Ego Through the Ages

“Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine…” (Hugo). It is human nature to progress, the desire to improve, to make advancements in personality and self-worth. When a person learns of a fault, their immediate aim is to reverse and correct it. This could be as simple as looking in a mirror to fix messy hair, but mirrors cannot reflect a person’s personality. What is it that gives a person the ability to consciously reflect upon their thoughts, attitude, and behavior? Ego is the most obvious answer. The meaning of ego has been distorted through the ages, since its origin. However, the general idea remains the same. Ego is a complex term, which contains several different meanings from the time it originated, to present day, where it consists of psychological as well as spiritual usages.

Ego first entered the English language in the early 1700’s, as a term involved in metaphysics. It was adopted from the Latin word ego, which translated into “I”, referring to the self. Metaphysics was a form of philosophy invented by Greek philosophers, including Aristotle, which analyzed the essence of things. It dealt with reality, and the perception of what was real and why it was so. It was important to have the term ego, because it incurred self reflection, which helped students of metaphysics to realize the essence of reality. While at its first insurgence from the Latin language into English use the translation was simply “I”, it became to be known later as “I myself” for added emphasis on its self-reflective meaning. For years ego kept its metaphysical meaning, unti psychology was born. A creation resulting from the mixture of human anatomy and biology, psychology was a study of the mind and its processes. It originated around 1860, and was specifically analyzed the way people think. Important to psychology, of course, would be how a person would think about themselves. This is where ego became a word component of psychology. Sigmund Freud, a famous psychologist is known for his focus on the trio of ego, superego, and id. These terms, work together as subsections for all of the realms of the human mind. Most common present-day dictionary definitions detail ego as a noun, and all meanings deal with the first-person. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the most widely accepted dictionary among scholars and in science includes the first definition of ego as, “ The self especially as contrasted with another self or the world,”(Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). This is a somewhat obscure description, and thus is used in many different settings without one usage being clearly defined as “right” or “wrong”. While some definitions are reflective, meaning how a person sees themselves, others include negative connotations, hinting that ego embellish ones pride causing them to make a effrontery decision. An example would be how ego is often defined as the idea of self-love, or conceit. In most cases, a spiritual definition is not incorporated. In most dictionaries, psychoanalytic definitions are also included, which borrow ideas from Freud.

In psychology, the conscious mind and its processes are described through ego. Ego is a part of us that allows us to make a decision, think, and behave in a certain way that reflects our personality. Some psychoanalysts believe that ego is the median between two moral extremes, which are id and superego. Id and superego are each two entities of the human brain that want to do different things. They differ greatly, and ego is the compromise between them. Freud has a different definition however, one that is generally more accepted with psychologists. Freud describes ego part of the id, superego and ego trio that deals entirely with the conscious mind. What is surprising is that our conscious mind, made up of mostly ego, is the smallest of mind processes. They are simply the only processes we are aware of, and therefore seem to be much more immense than they truly are, in hindsight. Freud depicted this through the metaphor of an iceberg. When viewed by a common person above water, they see only the pinnacle of the iceberg. This section includes all of ego, and a small section of superego. Unbeknown to the onlooker is that this iceberg is actually many times smaller, underneath the waves of the ocean, in the subconscious, which cannot be detected. This subconscious contains the majority of superego and all of id (Freud). The purpose of this image is for Freud to display that while we may feel our ego, or processes of our conscious mind may seem like a very large and complex amount of activity, it is in actuality extremely minute in comparison to the processes that are unconscious and unknown to us. This kind of example