The Structure of Personality: Id, Ego, and Superego

Freud later revised this notion of three levels of personality and introduced three basic structures in the anatomy of the personality: the id, the ego and the super ego. The id: The id is the reservoir for the instincts and the libido. The id is powerful in the structure of personality because it supplies all the energy for the other two components. The id functions to increase pleasure and avoid pain, so id is driven by the pleasure principal. The id strives for immediate satisfaction of its needs and does not tolerate delay or postponement of satisfaction for any reason. It is selfish, pleasure seeking structure, primitive, amoral, insistent and rash. The ego: The ego is the rational master of the personality and is driven by reality principal. Its purpose is not thwart the impulses of the id but to help the id obtain the tension reduction it craves. The ego does not prevent id satisfaction, it tries to postpone, delay or redirect it in terms of the demands of reality. On the other hand, the ego is never independent of the id, but it is always responsive to the id’s demands and derives if power and energy from the id. The superego: the superego is the internal moral rules of conduct which forms our whether we are perceived as being good or bad. The superego is a powerful force in its quest of moral perfection. This is the ego ideal, which consists of good or correct. The super ego strives neither for pleasure nor for attainment of realistic goals. It strives solely for moral perfection.