ego summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see ego.

ego, (Latin: “I”) In psychoanalytic theory, the portion of the psyche experienced as the “self” or “I.” It is the part that remembers, evaluates, plans, and in other ways is responsive to and acts in the surrounding physical and social world. According to Sigmund Freud, it coexists with the id (the unconscious, instinctual portion of the psyche) and the superego (the portion representing the conscience, or the internalization of societal norms). The ego is not coextensive with either the personality or the body; rather, it serves to integrate these and other aspects of the person, such as memory, imagination, and behaviour. It mediates between the id and the superego by building up various defense mechanisms.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte Summary

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher and patriot, one of the great transcendental idealists. Fichte was the son of a ribbon weaver. Educated at the Pforta school (1774–80) and at the universities of Jena (1780) and of Leipzig (1781–84), he started work as a tutor. In this capacity he

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling Summary

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling was a German philosopher and educator, a major figure of German idealism, in the post-Kantian development in German philosophy. He was ennobled (with the addition of von) in 1806. Schelling’s father was a Lutheran minister, who in 1777 became a professor of

Sigmund Freud Summary

Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. (Read Sigmund Freud’s 1926 Britannica essay on psychoanalysis.) Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a