subject: Freud is wrong: it is not the Id and the Superego but it is the tendencies for Evil and Good [print this page] Freud is wrong: it is not the Id and the Superego but it is the tendencies for Evil and Good
Freud is wrong: it is not the Id and the Superego but it is the tendencies for Evil and Good
Freud was wrong in defining the psyche into three categories namely the Id, the Ego and the Superego. This threefold category is supposed to clarify the characteristic features of human motivation, impulses and needs with the role of society and moral codes in the composition of the human nature.
The Id is where all evil and bad impulses along side base desires, lusts and hopes reside and send impulses for man to act in accordance. The ego and the superego are societal influences where codes of morality, religion, and education as well as customs and habits and tradition repress the Id impulses.
Whether the three fold system of Freud explains the reality of the human nature is doubtful. For human nature is composed of good and evil. Good and bad thoughts, feeling as well as actions of every individual mark the reality of the human nature in more succinct and more precise manner.
These two motivations stand in complete paradoxical opposition. Man has within him these tendencies. If the Id represents natural motivations towards evil and the superego represents the societal influences then the Id is stronger by its very definition being natural and not artificial as the societal influences. The mind in the evil-good opposition paradigm is the arbitrator to go either way.
Man is swayed by either good or evil impulses. If he goes either way it is entirely up to man himself to decide. The reason why Freud classifies human nature in this three fold classification is because he did not believe in God and hence good and evil are shared only by the explication of man and society.
There is no God for Freud and hence whatever is left is man and society. Thus man for Freud represents evil tendencies embedded in the Id or the self that desires everything, murder, theft, rape, lying, cheating, and what have you, in brief, all evil doings. The ego and the superego are formations imposed by the society to combat the tendencies of the Self.
However, if Freud was mistaken and God IS, and that He is the creator of man and human nature, endowing it with its tendencies for good and evil and appointing the mind as the final arbitrator and judge, then we are closer to reality. For man, although living in society and is subject to its laws and traditions, remain a creature of good and bad. It is up to his free will to take either way.
The society is not really essential for the conduct of man, although important. It is not decisive in man's decisions but it is the individual himself who decides, being conscious of either tendency and conscious whether he makes the right or the wrong decision in favor of one tendency or the other.
Freud's makes society responsible for the actions of the individual, while the reality is that man, every man, himself is responsible for his own actions. The society cannot feel for man, or on behalf of man, but it is the individual himself who feels and recognizes his deeds of good or evil.
Denying God, for Freud. does not resolve his three-fold classification to describe the reality of the human nature and its responsibility, but makes it shallow and unreal.
