Alfreien’s Reviews > An Outline of Psychoanalysis > Status Update

“After a vain attempt to do the same as the boy, the girl comes to recognize her lack of a penis or, rather, the inferiority of her clitoris. This has permanent consequences for her character-development; as a result of this first disappointment in rivalry she often initially rejects sexual life altogether.”

Penis envy is such a funny concept to me

“If we assume that the living appeared later than the lifeless and arose from this, then the death-drive fits into the formula I have mentioned, namely that drives strive to restore everything to an earlier state.”

The aim of the first drive (Eros) is to establish and maintain ever greater unities, that is, ‘binding’; the aim of the second (Destruction-drive) is, by contrast, to dissolve connections, and thus to destroy things.

“After much wavering, we have decided to propose only two basic drives: Eros and the destruction-drive. (The opposition between the self-preservation and species-preservation drives, along with the other opposition between Ich-Iove and object-love, still falls within Eros.)”

“We see that, for all their fundamental dissimilarity, the Es and the Über-Ich have one thing in common:they represent the influences of the past. The Es represents the influence of what is inherited, and the Über-Ich essentially represents the influence of what is taken over from other people;whilst the Ich is mainly determined by what we experience ourselves-in other words, by accidental and current events.”

“An action of the Ich is then fully apt if it simultaneously satisfies the demands of the Es, the Über-Ich and reality – in other words, if it can reconcile their demands with one another.”

The Über-Ich—Superego—develops from internalized parental and/or social authority, and functions as a conscience. Self-criticism, guilt, standards, aspirations. It pushes for morality over pleasure, and can conflict with its sibling functions.

The Es (Id), meanwhile, is the reservoir for instincts and drives. It seeks immediate discharge of tension (pleasure) and has no concern for logic or morality. It provides the raw energy that the Ego regulates. It is the little beast in us all.

For Freud, the Ich (ego) controls voluntary movement and serves the task of self-assertion. It responds to stimuli through adaptation, flight, or activity, and it manages the drives—deciding whether to gratify, postpone, or suppress them. It monitors tension levels: rising tension is felt as unpleasure, and falling tension as pleasure.

“call the oldest of these psychical provinces or forces the Es; it contains everything that is inherited, everything present at birth, everything constitutionally determined – above all, then, the drives originating from the bodily organization, which here [that is, in the Es] find a first psychical expression in forms unknown to us.”