II
THE EGO AND THE ID

II. 1. PATHOLOGICAL research has directed our interest too exclusively to the repressed. We should like to learn more about the ego, now that we know that it, too, can be unconscious in the proper sense of the word. Hitherto the only guide we have had during our in, investigations has been the distinguishing mark of being conscious or unconscious; we have finally come to see how ambiguous this can be.

II. 2. Now all our knowledge is invariably bound up with consciousness. We can come to know even the Ucs. only by making it conscious. But stop, how is that possible? What does it mean when we say ‘making something conscious’? How can that come about?

II. 3. We already know the point from which we have to start in this connection. We have said that consciousness is the surface of the mental apparatus; that is, we have ascribed it as a function to a system which is spatially the first one reached from the external world — and spatially not only in the functional sense but, on this occasion, also in the sense of anatomical dissection.⁷ Our investigations too must take this perceiving surface as a starting-point.

⁷Beyond the Pleasure Principle [p. 297 above].

II. 4. All perceptions which are received from without (sense-perceptions) and from within — what we call sensations and feelings — are Cs. from the start. But what about those internal processes which we may — roughly and inexactly — sum up under the name of thought-processes? They represent displacements of mental energy which are effected somewhere in the interior of the apparatus as this energy proceeds on its way towards action. Do they advance to the surface, which causes consciousness to be generated? Or does consciousness make its way to them? This is clearly one of the difficulties that arise when one begins to take the spatial or ‘topographical’ idea of mental life seriously. Both these possibilities are equally unimaginable; there must be a third alternative.⁸

⁸[This had been discussed at greater length in the second section of ‘The Unconscious’ (1915e), pp. 175-8 above.]

II. 5. I have already, in another place,⁹ suggested that the real difference between a Ucs. and a Pcs. idea (thought) consists in this: that the former is carried out on some material which remains unknown, whereas the latter (the Pcs.) is in addition brought into connection with word-presentations. This is the first attempt to indicate distinguishing marks for the two systems, the Pcs. and the Ucs., other than their relation to consciousness. The question, ‘How does a thing become conscious?’ would thus be more advantageously stated: ‘How does a thing become preconscious?’ And the answer would be: ‘Through becoming connected with the word-presentations corresponding to it.’

⁹‘The Unconscious’[p. 206 in above].

II. 6. These word-presentations are residues of memories; they were at one time perceptions, and like all mnemic residues they can become conscious again. Before we concern ourselves further with their nature, it dawns upon us like a new discovery that only something which has once been a Cs. perception can become conscious, and that anything arising from within (apart from feelings) that seeks to become conscious must try to transform itself into external perceptions: this becomes possible by means of memory-traces.

II. 7. We think of the mnemic residues as being contained in systems which are directly adjacent to the system Pcpt.-Cs., so that the cathexes of those residues can readily extend from within on to the elements of the latter system.¹⁰ We immediately think here of hallucinations, and of the fact that the most vivid memory is always distinguishable both from a hallucination and from an external perception¹¹ but it will also occur to us at once that when a memory is revived the cathexis remains in the mnemic system, whereas a hallucination, which is not distinguishable from a perception, can arise when the cathexis does not merely spread over from the memory-trace on to the Pcpt. element, but passes over to it entirely.

¹⁰ [Cf. Chapter VII (B) of The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), P.F.L., 4, 687.]

¹¹[This view had been expressed by Breuer in his theoretical contribution to Studies on Hysteria (1895d), P.F.L., 3, 263.]

II. 8. Verbal residues are derived primarily from auditory perceptions,¹² so that the system Pcs. has, as it were, a special sensory source. The vital components of word-presentations are secondary, acquired through reading, and may to begin with be left on one side; so may the motor images of words, which, except with deaf-mutes, play the part of auxiliary indications. In essence a word is after all the mnemic residue of a word that has been heard.

II. 9. We must not be led, in the interests of simplification perhaps, to forget the importance of optical mnemic residues, when they are of things, or to deny that it is possible for thought-processes to become conscious through a reversion to visual residues, and that in many people this seems to be the favoured method. The study of dreams and of preconscious phantasies as shown in Varendonck’s observations¹³ can give us an idea of the special character of this visual thinking. We learn that what becomes conscious in it is as a rule only the concrete subject-matter of the thought, and that the relations between the various elements of this subject-matter, which is what specially characterizes thoughts, cannot be given visual expression. Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incomplete form of becoming conscious. In some way, too, it stands nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and phylogenetically.

¹³[Cf. Varendonck (1921), a book to which Freud contributed an introduction (1921b).]

II. 10. To return to our argument: if, therefore, this is the way in which something that is in itself unconscious becomes preconscious, the question how we make something that is repressed (pre)conscious would be answered as follows. It is done by supplying Pcs. intermediate links through the work of analysis. Consciousness remains where it is, therefore; but, on the other hand, the Ucs. does not rise into the Cs.

II. 11. Whereas the relation of external perceptions to the ego is quite perspicuous, that of internal perceptions to the ego requires’ special investigation. It gives rise once more to a doubt whether we are really right in referring the whole of consciousness to the single superficial system Pcpt.-Cs.

II. 12. Internal perceptions yield sensations of processes arising in the most diverse and certainly also in the deepest strata of the mental apparatus. Very little is known about these sensations and feelings; those belonging to the pleasure-unpleasure series may still be regarded as the best examples of them. They are more primordial, more elementary, than perceptions arising externally and they can come about even when consciousness is clouded. I have elsewhere¹⁴ expressed my views about their greater economic significance and the metapsychological reasons 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.

¹⁴[Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920g), p. 300 above.]

II. 13. 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 unpleasure as implying a heightening and pleasure a lowering of energic cathexis.¹⁵ 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 Pcpt.

¹⁵[Ibid., 276.]

II. 14. Clinical experience decides for the latter. It shows us that this ‘something’ behaves like a repressed impulse. It can exert drivinging force without the ego noticing the compulsion. Not until there is resistance to the compulsion, a hold-up in the discharge-reaction, does the ‘something’ at once become conscious as unpleasure. In the same way that tensions arising from physical needs can remain unconscious, so also can pain — a thing intermediate between external and internal perception, which behaves like an internal perception even when its source is in the external world. It remains true, therefore, that sensations and feelings, too, only become conscious through reaching the system Pcpt.; if the way forward is barred, they do not come into being as sensations, although the ‘something’ that corresponds to them in the course of excitation is the same as if they did. We then come to speak, in a condensed and not entirely correct manner, of ‘unconscious feelings’, keeping up an analogy with unconscious ideas which is not altogether justifiable. Actually the difference is that, whereas with Ucs. ideas connecting links must be created before they can be brought into the Cs., with feelings, which are themselves transmitted directly, this does not occur. In other words: the distinction between Cs. and Pcs. has no meaning where feelings are concerned; the Pcs. here drops out — and feelings are either conscious or unconscious. Even when they are attached to word-presentations, their becoming conscious is not due to that circumstance, but they become so directly.¹⁶

¹⁶[Cf. Section III of ‘The Unconscious’ (1915e). p.179 ff. above.]

II. 15. The part played by word-presentations now becomes perfectly clear. By their interposition internal thought-processes are made into perceptions. It is like a demonstration of the theorem that all knowledge has its origin in external perception. When a hypercathexis of the process of thinking takes place, thoughts are actually perceived — as if they came from without — and are consequently held to be true.

II. 16. After this clarifying of the relations between external and perception and the superficial system Pcpt. -Cs., we can go on to work out our idea of the ego. It starts out, as we see, from the system Pcpt., which is its nucleus, and begins by embracing the Pcs., which is adjacent to the mnemic residues. But, as we have learnt, the ego is also unconscious.

II. 17. Now I think we shall gain a great deal by following the suggestion of a writer who, from personal motives, vainly asserts that he has nothing to do with the rigours of pure science. I am speaking of Georg Groddeck, who is never tired of insisting that what we call our ego behaves essentially passively in life, and that, as he expresses it, we are ‘lived’ by unknown and uncontrollable forces.¹⁷ We have all had impressions of the same kind, even though they may not have overwhelmed us to the exclusion of all others, and we need feel no hesitation in finding a place for Groddeck’s discovery in the structure of science. I propose to take it into account by calling the entity which starts out from the system Pcpt. and begins by being Pcs. the ‘ego’, and by following Groddeck in calling the other part of the mind, into which this entity extends and which behaves as though it were Ucs., the ‘id’.¹⁸

¹⁷Groddeck (1923).

¹⁸[See Editor’s Introduction, p. 345.] — Groddeck himself no doubt followed the example of Nietzsche, who habitually used this grammatical term for whatever in our nature is impersonal and, so to speak, subject to natural law.

II. 18. We shall soon see whether we can derive any advantage from this view for purposes either of description or of understanding. We shall now look upon an individual as a psychical id, unknown and unconscious, upon whose surface rests the ego, developed from its nucleus the Pcpt. system. If we make an effort to represent this pictorially, we may add that the ego does not completely envelop the id, but only does so to the extent to which the system Pcpt. forms its [the ego’s] surface, more or less as the germinal disc rests upon the ovum. The ego is not sharply separated from the id; its lower portion merges into it.

II. 19. 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. We at once realize that almost all the lines of demarcation we have drawn at the instigation of pathology relate only to the superficial strata of the mental apparatus — the only ones known to us. The state of things which we have been describing can be represented diagrammatically (Fig. 1);¹⁹ though it must be remarked that the form chosen has no pretensions to any special applicability, but is merely intended to serve for purposes of exposition.

We might add, perhaps, that the ego wears a ‘cap of hearing’²⁰ — on one side only, as we learn from cerebral anatomy. It might be said to wear it awry.²¹

¹⁹[Compare the slightly different diagram near the end of Lecture 31 of the New Introductory Lectures (1933a) P. F. L., 2, 111. The entirely different one in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), P. F. L., 4, 690, and its predecessor in a letter to Fliess of 6 December 1896 (Freud, 1950a, Letter 52) are concerned with function as well as structure.]

²⁰[‘Hörkappe.’ I.e. the auditory lobe. Cf. footnote 1, p.359 above.]

²¹[Freud may here have had in mind ‘Wernicke’s area’ (Wernicke, 1900), the higher auditory lobe of the brain concerned with the understanding of speech. Cf. p.359 n. 1 above.]

II. 20. It is easy to see that the ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world through the medium of the Pcpt.-Cs.; in a sense it is an extension of the surface-differentiation. Moreover, the ego seeks to bring the influence of the external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavours to substitute the reality principle for the pleasure principle which reigns unrestrictedly in the id. For the ego, perception plays the part which in the id falls to instinct. The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions. All this falls into line with popular distinctions which we are all familiar with; at the same time, however, it is only to be regarded as holding good on the average or ‘ideally’.

II. 21. 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;²² 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.

²²[This analogy reappears in the New Introductory Lectures (1933a). P.F.L., 2, 109-10. A similar one appears as an association to one of Freud’s dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), P.F.L., 4, 326.]

II. 22. Another factor, besides the influence of the system Pcpt., seems to have played a part in bringing about the formation of the ego and its differentiation from the id. A person’s own body, and above all its surface, is a place from which both external and internal perceptions may spring. It is seen like any other object, but to the touch it yields two kinds of sensations, one of which may be equivalent to an internal perception. Psych-physiology has fully discussed the manner in which a person’s own body attains its special position among other objects in the world of perception. Pain, too, seems to play a part in the process, and the way in which we gain new knowledge of our organs during painful illnesses is perhaps a model of the way by which in general we arrive at the idea of our body.

II. 23. The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface.²³ If we wish to find an anatomical analogy for it we can best identify it with the ‘cortical homunculus’ of the anatomists, which stands on its head in the cortex, sticks up its heels, faces backwards and, as we know, has its speech-area on the left-hand side.

II. 24. The relation of the ego to consciousness has been entered into repeatedly; yet there are some important facts in this connection which remain to be described here. Accustomed as we are to taking our social or ethical scale of values along with us wherever we go, we feel no surprise at hearing that the scene of the activities of the lower passions is in the unconscious; we expect, moreover, that the higher any mental function ranks in our scale of values the more easily it will find access to consciousness assured to it. Here, however, psychoanalytic experience disappoints us. On the one hand, we have evidence that even subtle and difficult intellectual operations which ordinarily require strenuous reflection can equally be carried out preconsciously and without coming into consciousness. Instances of this are quite incontestable; they may occur, for example, during the state of sleep, as is shown when someone finds, immediately after waking, that he knows the solution to a difficult mathematical or other problem with which he had been wrestling in vain the day before.²⁴

²⁴[I was quite recently told an instance of this which was, in fact. brought up as an objection against my description of the ‘dream-work’. Cf. The Interpretation of Dreams. P.F.L.. 4. 131 f. and 718.]

II. 25. There is another phenomenon, however, which is far stranger. In our analyses we discover that there are people in whom the faculties of self-criticism and conscience — mental activities, that is, that rank as extremely high ones — are unconscious and unconsciously produce effects of the greatest importance; the example of resistance remaining unconscious during analysis is therefore by no means unique. But this new discovery, which compels us, in spite of our better critical judgement, to speak of an ‘unconscious sense of guilt’,²⁵ bewilders us far more than the other and sets us fresh problems, especially when we gradually come to see that in a great number of neuroses an unconscious sense of guilt of this kind plays a decisive economic part and puts the most powerful obstacles in the way of recovery.²⁶ If we come back once more to our scale of values, we shall have to say that not only what is lowest but also what is highest in the ego can be unconscious. It is as if we were thus supplied with a proof of what we have just asserted of the conscious ego: that it is first and foremost a body-ego.