Freud theory of the self

sigmund freud's theory of the pyche, known commonly as theory of the self revolves around the idea of the id, the ego and the superego which are freuds interpretations of what makes up the subconciesness, freud belived that the human psyche had three destinct parts, the ego first of all was the main part of the three, essiently your ego is you it's the part in the middle thats being pulled by the subsecrent two parts. the super ego is the voice of reason, its the voice in your head that reminds you whats right and keeps you from doing regretable things, the super ego is like the instructions of what you should do and tends to influence you to conform to the ideas of society, usally the super ego is influenced by things such as your parents or other parts of your upbringing. the id on the other hand is the opposite of the super ego, its the desires of a person, the impulse to do what you want when you want, to put it simply if someone where to push in front of you in a que then the id would be the little voice in the back of your head telling you to knock them round the mouth and take your place back whereas the super ego would be your sense of reason telling you why that would obviously be a bad idea and how violence should not be resorted to, the ego is you caught in the middle of these voices.

A simple way to explain it would be the tradional angel and devil on your shoulders that is seen in many forms of film and media, this is a physical embodiement of freuds theory with the devil being the id, the angel being the super ego and the person in the middle being the ego. Both the id and the super ego try to convince the ego to act the why they want, the values of the super ego are constructed based on society, it tells us whats right and wrong based on the rules and ideologies imprinted on people by thier upbringing, on its own the super ego is a biproduct of social constructs, for example violence is frowned upon in society and is rarely considered an acceptable option but that is not because violence is not suitable for situations, in some cases violence can solve problems much more efficently than alternatives, the real reaseon the super ego forbids us from violence is because society has deemed violence unacceptable, the same could be said for other things such as drugs, sex thievery etc, the super ego forms to values and concepts no matter the pracatcallity or logistics of a situation. The id however is very primal, it has no consideration for societel constructs and its decisons are very basic and animalistic,"you want somthing? take it. it's not yours? whats that matter? theres nothing physcally stopping you so just take it". the id does not see rules and only follows it's own desires, if every human were to just have an id and lacked the other two then the world would have no structure, no society and woukd be an instict driven anarchy.

Now what stops the id or even the super ego from having complete control is their postion in the conciousness, the ego is the pilot and is in the front, the other two are very much back seat drivers though the super ego is more forward than the id as it serves as a guidence to the ego, this makes sense as the super ego is creted from ideals which normally come from parents or other parental figures so the super ego acting like a parent to the ego is very fitting and could be described as a small piece of your parents inbewed in your mind. the id resides further in the subconcious most feeding desires through thoughts though its possitive in the conciousness causes it to have less influence than the super ego on the ego, this is why people call the id "the little voice at the back of your head" as the ids thoughts are coming from deep within the subconsious or the back of your head. The ego being the mediator between the two stays at the front, it keeps balnce between the two parts as nither the id nore super ego are strictly correct, a balance between them must be formed as if either has more power it can cause issues within a person.