This is really fascinating to me.
So the ID is the desires and pleasure centers…our instincts while the Super-ego is this
“The super-ego works in contradiction to the id. The super-ego strives to act in a socially appropriate manner, whereas the id just wants instant self-gratification. The super-ego controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt. It helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways.”
For the record, we call that “propriety” and I have none. I do and say what I want and have no screening process to ask, “should I do/say this?”…Which is why I am so easily writing all of this out for you to read free of all worry on how you will judge me. I’ll say it again. I am broken.
Our morals. Right and wrong weighed by guilt. All sense of right and wrong I have is based on ethics through philosophical study and not based on my own principles or morals (I have no religion to determined my ethics, so I default to logic instead). I think this is where Ayn Rand went wrong as well.
When you use logic and not emotions or guilt to weigh out right and wrong, you can use logic to manipulate the outcome. Ergo, the Id rules the Super-Ego and not the Ego or the emotions through Guilt.
Ayn Rand was married to a man named Frank. Open anyone of her books and look at the dedication. “To Frank.” That is her husband. He was a friend who married her to keep her in the States back in the 20’s or 30’s. If you have an earlier edition (lucky you! So jealous!) You will see “To Frank and Brandon.”
Let me tell you about Brandon. Brandon was Ayn Rand’s not-so-secret lover.
Brandon had a wife named Barbara. I read Barbara’s biography on Ayn Rand which is how I know all this stuff. Barbara and Brandon were students of Ayn Rand who were married after their tutelage began. Soon after the wedding, Ayn Rand and Brandon fell in love. Rand sat Barbara and Frank down with her and Brandon and provided “a logical argument to prove why Brandon and Rand were destined to be lovers and why none of them should object.”
As a logician, I can say that she went wrong when she told them “none of them should object.”
(In hindsight, after reading this article over three times, I can see how odd it is that I am not viewing it wrong that she fell in love with a married man shortly after his wedding to another woman. BUT…the fact that I even noticed this “quirk” about me, is a sign that I am improving! Excellent!)
No logician has rights to dictate the emotions of another. Frank and Barbara didn’t know this and agreed to the situation on Rand’s terms. Brandon and Rand spent every Wednesday together for the next ten years (I think it was ten years).
Anyway…my point! Rand sensed no right or wrong in her actions because she used logic to determine right and wrong to sate her Id. But right and wrong should be determined by the super-ego and the feeling of guilt, which she didn’t have. Neither do I. This is not a behavior I idolize. It is very wrong and all very subconscious. It is a behavior developed through environment and, unlike Rand, I am trying to fix mine. I don’t want you to think I support this way of thinking because I don’t.
I recently learned that there are four types of guilt (There are. I learned this from a master psychologist). To be honest, I know too little about this to give much of any thoughts on this, so remember this is my own exploratory dialogue. I like that term by the way. Exploratory Dialogue. I’ll be using that from now on.
I feel guilt for spending money. I feel guilt for not helping out. I feel guilt for not obeying a male (yeah, I’m messed up…I’m working on it). I feel guilt for saying, “no” and denying a male or not giving to a male. I feel guilt for taking and for being selfish. I do not feel guilt for anything else. I am really messed up. Did I mention I’m in therapy?
I know this is abnormal and also, it a problem. But this means, my right and wrong is based on logic and not my sense of guilt because I have no sense of guilt outside of those conditions.
- I shouldn’t steal because that is a form of taking.
- I shouldn’t kill because that is a form of taking.
- I shouldn’t lie because that betrays my logic and logic is the core of my existence.
Any form of destruction and not preservation is a form of taking. I think this is why I garden. To give back and balance out what I take to relieve the guilt.
Yep. That is it. I have no other forms of guilt. So long as I don’t take, I’m okay. But, my super-ego—like Rand’s—is out to serve the Id (my Id) and I think this is where I’m messed up. The Id is emotion and instinct, which I’ve locked up. I wonder if this is why I chained Angel to the floor. It’s a metaphor for “I have suppressed my emotions/instinct.”
I have achieved Kolinahr (the Vulcan term from Star Trek that means “A lifestyle dedicated to logic and the suppression of all emotion”). I did this years ago and I usually live in this state. I pursued Kolinahr long before I knew anything about Star Trek, that is the awesome thing about all this. I achieved Kolinahr when I was in my mid-twenties. Anyone would tell you I was as cold as Spock and 100% logical. I had no physical contact and was always calm…but cold.
I have lived for so long without emotion that I can’t handle emotions when they come out. They never come out…but lately, since October of last year…they have been coming out more and more and I can’t contain them any longer. So I wrote Broken. Now I have awareness. I know what they are and why…and now I live two lives, one in a complete state of Kolinahr and the other when emotions break out and I face my past. I still enter Kolinhar when I feel threatened. It’s a security blanket to me.
This is why I am exploring the Id, Ego, and Super-Ego. To see where I went wrong. Now, the Ego…
Back to Wikipedia and Freud.
The ego is the organized part of the personality structure that includes defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of the operations of the ego are conscious. Originally, Freud used the word ego to mean a sense of self, but later revised it to mean a set of psychic functions such as judgment, tolerance, reality testing, control, planning, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory.[1]The ego separates out what is real. It helps us to organize our thoughts and make sense of them and the world around us.[1] “The ego is that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. … The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions … 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.”[20] Still worse, “it serves three severe masters … the external world, the super-ego and the id.”[18] Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality while satisfying the id and super-ego.
In short, my Ego is broken. Very broken. My awareness, perception…my sense of reality…This is all about perspective and I have none. I mean…NONE.
I love Don Quixote. I can not tell you enough how much I adore Cervantes. Most people talk about Alice and her rabbit hole. I hate Alice and Wonderland. The lack of logic scares me due to the chaos and lack of control, which is one of my greatest fears…lack of control. By the way…this is really what my issue is, a fear of losing control. I associate a lack of logic with severe danger. Which is why I embraced Kolinahr like I did.
So I go to Don Quixote for my metaphors. I am like the Don in this sense. To cope with my traumas, I lived for 35 riding a stallion and chasing dragons without realizing I was a dying old man riding a mule and chasing windmills.
On April 2nd, a friend of mine showed me the Mirrors of Reality and my perspective changed. For the first time in my life, I saw reality. I can not tell you enough how much I felt like a fool. My ego is broken. Distorted beyond recognition, my Id is chained to the floor and suppressed and my super-ego looks to serve the Id and not the Ego. This is what is wrong with me.
Hm…Now, I just need to figure out how to fix it.
I think I will have to start by freeing the Id…which will require a therapist as all my emotions will come out and…reveling one’s emotions is dangerous. Very dangerous. Foolish, in my opinion. Yes…this is where I will need a therapist. After I free Angel, I can re-break my ego and rebuild it so it is in proper order then this should align my super-ego and I can feel guilt like a normal person. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy…whatever that means.
So that is how I use “Exploratory Dialogue.”
I’ll say it again…this is all just an hypothesis. By the way this…This is “Unbreaking Me.”
