Three things happen to old ideas in their journey to contemporary thinking and practice: they are either dismissed and jettisoned, evolve and grow, or become new again (re-emerge under a new name).
Recently we’ve been looking at Sigmund Freud and behaviour change – specifically one of his theories that has evolved and grown.
Among other contributions to psychology and psychoanalysis, Freud proposed three components of human psyche that interact to shape behaviour and personality: the Id, Ego and Superego.
You might have heard of these and wondered what they are?
Firstly, they are not descriptions of neurophysiology (the workings of the brain) but structural concepts to help frame analysis of people’s psyche (the workings of the mind).
Also, Freud did not use the word ‘ego’ like we do in contemporary times – although some might claim he ‘had a big ego’!
Interestingly, Freud did not even use the words ‘Id, Ego and Superego’ – these were chosen by English translators and stuck; rather, Freud used the German words ‘Es, Ich, and Über-Ich’, which translate literally as ‘the it, I, and over-I’.
According to Freud…
- The Id is our instinctive, subconscious, non-rational reaction to stimulus.
- The Ego is a that part of the mental process that recognises the Id and, based on what is realistically possible in a particular context (the ‘reality principle’), leading to rational decision-making.
- The Superego the part of a person’s mind that acts as a self-critical conscience, reflecting social rules and norms learned primarily from parents and teachers.
If you are working in behavioural science, you may see some similarities in these concepts to how we talk about the psychology of judgment and decision-making.
You may even have had your own thoughts about Sigmund Freud and behaviour change.
In his Nobel Prize-winning research, and put compellingly in the best seller Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman defines people’s minds as operating in two systems:
- Automatic: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, unconscious.
- Reflective: Slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating, conscious.
You might say the automatic system is like the Id, and the reflective system is similar to the Ego.
The Superego concept can be seen at work in a range of modern social psychology theory. The influence on individual behaviour of ‘the crowd’, or peers and other persons of cultural influence is significant in the age of social media.
Today, we talk a lot about values: social and environmental; conservative and progressive. Underneath it all, are increasingly contested or ambiguous notions of morals and related rights.
And then there are algorithms simultaneously manipulating the Id, Ego and Superego! What would Freud have made of that?
