“Yes, I see.”
“The analyst can perhaps discover an unhappy experience that the
patient has tried to suppress for many years, but which has nevertheless lain
buried, gnawing away at the patient’s resources. By bringing a ‘traumatic
experience’ into the conscious mind—and holding it up to the patient, so to
speak—he or she can help the patient ‘be done with it,’ and get well again.”
“That sounds logical.”
“But I am jumping too far ahead. Let us first take a look at Freud’s
description of the human mind. Have you ever seen a newborn baby?”
“I have a cousin who is four.”
“When we come into the world, we live out our physical and mental
needs quite directly and unashamedly. If we do not get milk, we cry, or maybe
we cry if we have a wet diaper. We also give direct expression to our desire
for physical contact and body warmth. Freud called this ‘pleasure principle’ in
us the id. As newborn babies we are hardly anything but id.”
“Go on.”
“We carry the id, or pleasure principle, with us into adulthood and
throughout life. But gradually we learn to regulate our desires and adjust to
our surroundings. We learn to regulate the pleasure principle in relation to the
‘reality principle.’ In Freud’s terms, we develop an ego which has this
regulative function. Even though we want or need something, we cannot just
lie down and scream until we get what we want or need.”
“No, obviously.”
“We may desire something very badly that the outside world will not
accept. We may repress our desires. That means we try to push them away
and forget about them.”
“I see.”
“However, Freud proposed, and worked with, a third element in the
human mind. From infancy we are constantly faced with the moral demands
of our parents and of society. When we do anything wrong, our parents say
‘Don’t do that!’ or ‘Naughty naughty, that’s bad!’ Even when we are grown up,
we retain the echo of such moral demands and judgments. It seems as
though the world’s moral expectations have become part of us. Freud called
this the superego.”
“Is that another word for conscience?”
“Conscience is a component of the superego. But Freud claimed that the
superego tells us when our desires themselves are ‘bad’ or ‘improper/ not
least in the case of erotic or sexual desire. And as I said, Freud claimed that
these ‘improper’ desires already manifest themselves at an early stage of
childhood.”
“How?”
“Nowadays we know that infants like touching their sex organs. We can
observe this on any beach. In Freud’s time, this behavior could result in a slap
over the fingers of the two- or three-year-old, perhaps accompanied by the
mother saying, ‘Naughty!’ or ‘Don’t do that!’ or ‘Keep your hands on top of the
covers!’”
“How sick!”
“That’s the beginning of guilt feelings about everything connected with
the sex organs and sexuality. Because this guilt feeling remains in the
superego, many people—according to Freud, most people—feel guilty about