It, Me, and Over-Me

The title of this piece is an alternate translation of the German terms Freud used to refer to his formulation of the three primary psychological functions. By this point in history, these terms are so well known that I almost don’t need to name them directly. But just in case, they’re:

Id, Ego, and Superego.

Although these names have been in use from the earliest English translations of Freud in 1924, they are actually a mis-translation, and their use has caused a century of unnecessary confusion and argument for analysts, psychotherapists, psychologists, and lay-people alike.

The original German terms are:

The very first point to make is that the word ich doesn’t translate to ego in English; it translates to I.

This is important because what Freud’s ich has a different meaning to what the word ego means in common English. Specifically, ich doesn’t carry the overtone of grandiosity, arrogance, or narcissism that ego does. In fact, according to psychoanalysis and psychodynamic therapies, grandiosity and arrogance are actually signs of a weak ego and a small sense of self.

So, because of the faulty tranlsation, having a “big ego” means you have a weak I.

Translations

It’s important to note that id, ego, and super-ego are indeed correct translations, but from German into Latin, not English. Nor was the mis-translation a mistake. The translator chose to use latin words because until recently dead languages like ancient Greek and Latin were considered more sophisticated and intellectual than modern living languages. Using ego instead of I therefore gives psychoanalytic theory the pompous gravity and authority of Latin, which probably appealed to the translator’s weak ego.

But, of course, English isn’t Latin; and worse yet, ego had already been in common use in English from at least 200 years before Freud’s translator decided to use the word.

The confusion comes from the fact that where the Latin word ego refers simply to an individual person’s sense of self, the English word ego carries the extra connotation of selfishness, grandiosity, and narcissism. This connotation extends back at least as far as 1714, in the word egotism.

“too frequent use of ‘I’… the obtrusive use of first person singular pronoun in writing, hence”talking too much about oneself.”

There are a number of other negative ego- words which long antedate the 1924 translation:

I personally find the latinate transaltions irritating because they ignore these pre-existing meanings, and thereby create a confusing conceptual overlap which makes it difficult for non-academics and non-psychoanalysts to understand the single most important (and helpful!) aspect of all of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: the part of all of us that refers to itself as I/me/mine.

Clarity

In other words, the problem with the fancy Latin translations is that they have taken something simple, elegant, and obvious and made it seem highly technical and mystically complex.

If, however, we translate the terms directly into common-use English, we discover that what was once arcane and obscure becomes almost painfully clear.

The It, The Me, and The Over-Me

The It

The animal. The It is the seat of the unconscious and the source of all of our impulses and desires. In modern terms, people often refer to this aspect as the lizard brain, or the inner monkey, but it is actually better understood as our inner ameoba. Basic needs create simple drives to satisfy those needs; needs which revolve around survival and sensory gratification. Pleasure, good, more; pain, bad, less. Hungry, horny, sleepy, etc.

Although the needs themselves are simple, satisfying them is not: think about how complex an operation it is to chew and swallow a mouthful of food, let alone hunting a rabbit or identifying edible leaves in a forest full of potentially poisonous plants. These operations are far too complex for the It-amoeba to manage successfully, and so we developed a more complex structure which can assess complex situations and decide between alternatives…

The Me

The negotiator. This is exactly what it sounds like: That part of yourself which refers to itself as Me.German speakers will note that this translation is also incorrect, strictly speaking. I’ve chosen to use me rather than I because of the differences in how the two words are used in English. Me feels closer and more personal, as in “Let’s talk about me.”

 This part is responsible for interacting with the world so that our needs are met as efficiently and with as little conflict as possible. The Me’s primary job is to control the simple, but powerful impulses that come from the It, and redirect them towards the best possible solution (rather than the quickest or easiest).

As we all know, this is never easy to do, and we often discover that the way we handled a past situation wasn’t exactly the optimal way of doing it (to put it rather diplomatically). Anxiety, therefore, is the Me’s fear that you’re about to do something that either won’t work out as planned, or will lead to bad consequences, up to and including death.

Part of the Me’s job is, in other words, to predict the future, or at least make a best-guess as to what’s most likely to happen. Predicting the future in this way requires us to have a set of rules for how things work, and a set of expectations which assess the final outcome of an action. Thus…

The Over-Me

The judge. The Me knows that trouble is on the horizon because the Over-Me is always there watching, monitoring, correcting, and punishing our behaviour. Many people experience this monitoring, judging, and controlling function as somewhere in the air vaguely above them, like a parent hovering over their shoulder - hence the over in Over-Me. The Over-Me is the seat of our conscience and moral judgement, and uses guilt and shame to coerce good behaviour and punish bad.

This is also the source of what is referred to as moral anxiety, the fear that you are about to do something which will not only be factually wrong, but which will break the rules of your society or cause harm to others, and therefore make you a bad person. Shame and guilt are the bedrock of social harmony, without which no individual person can survive, and so emotionally sensitive people often find that their Over-Me punishes even the smallest mistake in the most brutal possible way.

My Over-Me is Very Unhappy with My Me-Me for Letting My It-Me Have Another Slice of Cake

Humourous grammatical oddities aside, it is actually this simple:

These are the three basic functions necessary for both survival and personal fulfilment. Every action begins with an impulse, is fulfilled by intentional action in the world, and is then judged on its effectiveness.

When these three functions act in harmony, you become anxiety-free; a feeling which is known by any number of names: integration, balance, tranquility, enlightenment, zen, satori, jazz, self-actualisation, and so on. But, of course, the It, Me, and Over-Me rarely work together, let alone with anything approaching what you might call harmony.

Most of the time, the It and the Over-Me pull in opposing directions. This is one of the reasons why sex was so central to Freud’s theory; there is no other impulse which is so powerful, pleasurable, and yet has such destructive potential as un-checked sexual desire. We need it, yet fear it, and many people struggle to ever feel entirely comfortable in and with their own sexuality, exactly because of the inner tug-of-war between the desiring It and the judging/punishing Over-Me.

Dominant Functions

It Dominance

For some, the It is the strongest of the three. These people tend to have difficulties with self-regulation; often starting emotional conflicts with others, struggling with self-reflection and long-term thinking. They tend to be reactive and often get caught in patterns of substance abuse and addiction more generally. They are often experienced as impulsive, demanding, and inconsiderate.

Over-Me Dominance

Others have the opposite problem, a dominant Over-Me. These people are hyper-reflexive over-thinkers, and typically experience a lot of anxiety and carry a lot of shame. Insecurity and low self-esteem often results from the thunderbolts of shame and guilt which the Over-Me hurls at them for even the smallest mistake. This is the source of impostor syndrome, but also all of the anxiety-based issues like social anxiety, obsession/compulsion, paranoia, agoraphobia, orthorexia, anorexia, and so on.

Shame and guilt of course also contribute directly to the hopelessness, dread, and self-loathing of depression. This also explains why most so-called “psychological disorders” are so highly co-morbid. For example, anxious people often have both paranoid thoughts and depressive feelings, are plagued by the intrusive thoughts of “OCD,” and have signs of disordered eating… because these are all different dimensions of the same basic problem: an over-active and punishing Over-Me.

Me Dominance

It’s tempting to think that the ideal state, then, would be that of a dominant Me, right? Planning, rationality, self-control are all desirable traits, aren’t they? But in fact, we tend to experience Me-dominant people as stuffy, uptight, lifeless, and boring. There is, after all, such thing as being too reasonable and too levelheaded. Leaning too far in this direction often leads to feelings of apathy, ennui, futility, pessimistic nihilism, and boredom.

Sometimes we need to be impulsive and unconsidered, and sometimes we need to be morally upright and unshakable in our resolve. If you spend your whole life in the wooly-middle ground of being perfectly reasonable all the time, you effectively become stuck in perpetual stasis; minimal action, minimal challenge, minimal excitement.

PsychoDynamics

Satisfying action, therefore, is any consciously-chosen action (me) which fulfills our basic needs (it), while remaining within the boundaries of what’s acceptable within our given moral framework (over-me).

This is part of why post-Freudian psychotherapy calls itself psycho-dynamic. It’s not simply that our psychology is a dynamic system of contradictory emotions, thoughts, desires, and inhibitions. Healthy psychological function requires** the system to be in constant flux.**

Rather than the flag tied to the rope of an eternal tug of war between desire and inhibition, the Me-in-the-middle will ideally function as a negotiator which ensures that both sides get as much of what they want as is possible in the given situation. Confidence is the basic belief that you are able to do this, and insecurity/anxiety is the belief that you can’t.

Therapy, then, is the process of learning how to tame both the It and the Over-Me, without becoming someone who eats only bran-flakes, drinks only tapwater, and reads only washing machine instruction manuals…