“self”<\/a> on my website.)<\/p>\nAnother key element in the sense of \u201cego\u201d involves the dynamic of identification, which refers to the way we tend to think of certain qualities as part of us or describing us, while other qualities (we think) do not refer to us. There\u2019s room for repression and denial here, so some qualities that are more obvious to others may be unknown to us. This is the meaning of the saying by Jesus that we should remove the stick (or beam) in our own eye (vision field) before we criticize the tiny splinter (or mote) in the other person\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n
Ego is also applied as a synonym for self, so that egocentric and self-centered-ness seem to be the same things. Ego in this sense may be imagined as a sensitivity about such things as \u201chow am I doing? Do you like me? Do you think I\u2019m attractive? Do you find me interesting?\u201d Some of this is okay for assessing one\u2019s status and the harmony of social membership, even if it\u2019s never spelled out. Some people, though, make this concern more central to a wider range of operations, in which case they may be labeled as excessively egocentric or \u201cnarcissistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ego concerns operate when people are consciously or unconsciously expending a fair amount of energy of determining such things as \u201chow well am I doing? Am I getting enough attention? Do I want (or even deserve) attention?\u00a0 Do I feel proud of myself or ashamed? Am I being given enough or does my sibling or neighbor get more, is it fair?\u201d\u2014”self-conscious” things\u00a0 like that. When it interferes with the capacity for relating in a more matter-of-fact way on a task, then the egotism edges over into mild or not-so-mild range of being problematic..<\/p>\n
Egocentricity is another aspect of this word, \u201cego,\u201d and refers to the tendency to measure other phenomena in terms of what one knows: \u201cWell, doesn\u2019t everyone? Isn\u2019t everyone like me? If I like chocolate, how can you not like chocolate?\u201d\u00a0 It takes a bit of maturation to get past this, and it\u2019s possible to get past it in some ways and hold on to it in others. (Indignantly) \u201cWhat do you mean you don\u2019t want to do this? What\u2019s wrong with it?\u201d (Egocentric people perceive others who don\u2019t share their preferences or beliefs or religion, etc., as thereby criticizing their own choices. Egocentric people have difficulty conceiving of the very idea that someone simply has different preferences, or resonates with a different set of symbolic images or ideas, but others are not necessarily criticizing the egocentric person\u2019s preferences.<\/p>\n
Personal maturity involves growing past this tendency that arises out of a lack of sophistication, a lack of awareness of the great variety in preferences, and includes the awareness that being \u201cdifferent\u201d need not be taken as a criticism.<\/p>\n
Back to the psychoanalytic use of the term: The ego operates both consciously and unconsciously. Few people have an adequate appreciation of the depth and rapid skill of the subconscious mind. Perhaps we should find terms that make this differentiation more explicit. The more conscious and ordinary \u201cself\u201d practices, has more control over attitudes, insight, and self-discipline. The subconscious parts can operate in several ways: (1) The conscious part can learn about it and from this insight can update attitudes. (2) The subconscious ego can use foolish, magical thinking patterns that are used as the most prevalent “defense mechanisms.” These overlap with the tendency toward logical fallacies that make people more vulnerable to manipulation by others, including politicians and advertisers, through their rhetoric. (3) An interesting discovery is in the way the subconscious mind can operate in a way that is faster and more subtle, clever, and elaborate than anything the ordinary conscious mind can generate. Behavior enacted through this channel is often inspired, part of what Csikszentmihalyi calls \u201cflow.\u201d I think this part of the mind can be energized when a skill is well learned and practiced, and also it operates as a dream-maker to make the stories in dreams vivid and seemingly \u201creal.\u201d<\/p>\n
I am interested in the capacity of ego to become more explicitly self-aware, to think about the way it thinks. This is called \u201cmeta-cognition.\u201d I think psychotherapy should address this part of \u201cyou-as-manager-of-your-many-parts.\u201d The more we know about psychology, the more we can take on the identity of self-manager, which fosters in turn the goal of further maturation and self-awareness.<\/p>\n
Back to the emergence of \u201cego\u201d psychology from \u201cdrive\u201d psychology in the field of psychoanalysis, mainly in the 1930s. Instead of analyzing the underlying motives, what began to happen was that therapy involved also analyzing the defenses, the avoidances, the adjustive maneuvers that people used to disguise or cope with their deeper drives. From this came an awareness that some \u201cdefenses\u201d are more flexible and mature than others\u2014or they could be, if applied more consciously and with discrimination. For example, suppression is a maneuver by which we can consciously choose to avoid thinking about that which is for the time being distracting or uncomfortable, but that which is put off is not sealed away in a way that\u2019s more pathological (i.e., repression). We all need to do this just to not become too scattered.<\/p>\n
Another more mature defense is humor, making a joke, a lightening up which also serves usually as a healthy maneuver. One of the more under-estimated maneuvers is that of sublimation, making something that is partly motivated by less worthy desires into something that is truly sublime, socially useful. Used to foster consciousness and mental flexibility this way the ego-mind is a friend.<\/p>\n
Some spiritual writings differentiate between the ego and the cap-s \u201cSelf,\u201d and this needs to be unpacked. The ego in that context is generally associated with more immature attitudes about life. The sense that I am here and stand over and against others and nature is a key example of the kind of ego-attitude that is generally targeted for deconstruction in the service of mind-expansion. My concern is that we not over-value the desire to eliminate the ego, because such measures are too often part of the mind-control maneuvers found in cult brainwashing. It makes more sense to me to work gradually in expanding the person\u2019s mental flexibility and skill set so that there can be a balancing, an openness to inspiration, higher values, and balancing these with practical issues and one\u2019s more natural psycho-spiritual development.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the \u201cSelf\u201d with a capital S is imagined to be the core or true identity, while the ego is a small and partly illusory structure. I think we need to note, first, that all these terms and the mental maps that support them are just that\u2014words and maps, constructions of the mind\u2014and more, as words, socially-agreed-upon terms and meanings. They will vary over time, and what they may have meant a century or a millennium ago may be different from what they mean today and what they may mean in the future.<\/p>\n
Jung uses the cap-s Self to speak of that archetypal function of the deep mind that organizes experiences into the illusion of unity in flow of time and coherence and value. The term also is imagined to be a core of being, but here the word blurs into metaphysical speculations. This use in analytical psychology blurs nowadays in overlapping with other transpersonal approaches.<\/p>\n
Some spiritual approaches speak of \u201cSelf\u201d with a capital S to suggest the core or spiritual dimension. I suspect there may be some value in imagining that we can partake of that energy-flow-structure, but I fear that the time isn\u2019t yet ripe for a widespread agreement about how we should language these various elements. One problem is that they overlap, can blur into each other, generate the illusion of being awake and mature even while indulging in less-mature activities, and so forth. I am hopeful, though, that this preliminary effort at least draws attention to the variety of ways the word \u201cego\u201d is used.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a number of contexts\u2014\u201cnew age,\u201d psychology, consciousness studies, spirituality\u2014the term \u201cego\u201d has been used as if it\u2019s a problem. There are several meanings of \u201cego\u201d and it may be worthwhile considering these. First, the word is Latin for \u201cI\u201d and is attributed by the English translators of Freud\u2019s writings to that part of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,11,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-papers","category-literacy","category-psychotherapy","category-spirituality-and-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":592,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions\/592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}