Ken Steele writes:
"Further, and I would like Allen Esterson to comment, the iceberg analogy seems unlike most of the analogies I have seen in the literature. Most of the analogies I have seen suggest movement, forces in conflict, or animate beings in conflict. The iceberg analogy is literally a frozen, static structure that lacks dynamism. So, a second mystery is why is the iceberg analogy so widely used in textbooks when it does not seem to represent psychoanalytical writings?"
I think there is widespread confusion about the subdivision of the psyche into id, ego, and superego in Freud's writings. This was a development that occured fairly late in Freud's career -- the 1920s as I recall (belying, incidentally, the oft-heard claim from Freud's opponents that he was intellectually rigid and unwilling to entertain changes in his theoretical position). Prior to that, his primary distinction had been between the conscious and unsconscious mind. The iceberg analogy, as I understand it, is only supposed to iluuminate the distinction between the "visible" and "invisible" part of the mind (the water line being anlogous to the threshold of consciousness). It has nothing whatever to do with the later partition into the id, ego, and supego. One of the oddest parts of the Encarta diagram I forwarded to you a few days back was that it attempted, quite infelicitously, to graft the later tripartite subdivision of the psyche on to a metaphor developed for an earlier version of the theory.
Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-5115 ex. 66164 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.yorku.ca/christo ============================= --- To make changes to your subscription go to: http://acsun.frostburg.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=tips&text_mode=0&lang=english
