Beyond the Pleasure Principle
The Ego and The Id
The state of consciousness is very transitory
- P.16-18
- The relationship between Pcts and Cs.
Cs, Pcs, Ucs.
Two kinds of consciousness but in a dynamic sense it is one
The ego is a coherent organisation of mental processes, that the consciousness is attached to.
But what about those in the processes which we may—roughly and inexactly— up under the name of thought-processes? They represent displacements of mental energy which are effected, where in the interior of the apparatus as this energy proceed on its way towards action. Do they advance to the sur which causes consciousness to be generated? Or does sciousness make its way to them? This is clearly one of the difficulties that arise when one begins to take the spatial or topological idea of mental life logically.
Both are equally unimaginable. There must be a third alternative.
In itself something unconscious become preconscious such that how can we make something that is repressed (pre)conscious would be answered:
Internal perception yields sensation of processes arising in the most diverse strata of the mental apparatus.
These sensations are my views about their idea for this. These sensations are multilocular, like external perceptions; they may come from different places simultaneously and may thus have different or even opposite qualities.
Sensations of a pleasurable nature have not anything inherently impelling about them, whereas unpleasurable ones have it in the highest degree. The latter impel towards change, towards discharge, and that is why we interpret un-pleasure as implying a heightening and pleasure a lowering of energic cathexis.’ Let us call what becomes conscious as pleasure and unpleasure a quantitative and qualitative
‘something’ in the course of mental events; the question then is whether this ‘something’ can become conscious in the place where it is, or whether it must first be transmitted to the system Pept.
Clinical experience decides for the latter. It shows us that this something’ behaves like a repressed impulse. It can exert driving force without the ego noticing the compulsion.
The Ego
The ego is the id modified by influence of perceptual system
object-cathexis and Oedipus complex to describe the form of ego
Object-choices and identification
At this point we must widen our range a little. We succeeded in explaining the painful disorder of melancholia by supposing that [in those suffering from it] an object which was lost has been set up again inside the ego-that is, that an object-cathexis has been replaced by an identification.
At that time, however, we did not appreciate the full significance of this process and did not know how common and how typical it is. Since then we have come to understand that this kind of substitution has a great share in determining the form taken by the ego and that it makes an essential contribution towards building up what is called its ‘character
At the very beginning, in the individual’s primitive oral phase, object-cathexis and identification are no doubt indistinguishable from each other. We can only suppose that later on object-cathexis proceed from the id, which feels erotic trends as needs. The ego, which to begin with is still feeble, becomes aware of the object-cathexis, and either acquiesces in them or tries to fend them off by the process of repression.
The super-ego originates from the experience that let to totemism
Early conflicts of the ego with object-cathexis of the id can be continued in conflicts with their heir, super-ego
If the ego has not succeeded in properly mastering the Oedipus complex, the energic cathexis pf the latter, spring from the id will come into operation once more reaction-formation of the ego ideal.