Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

a byproduct of mental illness, Freud conjectured, but one path
to a part of the human mind that everyone possesses, although it
remains out of sight when the mind works as expected.
Charcot’s hypothesis that trauma could lead to mental illness and
Breuer’s observations that talking could make a patient better
implied that there was more going on in the mind than we normally
see. Perhaps some mental illnesses are the result of traumatic events
stored in this inaccessible part of the mind, the subconscious. These
events remain hidden from our minds because they are too painful
to confront, but we must work hard to repress them. The struggle
for repression remains below the threshold of consciousness, but
the mental strain takes its toll and instantiates itself in sometimes
bizarre and seemingly unexplainable ways.
The result of Freud’s study over several years was a tripartite theory
of mind, encompassing the ego, the id, and the superego.
The ego is the conscious mind. Traditionally, it had been thought
of as the complete self. Reasoning, arguing, deliberating,
organizing, planning, and making sense of sense experiences
are all the work of the ego.
The id is the repository of our urges and desires. It is where
instinct and primal needs are located. Freud contended that the
child’s mind is pure id, something we learn to mitigate later in
life, when we become proper and cultured.
The superego is the conscience. In Freud’s thinking, this is the
internalized father, the parent who teaches us how to behave
and punishes us if we do not follow the rules.
According to the Freudian model of the mind, we think we are free
and the result is wrongly perceived by us to be a matter of free choice.
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