An outline of psycho-analysis / Sigmund Freud ; authorized translation by James Strachey.

  • Sigmund Freud
Date:
1949
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An outline of psycho-analysis / Sigmund Freud ; authorized translation by James Strachey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/104 page 3
    THE PSYCHICAL APPARATUS the external world to its own advantage (through activity). As regards internal events, in relation to the id, it performs that task by gaining control over the demands of the instincts, by deciding whether they shall be allowed to obtain satisfaction, by postponing that satisfaction to times and circumstances favourable in the external world or by suppressing their excitations completely. Its activi¬ ties are governed by consideration of the tensions pro¬ duced by stimuli present within it or introduced into it. The raising of these tensions is in general felt as unpleasure cpid their lowering as pleasure. It is probable, however, that what is felt as pleasure or unpleasure is not the absolute degree of the tensions but something in the rhythm of their changes. The ego pursues pleasure and seeks to avoid unpleasure. An increase in unpleasure which is expected and foreseen is met by a signal of anxiety ; the occasion of this increase, whether it threatens from without or within, is called a danger. From time to time the ego gives up its connection with the external world and withdraws into the state of sleep, in which its organization undergoes far-reaching changes. It may be inferred from the state of sleep that that organi¬ zation consists in a particular distribution of mental energy. The long period of childhood, during which the grow¬ ing human being lives in dependence upon his parents, leaves behind it a precipitate, which forms within his ego a special agency in which this parental influence is pro¬ longed. It has received the name of super-ego. In so far as the super-ego is differentiated from the ego or opposed to it, it constitutes a third force which the ego must take into account. Thus, an action by the ego is as it should be if it satisfies simultaneously the demands of the id, of the super-ego r
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