzen Young, an American Buddhist teacher, has pointed at the difficulty integrating the experience of no self. He calls this "the Dark Night", or

... "falling into the Pit of the Void." It entails an authentic and irreversible insight into Emptiness and No Self. What makes it problematic is that the person interprets it as a bad trip. Instead of being empowering and fulfilling, the way Buddhist literature claims it will be, it turns into the opposite. In a sense, it's Enlightenment's Evil Twin.^{[web 3]}

Willoughby Britton is conducting research on such phenomena which may occur during meditation, in a research program called "The Dark Night of the Soul".^{[web 4]} She has searched texts from various traditions to find descriptions of difficult periods on the spiritual path,^{[web 5]} and conducted interviews to find out more on the difficult sides of meditation.^{[web 4][note 8]}

Influence

The propagation of LSD-induced "mystical experiences", and the concept of ego death, had some influence in the 1960s, but Leary's brand of LSD-spirituality never "quite caught on".^[80]

Reports of psychedelic experiences

Leary's terminology influenced the understanding and description of the effects of psychedelics. Various reports by hippies of their psychedelic experiences describe states of diminished consciousness which were labelled as "ego death", but do not match Leary's descriptions.^[81] Panic attacks were occasionally also labeled as "ego death".^[82]

The Beatles

John Lennon read The Psychedelic Experience, and was strongly affected by it.^[83] He wrote "Tomorrow Never Knows" after reading the book, as a guide for his LSD-trips.^[83] Lennon took about a thousand acid-trips, but it only exacerbated his personal difficulties.^[84] He eventually stopped using the drug. George Harrison and Paul McCartney also concluded that LSD use didn't result in any worthwhile changes.^[85]

Radical pluralism

According to Bromell, the experience of ego death confirms a radical pluralism that most people experience in their youth, but prefer to flee from, instead believing in a stable self and a fixed reality.^[86] He further states this also led to a different attitude among youngsters in the 1960s, rejecting the lifestyle of their parents as being deceitful and false.^[86]

Criticisms of ego death

The relationship between ego death and LSD has been disputed. Hunter S. Thompson, who tried LSD,^[87] saw a self-centered base in Leary's work, noting that Leary placed himself at the centre of his texts, using his persona as "an exemplary ego, not a dissolved one". ^[87] Dan Merkur notes that the use of LSD in combination with Leary's manual often did not lead to ego-death, but to horrifying bad trips.^[88]

The relationship between LSD use and enlightenment has also been criticized. Sōtō-Zen teacher Brad Warner has repeatedly criticized the idea that psychedelic experiences lead to "enlightenment experiences".^{[note 9]} In response to The Psychedelic Experience he wrote:

While I was at Starwood, I was getting mightily annoyed by all the people out there who were deluding themselves and others into believing that a cheap dose of acid, 'shrooms, peyote, "molly" or whatever was going to get them to a higher spiritual plane [...] While I was at that campsite I sat and read most of the book The Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (aka Baba Ram Dass, later of Be Here Now fame). It's a book about the authors' deeply mistaken reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a guide for the drug taking experience [...] It was one thing to believe in 1964 that a brave new tripped out age was about to dawn. It's quite another to still believe that now, having seen what the last 47 years have shown us about where that path leads. If you want some examples, how about Jimi Hendrix, Sid Vicious, Syd Barrett, John Entwistle, Kurt Cobain... Do I really need to get so cliched with this? Come on now.^{[web 6]}

The concept that ego-death or a similar experience might be considered a common basis for religion has been disputed by scholars in religious studies ^[89] but "has lost none of its popularity".^[90] Scholars have also criticized Leary and Albert's attempt to tie ego-death and psychedelics with Tibetan Buddhism. John Myrdhin Reynolds, has disputed Leary and Jung's use of the Evans-Wentz's translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, arguing that it introduces a number of misunderstandings about Dzogchen.^[91] Reynolds argues that Evans-Wentz's was not familiar with Tibetan Buddhism,^[91] and that his view of Tibetan Buddhism was "fundamentally neither Tibetan nor Buddhist, but Theosophical and Vedantist".^[92] Nonetheless, Reynolds confirms that the nonsubstantiality of the ego is the ultimate goal of the Hinayana system .^[93]

Id, ego and super-ego

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The id, ego, and super-ego are three distinct, yet interacting agents in the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche.

The three parts are the theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction our mental life is described. According to this Freudian model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.^[1]

As Freud explained:

The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in its relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with his own strength while the ego uses borrowed forces. The analogy may be carried a little further. Often a rider, if he is not to be parted from his horse, is obliged to guide it where it wants to go; so in the same way the ego is in the habit of transforming the id's will into action as if it were its own. (p. 19).^[2]

Although the model is structural and makes reference to an apparatus, the id, ego and super-ego are purely psychological concepts and do not correspond to (somatic) structures of the brain such as the kind dealt with by neuroscience. The super-ego is observable in how someone can view themselves as guilty, bad, shameful, weak, and feel compelled to do certain things. Freud in The Ego and the Id discusses "the general character of harshness and cruelty exhibited by the [ego] ideal – its dictatorial 'Thou shalt.'"

Freud (1933) hypothesizes different levels of ego ideal or superego development with increasingly greater ideals:

...nor must it be forgotten that a child has a different estimate of [their] parents at different periods of [their] life. At the time at which the Oedipus complex gives place to the super-ego they are something quite magnificent; but later they lose much of this. Identifications then come about with these later parents as well, and indeed they regularly make important contributions to the formation of character; but in that case they only affect the ego, they no longer influence the super-ego, which has been determined by the earliest parental images.

— New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, p. 64

The earlier in development, the greater the estimate of parental power. When one defuses into rivalry with the parental imago, then one feels the 'dictatorial thou shalt' to manifest the power the imago represents. Four general levels are found in Freud's work: the auto-erotic, the narcissistic, the anal, and the phallic.^[3] These different levels of development and the relations to parental imagos correspond to specific id forms of aggression and affection. For example, aggressive desires to decapitate, to dismember, to cannibalize, to swallow whole, to suck dry, to make disappear, to blow away, etc. animate myths, are enjoyed in fantasy and horror movies, and are observable in the fantasies and repressions of patients across cultures.

The concepts themselves arose at a late stage in the development of Freud's thought as the "structural model" (which succeeded his "economic model" and "topographical model") and was first discussed in his 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle and was formalized and elaborated upon three years later in his The Ego and the Id. Freud's proposal was influenced by the ambiguity of the term "unconscious" and its many conflicting uses.

Id

The id (Latin for "it",^[4] German: Es)^[5] is the disorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives. Id is the only component of personality that is present from birth.^[6] It is the source of our bodily needs, wants, desires, and impulses, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives. The id contains the libido, which is the primary source of instinctual force that is unresponsive to the demands of reality.^[7] The id acts according to the "pleasure principle"—the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse^[8]—defined as seeking to avoid pain or unpleasure (not "displeasure") aroused by increases in instinctual tension.^[9] According to Freud the id is unconscious by definition:

It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the dreamwork and of course the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. ...It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.^[10]

In the id:

...contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out. ...There is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation...nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time.^[11]

Developmentally, the id precedes the ego; i.e., the psychic apparatus begins, at birth, as an undifferentiated id, part of which then develops into a structured ego. Thus, the id:

...contains everything that is inherited, that is present at birth, is laid down in the constitution—above all, therefore, the instincts, which originate from the somatic organization, and which find a first psychical expression here (in the id) in forms unknown to us.^[12]

The mind of a newborn child is regarded as completely "id-ridden", in the sense that it is a mass of instinctive drives and impulses, and needs immediate satisfaction.

The id "knows no judgements of value: no good and evil, no morality. ...Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge—that, in our view, is all there is in the id."^[13] It is regarded as "the great reservoir of libido",^[14] the instinctive drive to create—the life instincts that are crucial to pleasurable survival. Alongside the life instincts came the death instincts—the death drive which Freud articulated relatively late in his career in "the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state."^[15] For Freud, "the death instinct would thus seem to express itself—though probably only in part—as an instinct of destruction directed against the external world and other organisms"^[16] through aggression. Freud considered that "the id, the whole person...originally includes all the instinctual impulses...the destructive instinct as well",^[17] as eros or the life instincts.

Ego

The ego (Latin for "I",^[18] German: Ich)^[19] acts according to the reality principle; i.e., it seeks to please the id's drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term rather than bring grief.^[20] At the same time, Freud concedes that as the ego "attempts to mediate between id and reality, it is often obliged to cloak the [unconscious] commands of the id with its own preconscious rationalizations, to conceal the id's conflicts with reality, to profess...to be taking notice of reality even when the id has remained rigid and unyielding."^[21] The reality principle that operates the ego is a regulating mechanism that enables the individual to delay gratifying immediate needs and function effectively in the real world. An example would be to resist the urge to grab other people's belongings, but instead to purchase those items.^[22]

The ego is the organized part of the personality structure that includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious. Originally, Freud used the word ego to mean a sense of self, but later revised it to mean a set of psychic functions such as judgment, tolerance, reality testing, control, planning, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory.^[23] The ego separates out what is real. It helps us to organize our thoughts and make sense of them and the world around us.^[23] "The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. ...The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions...in its relation to the id it is like a person on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse; with this difference, that the rider tries to do so with their own strength, while the ego uses borrowed forces."^[24] Still worse, "it serves three severe masters...the external world, the super-ego and the id."^[21] Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality while satisfying the id and super-ego. Its main concern is with the individual's safety and allows some of the id's desires to be expressed, but only when consequences of these actions are marginal. "Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super-ego, repulsed by reality, struggles...[in] bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon it," and readily "breaks out in anxiety—realistic anxiety regarding the external world, moral anxiety regarding the super-ego, and neurotic anxiety regarding the strength of the passions in the id."^[25] It has to do its best to suit all three, thus is constantly feeling hemmed by the danger of causing discontent on two other sides. It is said, however, that the ego seems to be more loyal to the id, preferring to gloss over the finer details of reality to minimize conflicts while pretending to have a regard for reality. But the super-ego is constantly watching every one of the ego's moves and punishes it with feelings of guilt, anxiety, and inferiority.

To overcome this the ego employs defense mechanisms. The defense mechanisms are not done so directly or consciously. They lessen the tension by covering up our impulses that are threatening.^[26] Ego defense mechanisms are often used by the ego when id behavior conflicts with reality and either society's morals, norms, and taboos or the individual's expectations as a result of the internalization of these morals, norms, and their taboos.

Denial, displacement, intellectualisation, fantasy, compensation, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, and sublimation were the defense mechanisms Freud identified. However, his daughter Anna Freud clarified and identified the concepts of undoing, suppression, dissociation, idealization, identification, introjection, inversion, somatisation, splitting, and substitution.

"The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it.... But the repressed merges into the id as well, and is merely a part of it. The repressed is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it can communicate with the ego through the id." (Sigmund Freud, 1923)

In a diagram of the Structural and Topographical Models of Mind, the ego is depicted to be half in the consciousness, while a quarter is in the preconscious and the other quarter lies in the unconscious.

In modern English, ego has many meanings. It could mean one’s self-esteem; an inflated sense of self-worth; the conscious-thinking self;^[27] or in philosophical terms, one’s self. Ego development is known as the development of multiple processes, cognitive function, defenses, and interpersonal skills or to early adolescence when ego processes are emerged.^[20]

Super-ego

The super-ego^[28] (German: Über-Ich)^[29] reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly taught by parents applying their guidance and influence.^[8] Freud developed his concept of the super-ego from an earlier combination of the ego ideal and the "special psychical agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured...what we call our 'conscience'."^[30] For him "the installation of the super-ego can be described as a successful instance of identification with the parental agency," while as development proceeds "the super-ego also takes on the influence of those who have stepped into the place of parents — educators, teachers, people chosen as ideal models".

Thus a child's super-ego is in fact constructed on the model not of its parents but of its parents' super-ego; the contents which fill it are the same and it becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the time-resisting judgments of value which have propagated themselves in this manner from generation to generation.^[31]

The super-ego aims for perfection.^[26] It forms the organized part of the personality structure, mainly but not entirely unconscious, that includes the individual's ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency (commonly called "conscience") that criticizes and prohibits their drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions. "The Super-ego can be thought of as a type of conscience that punishes misbehavior with feelings of guilt. For example, for having extra-marital affairs."^[32] Taken in this sense, the super-ego is the precedent for the conceptualization of the inner critic as it appears in contemporary therapies such as IFS.^[33]

The super-ego works in contradiction to the id. The super-ego strives to act in a socially appropriate manner, whereas the id just wants instant self-gratification. The super-ego controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways.^[23]

The super-ego's demands often oppose the id's, so the ego sometimes has a hard time in reconciling the two.^[26]

Freud's theory implies that the super-ego is a symbolic internalisation of the father figure and cultural regulations. The super-ego tends to stand in opposition to the desires of the id because of their conflicting objectives, and its aggressiveness towards the ego. The super-ego acts as the conscience, maintaining our sense of morality and proscription from taboos. The super-ego and the ego are the product of two key factors: the state of helplessness of the child and the Oedipus complex.^[34] Its formation takes place during the dissolution of the Oedipus complex and is formed by an identification with and internalisation of the father figure after the little boy cannot successfully hold the mother as a love-object out of fear of castration. Freud described the super-ego and its relationship to the father figure and Oedipus complex thus:

The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt.^[35]

The concept of super-ego and the Oedipus complex is subject to criticism for its perceived sexism. Women, who are considered to be already castrated, do not identify with the father, and therefore, for Freud, "their super-ego is never so inexorable, so impersonal, so independent of its emotional origins as we require it to be in men...they are often more influenced in their judgements by feelings of affection or hostility."^[36] However, Freud went on to modify his position to the effect "that the majority of men are also far behind the masculine ideal and that all human individuals, as a result of their human identity, combine in themselves both masculine and feminine characteristics, otherwise known as human characteristics."^[37]

Advantages of the structural model

The iceberg metaphor is often used to explain the psyche's parts in relation to one another.

Freud's earlier, topographical model of the mind had divided the mind into the three elements of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The conscious contains events that we are aware of, preconscious is events that are in the process of becoming conscious, and unconscious include events that we are not aware of.^[38] At its heart was "the dialectic of unconscious traumatic memory versus consciousness...which soon became a conflict between System Ucs versus System Cs."^[39] With what Freud called the "disagreeable discovery that on the one hand (super-)ego and conscious and on the other hand repressed and unconscious are far from coinciding,"^[40] Freud took the step in the structural model to "no longer use the term 'unconscious' in the systematic sense," and to rename "the mental region that is foreign to the ego...[and] in future call it the 'id'."^[41] The partition of the psyche defined in the structural model is thus one that cuts across the topographical model's partition of "conscious vs. unconscious".

"The new terminology which he introduced has a highly clarifying effect and so made further clinical advances possible."^[42] Its value lies in the increased degree of precision and diversification made possible: Although the id is unconscious by definition, the ego and the super-ego are both partly conscious and partly unconscious. What is more, with this new model Freud achieved a more systematic classification of mental disorder than had been available previously:

Transference neuroses correspond to a conflict between the ego and the id; narcissistic neuroses, to a conflict between the ego and the superego; and psychoses, to one between the ego and the external world.^[43]

It is important to realise however, that "the three newly presented entities, the id, the ego and the superego, all had lengthy past histories (two of them under other names)"^[44]—the id as the systematic unconscious, the super-ego as conscience/ego ideal. Equally, Freud never abandoned the topographical division of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious, though as he noted ruefully "the three qualities of consciousness and the three provinces of the mental apparatus do not fall together into three peaceful couples...we had no right to expect any such smooth arrangement."^[45]

The iceberg metaphor is a commonly used visual metaphor when attempting to relate the ego, id and superego with the conscious and unconscious mind. In the iceberg metaphor the entire id and part of both the superego and the ego would be submerged in the underwater portion representing the unconscious mind. The remaining portions of the ego and superego would be displayed above water in the conscious mind area.^[7]

Translation

The terms "id", "ego", and "super-ego" are not Freud's own. They are latinisations by his translator James Strachey. Freud himself wrote of "das Es",^[5] "das Ich",^[19] and "das Über-Ich"^[29]—respectively, "the It", "the I", and "the Over-I" (or "I above"); thus to the German reader, Freud's original terms are more or less self-explanatory. Freud borrowed the term "das Es" from Georg Groddeck, a German physician to whose unconventional ideas Freud was much attracted (Groddeck's translators render the term in English as "the It").^[46] The word ego is taken directly from Latin, where it is the nominative of the first person singular personal pronoun and is translated as "I myself" to express emphasis.

Figures like Bruno Bettelheim have criticized the way "the English translations impeded students' efforts to gain a true understanding of Freud."^[47] by substituting the formalised language of the elaborated code for the quotidian immediacy of Freud's own language.

Here’s what real science says about the role of CO2 as Earth’s preeminent climatic thermostat

By Tom Yulsman | March 12, 2018 2:07 pm

Original link:  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2018/03/12/what-science-says-about-role-of-co2-in-climate-change/#.WzxdVIpOmhA 

 

The relatively thin atmospheric cocoon that

protects us from meteor impacts and radiation also

makes for a habitable climate, thanks to the

greenhouse gases it contains — carbon dioxide first

and foremost.

Whenever I post something here at ImaGeo involving climate change, it’s a good bet that I’ll get a spectrum of critical responses in the comments section. These range from skepticism about the urgency of the problem to outright dismissal of humankind’s influence on climate through our emissions of greenhouse gases.

A recent post here about thawing permafrost releasing climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was no exception. For the story, I reviewed dozens scientific research papers, and used information and quotations from two interviews. Based on that reporting, here’s what I wrote at the top of the story:

The coldest reaches of the Arctic on land were once thought to be at least temporarily shielded from a major — and worrisome — effect of a warming climate: widespread melting of permafrost. But a recent study suggests these northernmost Arctic areas are likely to thaw much sooner than expected. That’s concerning because melting permafrost releases climate-warming greenhouse gases.

As always, I expected skeptical pushback — but nothing as extreme as this:

As CO2 has had no noticeable effect on climate in 600 million years, until 15- 20 years ago, when carbon tax was invented, any alleged climatic effects can be ignored.

I took this to mean that a liberal scientific establishment invented the idea that carbon dioxide plays a role in Earth’s climate system to support raising taxes.

Never mind that relatively simple physics worked out in the 1800s, and since corroborated by experiments and observations, show that adding CO2 to the atmosphere should raise Earth’s average temperature.

I ordinarily ignore comments like the one I quote above. Discover is a science magazine, not a platform for political grandstanding. And it is especially not a platform for ideas that run counter to basic physics and more than a century of hard scientific work by generations of researchers.

This is not to say that I and the other writers and editors here at Discover view science as being infallible. Far from it. We recognize that as a human endeavor, science is prone to error born of vanity, preconceived notions, confirmation bias, a herd mentality, etc.  Scientists know this better than anyone, so skepticism is one of their cardinal values. So is the recognition that even today’s most widely accepted theories may have to be modified or even replaced tomorrow if new evidence requires it.

Journalists are also supposed to be skeptical and self-critical. We should frequently ask ourselves things like, “How do I know this? Am I sure? Maybe I should check because I could be deceived by my preconceived notions.”

And so in this case, I thought it would be useful to delve deeper into what scientists know of the link between carbon dioxide and climate over the geologic timescale, and CO2’s overall role as a kind of thermostat for the planet.

I don’t pretend that what follows is a definitive primer on these issues. Not even close. But I thought it might be useful to share what I learned — if for no other reason that it might arm readers with some useful scientific information when they encounter people peddling politics in the name of science.

So, back to that original claim that “CO2 has had no noticeable effect on climate in 600 million years,” the commenter wrote this to support it:

My evidence for my comment, is climate history over 600 million years, during which time, when CO2 increased, global temperature decreased, for several million years, and when CO2 decreased, global temperature increased, also for several millions of years.

He also used a graph originally posted online by someone named Monte Hieb at this website. Hieb has changed the graph a number of times over the years. The following version is one that has been frequently picked up by people who deny the science on humankind’s impact on climate, including such well known figures as Christopher Monckton:

Source: APS Physics

It purports to show that CO2 and climate really aren’t well linked.

When I sought more information about this graph, I landed first on a post at RealClimate by Gavin Schmidt, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. From his article, titled “Can we make better graphs of global temperature history?,” I learned that Hieb had hand drawn his temperature record based on the work of a scientist named Chris Scotese. And as Schmidt puts it:

Scotese is an expert in reconstructions of continental positions through time and in creating his ‘temperature reconstruction’ he is basically following an old-fashioned idea . . . that the planet has two long-term stable equilibria (‘warm’ or ‘cool’) which it has oscillated between over geologic history. This kind of heuristic reconstruction comes from the qualitative geological record which gives indications of glaciations and hothouses, but is not really adequate for quantitative reconstructions of global mean temperatures. Over the last few decades, much better geochemical proxy compilations with better dating have appeared . . . and the idea that there are only two long-term climate states has long fallen by the wayside

The “proxy” records Schmidt references are preserved physical characteristics of the environment that stand in for direct measurements — in this case, chemical fingerprints in the geological record of changing climatic conditions. (For more on proxy records, see this explainer.)

Based on Schmidt’s post, here is part of my response to the commenter claiming no link between CO2 and climate:

You are deluded by hubris — the idea that by reading one graph of suspect origin you know better than an entire scientific community consisting of literally thousands of researchers, operating over many decades and doing the actual hard work of science — and holding up their findings to rigorous review by expert peers.

I went on to say this:

. . . your alleged “evidence” is a graph, in part hand-drawn, posted to a website that hasn’t been updated in six years by an obscure person with no discernible expertise in this area, and based on the work of a scientist who is not an expert in paleo temperature reconstructions and whose ideas were long ago supplanted by better work based on actual physical proxy records.

I then pointed him toward an example of real researchers doing the truly complex and hard work of science — a peer-reviewed paper titled “CO2 as a primary driver of Phanerozoic climate”.

In their paper, the team of five scientists analyzed a wealth of different data to examine the role of CO2 in climate over the past 540 million years. Their conclusions are nuanced — which is to be expected for a system as complex as global climate, and especially when looking at it over such long time periods. But here is the most relevant fundamental finding:

Here we review the geologic records of CO2 and glaciations and find that CO2 was low (<500 and="" continental="" during="" glaciations="" high="" long-lived="" of="" periods="" ppm="" widespread="">1000 ppm) during other, warmer periods.

Other scientists have addressed particular details of the geologic record. These include a period of glaciation that occurred during late Ordovician Period. Climate change dismissives say it happened despite sky high concentrations of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere 440 million years ago. This, they claim, is proof that CO2 plays less of a role, or even no role, in determining Earth’s climate.

In supporting this claim they use a geochemical model called “GEOCARB” that provides estimates of CO2 concentrations through geologic time. But the critics fail to mention that the data included in the GEOCARB model come in very long time steps of 10 million years. With this in mind, the creators of GEOCARB explicitly warned that their model cannot discern changes in CO2 occurring over periods less than 10 million years long — including shorter-term drops of the kind that scientists have shown likely occurred during the late Ordovician glaciation.

“Thus, exact values of CO2 . . . should not be taken literally and are always susceptible to modification,” GEOCARB’s creators said.

Yet climate dismissives do just that. And they ignore copious evidence gathered by scientists supporting lower CO2 levels in the atmosphere during that period. For example, a 2009 paper in the journal Geology came to the following conclusion, as described by Phil Berardelli in a story in Science:

The rise of the Appalachians plunged Earth into an ice age so severe that it drove nearly two-thirds of all living species extinct. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which finds that the mountains’ rocks absorbed enough greenhouse gas to freeze the planet.

For more details about the Ordovician glaciation and related issues, the website Skeptical Science has an excellent overview. And for a broad overview of  CO2’s role in Earth’s climate over geological history, check out this lecture by Richard Alley, a renowned Penn State geoscientist:

Commenters on my blog also often claim that since the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is so low compared to that of water vapor, also a greenhouse gas, it could not possibly play the role of a thermostat. But here, too, rigorous research shows otherwise.

For example, a team of four NASA scientists led by Andrew Lacis and including Gavin Schmidt, found this: “Ample physical evidence shows that carbon dioxide (CO2) is the single most important climate-relevant greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere.”

Yes, water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth’s overall greenhouse effect. And, in fact, a companion study led by Schmidt showed that water vapor and clouds together account for 75 percent, with CO2 coming in at 20 percent, and other non-condensing greenhouse gases making up the rest.

So given that CO2 accounts for just a fifth of Earth’s overall greenhouse effect, what supports the claim that it nevertheless is the most important greenhouse gas?

The answer involves different characteristics of greenhouse gases. When the atmosphere cools enough, water vapor condenses and rains out. By contrast, carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases do not — they are non-condensing.

The researchers found that without these non-condensing greenhouse gases — CO2 foremost among them — there would be nothing to prevent the atmosphere from cooling enough to cause water vapor to rain out.  And since it is such a potent greenhouse gas, if water vapor were to rain out, the result would be very dramatic cooling. In this way, CO2 may not be as potent a greenhouse gas as water vapor, but it is actually more important.

“Without the radiative forcing supplied by CO2 and the other noncondensing greenhouse gases, the terrestrial greenhouse would collapse, plunging the global climate into an icebound Earth state,” the authors of the first study concluded.

Just how much does carbon dioxide contribute? The second study led by Gavin Schmidt concluded that the CO2 in our atmosphere is itself is responsible for 80 percent of the radiative forcing that sustains Earth’s greenhouse effect.

Scientists have worked out the fine details of how energy flows through Earth’s atmosphere, as seen in this diagram. It shows how energy contained in sunlight warms our planet, and how this energy becomes temporarily trapped as it flows away from Earth’s surface as longwave infrared radiation. This energy trap produces the greenhouse effect, the main driver of global warming. (Source: Kevin Trenberth, John Fasullo and Jeff Kiehl via UCAR)

This brings me to another claim made by some commenters here at ImaGeo. Climate records show that global temperatures drop before CO2 does as Earth enters an ice age, and visa versa too: Temperatures rise before CO2 as we come out of an ice age. So once again, CO2 cannot be the most important factor.

Scientists have actually long known that something something other than CO2 sets things in motion when Earth enters and emerges from ice ages: shifts in solar radiation reaching Earth due to variations in the Earth’s orientation to the Sun. (These are known as Milankovitch cycles). Then other natural feedbacks kick in — most especially changes in carbon dioxide.

Scientists haven’t fully teased out all of the details yet. But in general, the picture looks like this:

As Earth starts to warm at the end of an ice age due to increased solar radiation reaching Earth, ice sheets and snow begin to contract. These surfaces are very reflective. So as they shrink, less sunlight is reflected back into space. This helps to enhance the warming. The warming causes ocean waters to give up CO2 — because CO2 is less soluble in warmer water. This strongly enhances the warming, which reduces the ice and snow, which causes more warming, which increases the CO2, leading to even more warming.

The bottom line is that a change in the amount of solar energy reaching Earth may get things going, but it’s CO2 that plays the dominant role.

This general picture leaves out some important details, such as the role of fresh water flowing into the oceans as ice sheets melt. A 2012 study led by Jeremy Shakun, now a Boston College climatologist, examined some of these details. Skeptical Science posted an excellent explainer about the results here. But the upshot of the study was this: “While the orbital cycles triggered the initial warming, overall, more than 90% of the glacial-interglacial warming occured after that atmospheric CO2 increase.”

I’ll finish with one recent piece of research in which a team of five scientists examined the role of greenhouse gases in temperature anomalies, including the overall warming trend, since the onset of the industrial revolution.

Here, too, commenters on this blog often claim that since recent periods in Earth’s past were almost as warm as it is now, we can’t know for sure that the CO2 we’ve added to the atmosphere is responsible for the observed recent warming.

But in their paper, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the scientists confirmed that our emissions of greenhouse gases, “especially CO₂, are the main causal drivers of the recent warming.”

Earth’s climate is clearly an incredibly complex system. And climate scientists have never contended that they’ve understood all the details, or that their current understanding isn’t subject to revision when new evidence comes along. This is why they continue to do their research – to improve our understanding of how one of Earth’s key life support systems works.

They’ve also never contended that CO2 is the sole factor driving climate changes over geologic history. As we’ve seen, however, it plays a key role: Without the CO2 thermostat, Earth would likely be a proverbial snowball.

And now, we humans have turned the thermostat up, with predictable results that we’re already observing — such as changes to permafrost in the Arctic that got me going on this post to begin with.