According to Freud's theory of personality, id,ego, and super ego are considered as the three part of the structure. ego will follow "reality rule"to deal with both the desire from id and the social requirement from superego. Does that mean, in the psychoanalytical practice, the therapists should try their best to foster clients' strong ego, to help them to counterbalance the two forces from id and superego, to help them satisfy their internal desire to some extent,and on the other hand also to meet social requirement? can we regard fostering clients'strong ego as the most important facet in psychoanalytical therapy?

-- Emily X.H.Bao (snowfar@263.net), September 18, 2001

Answers

Response to about "strong ego"

"According to Freud's theory of personality, (the) id, (the) ego, and (the) super ego are considered as the three parts) of the (personality's) structure. (The) ego will follow "reality rule" to deal with both the desire from (the) id and the social requirement from (the) superego."

--Reality Principle - job of the ego to satisfy id impulses with consideration of the situation/the reality.

"Does this mean (that) in psychoanalytical practice, the therapist should try their best to foster (their) clients' (strong) ego,..."

--The therapist and the patient work together to help the ego once again exercise appropriate control over the id impulses and the oppressive super ego. I'd say this is the basic concept not the overall summation of the theory. There is no one most important facet to the psychoanalytical approach. Can you define the most important part of an engine? Psychoanalysis is like this, in that it all works together. The patient works with the psychiatrist; it is a joint effort. I hope this does not sound condescending, but it's a good basic analogy. I don't really understand the question as it is layered and vague although, this explanation seems apropos. Much of Freud's work has been discredited due in part by it's untestable hypothesis. I would not place much importance on his theory other than it's invaluable perspective on personality development.

"to help them (the patient) to counterbalance the two forces from id and superego," In a way.

"...to help them satisfy their internal desire to some extent "

Their are two internal desires/forces in Freudian psych. The Libido (life force) and Thanatos (death force). What desire are you talking about?

"...to meet social requirement?"

The social requirement should not be thought of this way. It (the super ego) is the social conscious.

"Can we regard fostering clients' strong ego as the most important facet in psychoanalytical therapy?"

A basic tenet, not the most important facet, but then again, how can I be scientific when referencing Freud. It's like being atheist while quoting the bible.

-- O. Johnathan Twentyman (oliver@thirdfloorstudios.com), September 20, 2001.

Response to about "strong ego"

Hi Emily, one problem I can see with your question is that many of the terms you use will have many different meanings to others, and so I don't know if you are going to find "a" answer to your question. In the end, I think you will find you have a slippery question on your hands. Also plenty of psychologists (especially in North America) think the Freudian approach is just pure nonsense, and I'm not sure any Freudian psychotherapists haunt this page. Your question does have associations to memories of conversations I've had with some people on this subject. With Freud there always seems to be the problem of mixing up his practice with his theory of mind, and also the theory of mind has different stages of development over his life time. The id, ego, superego structure was a late development in his thinking which wasn't fully worked out before he died. A very readable instructive book is Psychoanalytic Psychology by R. Fancher. Next association, I spoke with a man who once worked in a Meniger style clinic, and basically he said there is a kind of therapy which they practiced that we don't often hear about, and it was called supportive therapy. And basically the object is to what? hold a person's hand over a speed bump in life. So fifty years ago they were practicing brief therapy which I haven't seen any credit given to them for this. In a way you seem to hit on this aspect to therapy, and I imagine it is what goes on in brief therapy HMO couseling today. Next association, with the entrace to this style clinic, an assessment was done by a team consisting of MD, psychologist, social worker, psychiatrist, and as a multidiscinplenary intake, part of the job was to judge what level of therapy the client would/could take. It turned out to my surprise they only did complete psychoanalysis on people who had relatively strong egos to undergo the treatment. And they almost never did full psychoanalysis with very religious people because religion was considered a defence mechanism which the person required. To associate with your last question, I think it is no; as I can envision a person with a plenty strong ego who would be getting into all kinds of trouble in society, but I guess that is qualified with how you define the well functioning strong ego. Anyway, I've heard some behavioral psychologists criticize the California school system of creating students with plenty of ego strength with little scholarly ability. Also, in some cases the most important function of the psychoanalytic experience may be modifying a personality where as a matter of treatment you might purposely disrupt the functioning of the ego - as organized. Of course, my associations on the subject are not offered as a definitive answer from a Freudian psychotherapist. All I can really say with the training in psychology which I have received is, "It depends!" And I think it depends upon how well the ego of your client is functioning when you first see them. Also, it depends upon how you size up the impending problem. If it is a bad hair day, perhaps they just need support to make it through the day in which case you pat them on the back and thereby enhance their existing ego strength. For more serious neuroitc symptoms, perhaps intense long term psychanalytic treatment is called for and that will by definition challenge and disrupt the ego's existing organization and bring about discomfort. I hope this helps until you can find a satisfactory answer your question. Best, David

-- david clark (doclark@yorku.ca), September 20, 2001.

what do u mean by id , ego, superego ????????

-- Amruta Deokule (amudeo@yahoo.com), February 04, 2002.

These three terms refer to key theoretical constructs in a late version of Freud theory of psychoanalysis. Very roughly, the id corresponds to basic biological desires (hunger, thirst, dexual desire), the ego to planful realistic strategies to achieve these goals within the bounds of reality (including social reality), and the super-ego is the repository of learned social mores which must also be satisfied if the ego is to operate without creating a great deal of anxiety. If you're interested, you might look at a good encyclopedia entry or a basic textbook of psychoanalysis. Calvin Hall's _Primer in Freudian Psychology_ is particularly short and direct.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), February 04, 2002.