Ego

... psychoanalytic point of view integrates the ego psychology more thoroughly into the psychoanalytic system of thought. Murphy in his recent book Personality uses the two terms "ego" and "self" to stand for two phases of the self which do not, however, coincide exactly with those originally posited by James and Mead.

Murphy refers to the self as the object of perception, whereas according to him the ego is a system of activities organized around the self to include both self-enhancement and self-defense. Jung uses the ego to designate the conscious part of the personality while the self, including the ego, also embraces the unconscious to take into account the total personality. Bertocci, following Allport, uses self rather broadly to include much of personality, but uses ego to refer to the core of the self where the values are most intense. One hears it said of a person who feels that he has been neglected or depreciated with regard to something in which he excels that "his ego has been hurt." Guthrie and Edwards in a recent book define the ego as "attitudes we hold toward our bodies, names, memories, and physical and mental traits." There is considerable confusion and inconsistency with regard to the use of the two terms ego and self in modern psychological writing.

Ego henceforth will be used to refer to that phase of personality which determines adjustments to the outside world in the interest of satisfying inner needs in those situations where choice and decision are involved. Or, to define the ego differently, it is an active process for developing and executing a plan of action for attaining satisfaction in response to inner drives. The self, on the other hand, refers to the body and mind and to bodily and mental processes as they are observed and reacted to by the individual. The ego as observer, thinker, and actor comes earlier in development than the self as observed. The self may have four different aspects. It may be the self as perceived, as, for instance, when one sees his physical self in the mirror or listens to his voice in a sound reproduction.

Basically, the ego has two main functions - namely, to satisfy wishes and to avoid dangers. The better the ego development, the better the chances of gratifying desires and of using the outside world to fulfill wishes. Of the dangers that the ego seeks to avoid, certain ones come from the outside environment, while others come from within. The ego avoids traumatic situations, that is, those which contain stimuli of overwhelming intensity in which the usual modes of adjustment fail and to which an abrupt change in previous adaptation must be made. But the ego avoids inner dangers, that is, possible frustrations of inner wants and needs. More specifically, the ego is recognized as possessing four distinct functions: 1) reality testing, 2) a synthetic function, 3) a repressing and inhibitory function, and 4) the building of memories.

The development of the ego may be considered the main task of education. Education should be concerned with helping individuals make better adjustments to their physical and social surroundings. Education should be concerned with more effective perceiving, more effective thinking, and more effective acting.