In Search of the Ego

In Search of the Ego

Carl W. Lutes

Copyright © 2024 Carl W. Lutes

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89315-099-5 (hc)

ISBN 979-8-89315-080-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

A series of lonely essays angling to form an allegory,

this work is dedicated to, and in appreciation for our selves.

Ballad

Foreword

Editorial Aside

The Quest

Demonic or Divine?

A Nod to Freud

The Triune

From the Forest to the Moon

The Six Ages of Man*

The Id

Into the Woods

The Devil Made Me Do It

The id is a concept, not a mass. That's to say it's not confined to its own section of the brain, although its origin would logically be associated with the brain stem. Like the other two elements of the triune, it is constantly in interplay with one or another of its siblings, whose distinctive characteristics might also suggest an association with particular parts of the brain, revelations best discerned in the laboratory.

The Stranger Within Us

The Traits

Aggression

Intelligence

Emotion

Traits: A Closer Look

Out of the Woods

The Superego

A Stopover in the Village

People Who Love People

The Sum of the Parts

The Lure of the Throng

The Rivulets that Feed the Flood

Judge, Jury, Jailer

Incorporation, a Pattern

The Percipient Conscience

Guilt

The Silent Scourge

Reconnoiter at the Junction

Midword

The Ego

Back to the Beginning

Can Feisty Fido Count?

The Magic of Numbers

A Prodigious Pair

Bogged in the Byways

Vanity, Vanity

What's New?

Roles

Collectives

Collectibles

Curiosity

Competition

Jealousy, Power, and an Arsenal of Negatives

Only Make Believe

Of Man and Beast

Penance

From the Highlands on a Clear Day

Pursuing the Why

The Generative Word

All in the Family

The Ego Ideal

The Alter Ego

The Ideal Ego

Over the Top

A Glance Backward

Ideologies

…The Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth

Laudamus Te

Postword

Acknowledgements

About the Author

A series of lonely essays angling to form an allegory,

this work is dedicated to, and in appreciation for our selves.

The author and his friend Helmut Riessberger Wonder-ing through the Alps

Ballad

Two travelers wandered down a lane,

The sun was veiled in clouds.

Another day was on the wane,

The mountains draped in shrouds.

What is this thing that drives us on?

They asked, both thinking men,

To which the younger replied anon,

"Something beguiled me when,

Stumbling down the garden trail,

A child not three years old,

I came upon a wiggly snail

And a butterfly etched in gold.

Then later on, ambitious, tall,

I quit the garden path

And wondered into a lecture hall,

A would-be polymath."

The older confessed, "Sly wanderlust

Whose pledges never stop,

Promised a pinch of rare stardust

If I'd scale the mountain top.

And then, to add a bewitching gloss,

The Wistful Gust unfurled

A silver flute to breathe across

The stages of the world."

Fine and good, the where and when,

But still they fail to say

What's the thing that whets our yen,

That spurs us on our way?

Of the farers two, one's gone away;

The second plods along.

The wiser haunts the Milky Way,

Fluting a Mozart song.

The other still wanders down the road

Where the wiggly dragon springs;

At other times, he haunts the abode

Of an angel with golden wings.

And so it goes, from dawn to dawn,

With the young as with the gray:

What is this thing that drives us on,

That thrusts us on our way?

—The Author

Foreword

I have always been fascinated with animal behavior, and, consequently, movie and television documentaries about animals, preferring to see animals in action rather than read about them. And that's how I first became interested in this ineffable thing called the ego: What exactly is it, how did it come about, what's its purpose — and, not least importantly, is it exclusively a human attribute?

Since I had begun observing animal behavior long ago, I continued my search for the obscure ego yet another twenty years or so by observing its workings in people around me; then, what was even more difficult, by attempting to observe my own ego as objectively as possible. I might add that I set out on my journey alone, having found very little travel information; and what I did come across was sprinkled randomly throughout abstruse guides or presented in coded language. My interest was in normal behavior, not in the abnormal, preferring to leave that to the specialists, who face challenges of their own trying to understand the complex anatomy of the brain, or those who struggle to understand the nature of mental diseases and their treatment, which at this point they seem to have abandoned to chemical nostrums.

‘Brain' and ‘mind' are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same. Everyone knows what the brain is: it is visually observable. The mind is not. The brain is the producer, the mind, the product. The mind, or psyche, as it is formally called, though based on physical processes, has developed complex processes of its own. It is the author's aim to examine those psychic processes for their development, characteristics, and correspondence, with special emphasis on one of them, the ego, the entity said to distinguish one person from another. Unfortunately, though, such insights aren't to be found in a facile pill.

Much of the literature on the subject has come to us in bits and pieces, most of that motivated by a more pressing need to understand and help the mentally disturbed. But where is the larger picture, the recourse for you and me — for the parent who is stumped by the anarchy of an adolescent child (it's not an unusual pattern), or why youth would be attracted to danger, or drugs, or mutilation of their bodies — or for the patriot who is bewildered that a flock of educated, seemingly normal human beings could, without provocation, crash an airplane into two buildings, destroying thousands of innocent lives?

The purpose of this study is to put together as many of those bits and pieces as possible, tracing the character and development of the ego, which is to say that mysterious and complex component of the mind that distinguishes one human life from all other creatures.

Unlike Walt Whitman, who ‘celebrated himself,' I celebrate my self — and yours, and your neighbor's, and the postman's, and the many children's selves, hesitant, if not outright defiant before what lies ahead of them.

Editorial Aside

In my attempt to bring some understanding to the obscure and often misconstrued nature of the ego, I use the word ‘man' without an article in its generic sense, with an article in its genderic sense. Unfortunately, however, there is no all-embracing third person singular pronoun in English that covers both genders; and the alternatives, he/she, and/or, are clumsy and ambiguous, the overused they, illogical, if not illiterate. I mention this in case there are readers who might misinterpret intentions. The basic formation and function of the ego are the same, whether in male or female. Moreover, the late twentieth century has demonstrated that prejudice can be overcome — but not by redoing the language. My preferred usage remains as respectful as practicable to that inherited from the masters of English literature: Shakespeare, Milton, and, fortunately for us, many, many others.

Furthermore, I would like to clarify for the cynic why I chose to resurrect the high-toned ‘royal we' to surrogate the singular ‘I.' Although the choice was spontaneous, it seems on second thought to be a reluctance to encumber stylistically a text exploring the ‘I' with a clutter of I's. But more importantly, replacing ‘I' with ‘we' was an attempt at objectivity, a difficult task when the explorer is one of the explored.

— The Author

The Quest

…and an invitation to join in

Demonic or Divine?

What thinking person hasn't asked himself why, on that infamous day, 9/11/2001, a flock of fledgling predators swooped down without provocation onto two of the most prestigious and internationally recognized towers in the world, destroying both buildings and thousands of innocents within them, as though the lives and limbs of people had no more value than the steel skeleton and aluminum skin of the buildings.

Furthermore, who hasn't puzzled over the attempted murder of a pope some years ago, a symbol of goodness itself, or of President Reagan, who worked diligently towards maintaining peace in the world? And what of the many actual assassinations? The list is long, the assassinators more and more numerous: Lee Harvey Oswald, who cut down President Kennedy in the prime of his life; Adam Lanza of the Newtown elementary school massacre; Eric Davis and Dylan Kiebold of the Columbine High School slaughter; Andreas Lubitz who purposely crashed a German Airbus into a Swiss mountain, killing all aboard, including himself; Dylan Root of Charleston, S.C., who mercilessly murdered nine devout churchgoers.

Why did it have to be? It couldn't have been a survival maneuver. The perpetrators couldn't have cared less about their own survival, let alone somebody else's. Drugs? Perhaps. It is a known fact that several of the malcontents abused drugs. But was that just more of the same? Did they turn to drugs for the same reason they turned to violence?

Poverty, that overused justification for antisocial behavior, is too easy an answer. In every case we have cited, the perpetrators have been young, educated, middle to upper class. Besides, to continually blame poverty for the misery in the world is an affront to the poor. There is a certain nobility available in poverty for those willing to draw from it. Poverty has spawned and formed the character of countless great men, including Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. It is one of the greatest teachers of life and an inspiration to seek better things, not to destroy the lives of those who might otherwise have succeeded.

Then what is the thing that drives promising youths (and sometimes the not-so-youthful) to vengeance and self-destruction? In each of the cases we mention, all evidence points to a failed, destitute, self-loathing sense of who one is — which is to say a disappointed, ineffectual ego, not exactly a rarity among human beings. But what is rare is the extremes these individuals resorted to, to express their rage. And what is equally amazing is the force behind that need.

To which we have to wonder: Is a crippled ego such a degradation in the estimable ethos of homo sapiens? History would affirm it is — but not just for the maniacal. Duels have been fought, feuds prolonged, families split apart over dishonored egos, often by otherwise reasonable men driven by an impulse they don't necessarily understand but are compelled to pursue. Nature's drive to make each life not only unique but better than the previous one is implanted in the human psyche, and when frustrated, whether by oneself or by others, assumes major proportions. This invisible entity, this symbol of worth, this nugget of self, is summed up in a three-letter word often misunderstood, and, as a consequence, misused.

Just to find a simple definition of ‘ego' is not easy, let alone exact. Because of its similarity to ‘egotistical' and ‘egoistical,' the word is often associated with selfish, self-centered parts of our nature such as arrogance and excessive pride — although the ego actually can be a vehicle for a loving, charitable nature. To say what it isn't, however, is easier than trying to explain what it is. Most of the formal attempts are turgid and evasive. The otherwise worthy Webster's 2nd International defines it as:

the entire man considered as union of soul and body,

the conscious and permanent subject of all experience,

the self-assertive and self-preserving tendency, as distinguished from libido.

The later New World is more explicit but still vague:

the self, the individual as aware of himself.

The ego can indeed be a synonym for ‘self,' but, like one's own DNA and fingerprints, it is that part of the self that sets an individual apart from every other living being, man or animal; and what continuously surprises is the strength of that need for uniqueness and the extremes many go to acquire it, including a complete lack of concern for other selves. Recorded history provides evidence that it has provoked despots, traitors, and self-seekers to perpetrate horrible, irrational acts throughout all the world.

Consider for a moment these remarks by some of the maniacs of our own time:

John Hinckley: I did what I did "to get on the cover of Time magazine."

Andreas Lubitz: Someday everyone will know my name.

Riebold of the Columbine massacre wrote that he and his cohort Davis were ‘godlike' (although in reality his secret journal records self loathings and suicidal intentions), and that their intentions were to outdo the heinous events of the Oklahoma bombings.

Lee Harvey Oswald reportedly was disgruntled that he received no attention from the press after killing an officer of the law.

To James Holmes of the Colorado movie massacre, his victims were ‘numbers,' not real people. Their deaths were to increase his self image, adding that if you take away a life, it adds to your own.

Christopher Harper Mercer, 26 years old, of Roseburg, Oregon, whose mass shootings killed nine community college students, is quoted on the internet as saying I have noticed that so many like them (the troubled co-worker who killed two journalists in Virginia) are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are, his face splashed across every screen, his name on the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. It seems the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight.

Not that such outrageous thoughts are new. As long ago as 1863, John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassinator, was overheard musing: What a glorious opportunity there is for a man to immortalize himself by killing Lincoln.

Jim Jones of the Guyana massacres wanted to go down in history and to pull his cultists with him.

Alexander the Great is said to have cried when he realized there were no more worlds to conquer.

Napoleon himself whined, I owe everything to my glory. If I sacrifice it, I lose everything. I wanted to assure for France (?) the mastery of the world.

Booth, Jim Jones, Hitler, all were losers, including Napoleon, each grasping for one last chance at exceptionalism, knowing that with that last chance at exceptionalism goes everything.

There's no doubt that discontented egos have been behind much of the misery in the world. But at the same time, many concordant egos have been the source of man's greatest accomplishments, artistic, inventive, humanitarian. Ego conflict has turned some individuals into devils, others into saints. According to William James, it has even turned devils into saints. It has motivated man's most shameful moments, his most noble achievements. To understand why, we have to examine other parts of the mind and how their interactions do or do not contribute to a happy, constructive person.

Question for consideration: If the character of the ego is affected by the degree of gratification experienced in its search for individuality and exceptionalism, where do such needs originate? Everything has an antecedent.

A Nod to Freud

It would be negligence, if not misappropriation, to attempt to examine the workings of the mind without paying homage to a man who spent most of his life trying to understand that mysterious organ, the mind — which is not to suggest, however, that the brain is mysterious in the popular sense of being spooky, or inexplainable, or cultish, or accessible only to the enlightened few; nor is it to imply that the mind is a simple thing. Because it normally functions by inborn patterns or in a manner learned from society or from influential individuals it has been subjected to, the mind is not inclined to analyze itself. But Sigmund Freud, one of the greatest, if not the greatest intellect of the late nineteenth-early twentieth century, managed to do exactly that.

In the physical sciences the nature of the researchers' work is to isolate, analyze, and attempt to understand the nature of physical phenomena and their interactions with each other, working either visually or aurally, or tactilely — often with the aid of instruments they have concocted for a specific purpose. Their discoveries might even include theories about things they have not been able to come directly in contact with, e.g., the stars, or microbes, or sound waves — but always physical things, including wind and light, and somehow observable or measurable, if only through cause and effect.

What makes Freud's accomplishments more unique and much more difficult to come by than those of other scientists is that he had nothing to aid him in his study of how the mind works other than the very thing he was analyzing, a difficult task indeed, especially since his seminal theory about that elusive thing he called the unconscious implies by its very name that it is not readily apparent, either visually or by the use of any other sensual apparatus; and that the best and only material at hand to scrutinize the unconscious, as well as other workings of the mind, is the mind itself, the very thing that is being studied. Which is probably the major reason why, although his major theories were conceived over a century ago, there are still many throughout the civilized world, even fellow scientists, who are skeptical, if not rejective of much of his work.

Another reason for Freud's neglect is that people, even educated ones, get caught up in fads, often superficial ones like diets, or hairdos, or slang; but also more serious ones like art and music and politics and religion, and yes, even scientific theories, ready to drop what was once startlingly new for yet another beguilement — something we will discuss later as a not uncommon attempt at ego fulfillment.

Furthermore, and probably more significant for the cautious acceptance of Freud's unconscious theory, is an innate fear of the unknown — which is to say one's unconscious. And not without reason. Fear is an important mechanism (itself often unconscious) of the survival instinct, which everyone is born with, and which sooner or later impels us (especially as children) to commit acts we are reluctant to admit openly.

There is a lesser known aspect of the unconscious, however, a positive one. Although it's the receptacle of repressed instinctual urges, it's the tenebrous area from which arise emotion, and intelligence, and aggression. The unconscious can be your helper and best friend; it contains all of what you were born with — and what you could be, as well as what you might have been.

But we'll go more into that when we discuss Freud's theory of the structure of the human mind and the dynamics and relationship of its three parts, of which the ego, the subject of this thesis, is the crowning jewel, so to speak, the third but not the least of the evolutionary excrescences of the human mind.

Which brings us to a question for future scholars to ponder as we begin our excursion through the maze, namely, could the narcissistic element of the ego enlarge over time and from overuse, or possibly even evolve into an independent, dynamic fourth unit of the mind? Not impossible, judging from the growing demand to satisfy individual narcissistic needs — not to mention the growing emphasis on self-indulgent values in contemporary society; for the mind, like the body, continues to evolve through environmental demands and successful resolutions.

So that's it. That's basically our reliance on Freud — except for an occasional reference to the unconscious theory, which is by its nature rooted in another of the three parts we are setting out to explore. Furthermore, we leave to the specialists any interest in abnormal psychology, including repressions, neuroses, psychoses, all the misplaced or misdeveloped, or misfiring psychic casualties. Our objective is to limit ourselves to the probe of that intriguing, normal, ineffable, distinguishing part of everyone: you, me, your neighbor, the postman, the student, and, most importantly, our leaders. It's the thing that sets us apart, one from another — and, not least, from the animals around us.

A quick summation: the workings of the mind are not easily discernible, especially from inside looking out. Besides, having three parts is more conducive to conflict than two.

Questions for thought: How much can an individual make or remake his ego?

Or his superego? And if so, to what degree?

The Triune

What we know, if not all we know, is based on previous knowledge, whether learned from parents, or society, or teachers, or gleaned from former experiences; and so we begin the discussion of the triune with gratitude for Sigmund Freud's theory of the tripartite function of the mind, hereafter referred to as the triune, the three-in-one (one being you).

The terms ‘mind' and ‘brain' are often used indiscriminately. Not in this study, however. For us the word brain refers to that flesh and blood organ that produces mental energy. The mind is the function, the output, the product of the brain's many complicated parts. Sometimes the mind's parts work well together; sometimes they don't. The mind can, however, often be observed at work; the brain cannot be (unless you're a neurosurgeon).

According to Freud, the three elements that make up the mind are the id, the superego, and the ego. Id in Latin means ‘it;' ego means ‘I;' and superego means ‘above' or ‘over' the ego, as the two are closely linked. The id is that part of the brain one is born with, a union from the mother's and father's genes, supposedly untouched by outside influences. But that has been disputed of late. Evidently the fetus, even before birth, is affected by the mother's feelings, health, physical condition, and any noises emitted by her or the environment around her. Beyond those environmental influences, however, the id is the aggregate of qualities and dispositions inherited from one's forefathers, immediate and remote. It is, simply stated, a storehouse for one's genes.

The superego is that part of the mind that has been influenced by the human beings with whom it comes in contact, especially during early childhood. A better term for this part of the psyche might have been the Latin for ‘they,' the plural of id; but ‘superego' has been so well established internationally that any such change would only be confusing. Also there is a general conception of the superego as being the ‘conscience' of mankind. It is more than that, much more, something we hope to show in a later more detailed discussion.

The third part, the ego, is, according to a general definition, the conscious self, that part of the psyche that experiences the external world, organizes thought processes rationally, and governs action. Of course, it is difficult to condense something which is every bit as complicated as a computer into a short explanation — which is why, after many years of examining the subject, we hope to share what we have learned about this part of the