Leonore Frigo wrote: > This is from one of my online students... > "Is Freud's id, ego and superego based on Plato's three part > soul which consists of reason, emotion and appetite?"
Christopher Green replied: >When I was an undergraduate, oh so many years ago, I wrote >what, at the time, I considered to be my most original paper for >a class (i.e., I had not read anything like it before). In the paper, >I compared Freud's three components of the psyche with >Plato's three components of the "Republic" (i.e., the artisans, >warriors and Philosopher-King... as I recall). The similarities >were quite compelling. But I'm not sure if there is any direct >link or if the similarities were a coincidence with most general >structures of triads. I would suspect that it was an illusory >relationship. and later: >There is, to be sure, a rough mapping bewteen Plato's epithumetikon >and Freud's id. One might even be able to make some sort of case >for the logistikon and the ego. It is very difficult, however, to map >the thumos on to the super-ego. They just don't do the same things. >In addition, the theorized dynamics among the various parts are quite >different. Here are some further comments in the literature on Freud’s ego-psychology formulations of the ego, id and superego: William McDougall, *Psychoanalysis and Social Psychology*, 1936, pp. 60-61: Is, then, the id simply the sum of the instincts ? On some pages it would seem so: for the id is unconscious, it is 'a cauldron of seething excitement' and is the great reservoir of libido, (The Ego and the Id, p. 38) and in it 'the pleasure principle exerts undisputed sway' and dominates all its processes'. (New Lectures, p. 100) Further, the ego stands for reason and circumspection, while the id stands for the untamed passions . . . one might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse'. Here we are back at Plato's doctrine of Reason as the charioteer who guides the fierce unruly horses, the passions, which are the motive powers. Even the topographical separation of the id and the reason was at least as clear in Plato's teaching as in Freud's. For Plato put Reason in the head, and the id in the belly. Whereas Freud does not yet seem to know that the id corresponds roughly to the thalamic region of the brain and reason to the cortex. But the doctrine of the id [as explicated by Freud], at present is not so clear, so simple, as this. It is still a great tangle in which Freud lashes about like a great whale caught in a net of his own contriving. He says quite explicitly Super-ego, ego and id, then, are the three realms, regions or provinces into which we divide the mental apparatus of the individual. (New Lectures, p. 97) This seems a pretty definite separation between ego and id; but it by no means corresponds with the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious. For, although the ego 'includes consciousness' (apparently all there is of consciousness) yet 'The ego is after all only part of the id' (New Lectures, p. 102). Now the super-ego is a 'function in the ego' there-fore the unconscious id includes within itself both ego and super-ego (which, two or three pages earlier in the chapter, have been emphatically separated from the id as distinct parts, 'realms, regions or provinces' of the mental apparatus) and, with them, the consciousness or conscious activities which they include. I have said enough, I think, to show you that, although it was a great step to distinguish the two very different meanings which until recently had been confused together by Freud under the term 'the Unconscious', it is clear that the name 'id', having been given to the topographical part thus separated out from the Unconscious, still covers a mass of gross confusion. I will not call it a hopeless confusion; for, if Professor Freud should have the strength to revise all this part of his doctrine once more, giving up once for all his obstinate inclination to confuse parts of mental structure with types of mental activity (a distinction whose importance he has now begun to realize), he will probably arrive at the tolerable conclusion that the name id, if it is to have any usefulness, must go back to the meaning which that great psychologist, Friedrich Nietzsche, gave to it, namely, the sum of the instinctive or innate dispositions. Henri Ellenberger (*The Discovery of the Unconscious*, 1970) wrote: As already mentioned, the notion of the id can be traced to the Romantics, and the essence of the superego unmistakably originated with Nietzsche, especially in *The Genealogy of Morals* (pp. 516-517). (Ellenberger also noted that Thomas Mann observed that Freud’s description of the id and the ego was “to a hair” Schopenhauer’s description of the will and the intellect, translated from metaphysics into psychology (p. 209).) Incidentally, Ronald Lehrer has traced the similarities between Freud’s ideas on this subject and those published by Nietzsche in a book that documents corresponding similarities throughout Freud’s writings. (*Nietzsche’s Presence in Freud’s Life and Thought*, 1995, pp. 160-183) Christopher wrote: > That said, Freud's classical education was quite good (perhaps > Allen E. can tell us just how good), he might well have gleaned > the general idea of intrapsychic conflict from Plato (and a slew > of others who got it from Plato as well and used it in various ways). It was more than quite good! Freud had a knowledge of classical literature and acknowledged great works of literature (in several languages) that we would find almost inconceivable in our philistine age. (And if anyone retorts, “speak for yourself”, I will gladly, though regretfully, accept that this certainly applies to me, in trumps.) Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=10 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
