Please, Don’t Kill Your Ego!

One day, I was thinking and making a critical decision, when I heard not one, but two voices inside my head.

I was debating whether I should get started with my homework, and I heard one voice go “Yes, that would be the most optimal thing to do at this moment in time,” then I heard another voice actively suppress that one, and shout louder, “I really would rather not, though, and I have so much other time to do it.” That was when I realized the harsh reality that I am completely controlled by my subconscious and conscious thoughts. I always knew, but I had never been confronted so heavily by it before. I was able to calmly stare away from it, but now I cannot keep my eyes off of it, even though it is blinding me.

When this happened, I did not feel scared that there were two specimens inside of me. If anything, I became excited, that I had just encountered and physicalized something the definition of intangible. I felt superhuman, rather than merely human.

But what happened to me was not unique in the slightest. If anything, it was just proof that I was human. But what it had done was make me think about the subconscious and conscious selves in a different way, and I started to read Freud and Jung’s theories on personality and consciousness much, much differently. The theories that seemed so poignant before started to feel overcomplicated, meandering and distracting. It felt like the important stuff was being suppressed, while the meaningless stuff was what everyone was speaking about.

Neurologist Sigmund Freud separated personality psychoanalytically into three pieces, the id, the ego and the superego.

The id was Freud’s term for unconscious thoughts, such as one’s instinctive and primitive behaviors. The id relies on immediate gratification and runs on the pleasure principle. Freud says that this is the part of you that is the first to emerge and the way it will develop depends a lot on the amount of attention or neglect you received during your childhood and during infancy. This correlates to being used to being in abundance of things you want all the time, or getting used to being content with the little things you have, or never getting used to it, and seeking the gratification you lacked in earlier life in different vessels. This is the childish side of you, that goes “I want that, I need that” and undergoes primary process thinking, with little critical thinking involved.

If the id was allowed to run free, truly who would we be? Would any of us want to be around each other? No, we wouldn’t, so Freud suggests we have balancing pieces to offset the confused, short-lived impulsivity of the id. The ego, the next piece, develops from the id and its purpose is to control and rationalize the id. Essentially, Freud is saying you have a child inside you, and a mother inside you. The ego resides in the conscious, preconscious and unconscious minds. The ego allows you to live with your id while still living in reality. But, if one lives too much with their ego and is too focused on physical reality, they lose sight of their self awareness as well.

Freud was the one who popularized the term of the ego, and his use of it is not malicious as it is often characterized as in the spiritual community. He talks about the ego as a necessary part of the self, and if anything, it is pivotal to one’s creation of their personality. He describes the self as part of a system, and every part of the system has to function for it to work properly. If the ego were killed, then who would control the id? Do we truly want everyone’s unconscious perturbed thoughts and actions happening with little thought or control behind them?

The last piece of the puzzle is the superego. While the ego is our personal suppressed desires, and the id is our childish immediate tendencies, the superego is our internalized moral beliefs as imposed by our family and society. The superego’s job is to make judgments about what the ego or id believe, and make sure it holds true to societal norms. There are two parts of the superego — the conscience and the ego ideal. The conscience is the localization of feelings of guilt or remorse when you act adversely to how someone else wants you to act. The ego ideal rules the aspects that the ego wants to adhere to, and combines one’s societal obligations with one’s personal obligations.

The most interesting thing I deemed from rereading Freud’s theory is actually the part that everyone seems to miss. People get so caught up and dazzled by the concrete organization of the psyche and the three easy to understand concepts that correlate with it, but forget what the overall meaning of the theory is. That’s where unnecessary hatred of the ego stems from, because we have learned to separate these three parts of us rather than to connect them.

At the conclusion of the theory, Freud brings up the term ego strength. This is the key part, as it states that the ultimate purpose of the theory is to learn how to balance all three aspects and keep them balanced. This involves bringing the unconscious to the conscious and not keeping it as hidden. One with strong ego strength can manage and uphold the pressures coming from all three sides, although this pressure is endlessly going. One with weak ego strength is ruled by one of the three sides, and this could cause a malignant and impatient person. The imbalance is the problem, not the ego.

One of the people who supported and looked up to Freud was psychiatrist Carl Jung. It’s interesting to note that Freud was a neurologist and Jung a psychiatrist, even though both of their theories were psychological.

Freud focused particularly on the personal unconscious, but Jung took it a step further and developed the collective unconscious as well. He rejected the concept of tabula rasa, that Freud disagreed with in his interpretation of the ego being there when you are born. Inversely, Jung believes that each human is born with primordial images that show us how we learn to be human, through dreams and symbolism. This is the collective unconscious, that states every human is born with predetermined memories from ancestors that are supposed to teach them basic human motivations, values and personalities. These ancestors speak to us in archetypes.

There are four major Jungian archetypes, which is his way of cutting apart the psyche.

The first archetype is the Persona. Considering persona means mask in Latin, it would make sense that this archetype comprises of the different social masks we wear for each of our different social groups. But, the persona can take different forms, as it can show up in your dreams, and also it can result in projection. If one is in denial that their persona exists, this causes projection and multiple other defense mechanisms. It’s easiest to see the defense mechanisms of other people — always remember that. You are not alleviated of guilt either. There is a misconception that your persona is not your true self. In fact, Jung states that if one becomes too involved in this archetype, they can lose sight of their true selves. The way that you pick and choose what you show to others is not entirely unconscious and out of your control. No, it can tell you about your true self. Although it’s true the persona is not your true self, that does not mean it is useless. It is just a puzzle piece.

The persona is akin to the id, as it is one’s primitive urges, impulses and emotions all bundled into one. If this is true, why would we true to suppress our persona either? The part of us that seems the most unlike us is secretly compromised of the parts most personal and hidden by us. These are the parts of us that make us human! Would you ever believe such an evil one-sided creation could multitask as such? There is no black or white. There is no bad part inside of you, you just want something to kill.

The second archetype is the shadow. The shadow is another archetype that is harshly demonized and even feared. It contains our sexual and life instincts, and all of the things we repress and hide from others. This involves our suppressed ideas, weaknesses, ideas and desires that are against societal and personal morals. Would you call this the part of yourself that you hate? The part you never tell anyone about? The secrets you hide from people that leave a mark from the burdensome strain? But, the shadow could be more regarded as your true self as well. The things you do when nobody watches, even though you may be embarrassed of them, you shouldn’t be. Whenever you feel yourself doing something alone that you wouldn’t want to do around others, hold that feeling in your chest, and watch the burden implode and wash over you like a wave. You will find self love when you are not riddled by this shame. One good trick to tell is if shame matters more to you than guilt. The only other variable in that equation is other people.

The third archetype is the anima/animus. Jung labels this one as your “true self” which seems redundant to say the least. This is the primary connection to the collective unconscious from the personal consciousness. One does not have either an anima or an animus; everyone has both. Many people are in denial of this, and suppress their anima side if they are male and their animus side if they are female. The anima/us constitute one’s gender identity, and the mere existence of this archetype implies that all humans are inherently nonbinary on the gender spectrum. As one must learn to balance all the parts inside of them, they must also learn how to balance the animus and anima equally or to their own desire. Usually, people don’t know what their own desire in this case is, mostly due to societal and familial imprinting. The equal synergy of the animus and anima is called syzygy, which is a really awesome word.

The fourth and final archetype is the self. This is the unity point of the unconscious and conscious. Jung describes the self as a culmination of all the parts above. He sees the self as a circle, square or mandala, but I see it more as a spiral that is never-ending, but the colors combine together to create this inevitable masterpiece. Jung proposes a concept similar to ego strength by Freud, which is called individuation. Individuation is the process one goes through various different personalities and archetypes inside one person are integrated together. Jung never explicitly states this, but I believe this is the ultimate trial of life. Life is learning how to balance these together. The problem is nobody is even trying.

Jung says that a disharmony between the conscious and unconscious selves could lead to psychological problems.

Jung mentions the ego as a conscious piece at the forefront of the archetypes. This is the one that interacts with the world, judges and makes decisions, and takes account of all sides and intertwines them. If some parts are stronger than others, the ego will reflect this.

Neuroscience has essentially the same approach as psychology does when it comes to organizing consciousness, but it is said in different terminology.

David Chalmers, a cognitive scientist, separated consciousness into not three, or four, but two categories. A-consciousness is access consciousness, which are concepts that can be understood in simple, mechanistic terms. P-consciousness is phenomenal consciousness, which are things that can only be understood subjectively. The main difference is A-consciousness can be measured, and P-consciousness is the subjective effects we feel when an event in A-consciousness occurs. The hard problem of consciousness is figuring out how to measure, collect and test P-consciousness, and also the reason why we have it. It has never been done.

The main problem of these psychological theories of the psyche in general is it simplifies it all too much. It skips the hard problem and ignores subjectivity all together. Jung and Freud falsely believed that everyone’s consciousness is organized the way that they organized theirs. No, the solution is not to read about theories of consciousness. It is to find your own.

I never realized until that day, that some part of me has been screaming for so long, but I had been suppressing it so much that I just filtered out the noise. I lived solely by the easiest things to do, and I could never figure out why I was so lost in life. I didn’t have any strong morals. I felt like dust blown by the wind, instead of being built into a beautiful sandcastle. I was human, but I didn’t feel human. That was because I denied myself of what made me human.

Everyone is in denial about something. As Jung says, if one has their unconscious and conscious selves imbalanced, they could have psychological problems. I thus suggest that everyone is mentally ill. I find it comical that we openly believe so many things are spectrums, yet we decide to ostracize and seclude ‘mentally ill’ people for acting abnormal. Have we never considered the ones acting normal are the ones being abnormal?

I feel embarrassed and awkward when I hear someone project on someone else. All that tells you is that they are unbalanced and unregulated and you shouldn’t be concerned with their opinions in the first place. It simply hurts for understanding people to watch the ignorant. It means they are actively suppressing things, and that is the cause of most mental illnesses. Everyone has some unresolved trauma in some way they are not encountering, unless they already deliberately have. But it does not go away. It just gets misplaced, into your conscious actions that you have no idea why you do. You do know. You just need to sit down and think about it. You’re the only person who knows why you are the way you are.

The main goal of life, as said by these theories, is to balance all of these contrasting parts of yourself and… make it work. The thing is, these diagrams and picturesque theories don’t provide much solace to anyone. If anything, they’re upset they didn’t think of it first. It upsets us that we might not be as unique as we thought we were. That at the end of the day, we are just archetypes.

That’s the problem of skipping subjectivity. You fail to relate to people. By bringing up the term individuation, you take away someone’s individuality as well. But, I believe that is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. We should not spoon-feed people the maps of their own personal consciousnesses. That would be assuming consciousness is that easy to predict, and it sure as hell isn’t. These theories people make is just an arbitrary organization in human understood terms what an abstract concept is. It holds no real meaning, other than the fact that they were able to utilize their metacognition enough to derive that theory, which is actually very hard to do. Other than that, they are no more unique than any one of us. They have parts within them too that are fighting every day. But their fault was making you believe their innards looked the exact same as yours.

Everyone should instead create their own map of their consciousness. Words are nothing compared to experience. You cannot read and then know. You must replicate it to ensure you know how to do it. We, as humans in this evolved society we have grown, rely too heavily on our instant gratification center, as Freud would say, the id. We don’t want to do it, we want it to be done for us. But we can never to expect to reach enlightenment if we never did any of the steps to get there. We cannot board a train we didn’t buy a ticket for.

For example, I have made my own map of my consciousness. Do you want to see into my soul? Here, I will guide you.

Mine is much simpler than Freud’s or Jung’s, and lies more on the Chalmers side. I believe I have two parts — my conscious and my subconscious, but as opposed to most theories, I believe my subconscious is my true self. Just because it’s suppressed does not mean it’s bad. I feel my subconscious has been the victim of this entire situation. My conscious self is the one who collected and imprinted all of my teachings from society and my family. It actively suppresses and shuts down my subconscious self. My subconscious self is a child at heart and she is untouched by all the harsh words that have been told to me and have absorbed through my conscious skin. She wants the best for me, to do what I truly want to do and aims to please people in just the right way, to be considerate but not to be too acceptable. She is curious, excited about life and wants to love so many people in so many different kinds of ways. She isn’t afraid of abandonment and being with others at the same time. She has so many different hobbies she wants to learn that she doesn’t even feel like she has enough time to do them all.

My conscious self is none of these things. I have done and said things that I do not believe or agree with for reasons unbeknownst to me. But, here is a tip, if there is something that you have no idea why you are doing it, then you are suppressing something. Dig deeper. If it hurts, dig even deeper into that wound. Make it gush and watch the pain turn to pleasure. It will be relieving. My conscious self will lie, cheat, steal, and have no remorse for it, because she stores it in the same place where my subconscious is, deep, deep down within me, so low you can’t hear the screams.

The toughest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life is lift my subconscious out from the depths. I had suppressed so much, and at times, it felt like the rope would snap. But, I found my conscious self’s weakness.

At the center of all her turmoil, was one major flaw and weakness. One thought that plagued all her actions and was the serum that tainted all of my regular thoughts was that she wanted so badly to die. I was setting myself up to die through my conscious self. I say conscious self in this regard instead of unconscious (even though this is imprinted), because it was physically done by me. I refer to this as conscious, as I consciously did it. Think about it as Jung’s ego archetype — it is conscious. I refuse to believe my true self is not my subconscious. I consciously did all of those things, I just did not know why. And I never cared enough to know why, so it won every time. My suppressed thoughts were made quiet. That can’t be anything other than my subconscious, in my brain, of course.

At this point, I did the only thing I could do. It was grow or die. I cracked its weakness, and I found a will to live for myself. I turned my anger and spite for the world into art. I poured all of my love into the people in my life and the forms of art I had at my disposal. I realized the void was unpromising, but the world has so much color. How can I guarantee color is wherever the void is? I really wouldn’t want to miss that.

By cracking that kryptonite, everything has thus started to crumble. You might refer to what I had as an ego death experience, but this is an incredibly misleading term. My ego shattered in many places and my subconscious filled in the gaps, but I will never be free of my conscious self. She is my hurt, wounded self, and I am not angry at her anymore. I recognize that she thought what she was doing was right in the moment and she has been through so much. I’m telling her that I will take it from here. But never would I kill her. That would be killing myself.

All of you is your true self. You don’t get to pick and choose what you identify with and what you don’t. You are a mop, you soaked up things you were aiming for and some things you weren’t. Learning to accept this among the chaos will bring you peace, and that is the most spiteful thing you can do.

It might take a lot of time, but I do recommend you try thinking about what your own map of your consciousness or psyche might look like. If I told you everyone is suppressing something and no one is special, would that make you feel better or worse? What if I told you those theories were neither right nor wrong? Would that make you upset? Good. Do something about it.