Intellectual Autobiography

The first assignment for my Understanding Media Studies class was to construct an "Intellectual Autobiography." I feel like I could have rambled on for twenty more pages than I did and still not said everything I wanted to say, but it was a nice way to start not only the class, but the program as a whole.

An Autobiography of my Intellectual History

By: George Saad

My education background is in psychology, English, and philosophy, with the latter being my minor and the former two being my majors. What brought me to the Media Studies program at The New School is a profound love for storytelling as a means to illustrate the complexities of the difference between right and wrong. In my studies, I have found that it is difficult -- probably impossible to find a distinct criterion with which to determine whether an action is right or wrong. I have found it much easier, however, to identify the fundamental difference between good and evil. Good people are aware of the needs of others and take interest in others doing well. Evil people are either unaware others or worse, they harbor ill will towards them. To create an account of my intellectual history is to see why my studies led me to this definition of good and evil. As such, it is necessary to begin with a discussion of Freud’s structural model of the human psyche.

In this model, the id, ego, and superego represent three streams of thought in the human mind. The instinctual needs of a person are demanded by the id. The id tells a person he[1] should eat when he is hungry and that he should sleep when he is tired. On a more complex level, the id tells him to take revenge on a person when he is angry and that he should kiss someone when he is in love. The id represents a person’s unfiltered, impulsive reactions to a situation. In order to prevent a world of chaos and violence, the id of the individual must be held in check.

The ego represents the realistic expectations of an individual. When a hungry person waits to eat until their food until it is cooked, it is because their ego made him aware that cooked food is healthier. When an angry person refrains from killing because of the consequences of that action, it is because of the involvement of the ego. When a person decides not to force himself upon someone he desires because the other person does not reciprocate his feelings, it is the ego that stops him. The ego, like the id, is necessary to the survival of the individual in a world where he must exist with others, but like the id, the ego is capable of destroying the individual if it is allowed to reign free.

In order to prevent this from happening, the superego mediates between the id and the ego. When a tired person is driving, it is the superego that determines that the ego’s argument for staying awake (that falling asleep at the wheel is dangerous) is better than the id’s argument for going to sleep (that he is tired). The id, ego, and superego were significant in not only my psychology classes, but they were also a component of my studies in English and philosophy. Freud’s model of the unconscious can be used to analyze actions of characters in literature and to diagnose those with mental dysfunction, but I am especially fascinated with identifying the genetic and environmental factors that shape the decisions made by the superego in the mediating process.

For this purpose, it is useful to take notice of the narcissist, who is characterized by self-love and is by definition only interested in and aware of his own needs and desires. In one of my past research projects, I studied the correlation between narcissism and sexual aggression. I had hypothesized that the narcissist’s superego is dominated by his id, causing the realistic understanding of his ego that sex must be consensual to be ignored. The result of the study, however, showed that the narcissist’s ego is lacking in the realistic understanding that sex may not be consensual. In this sense, the narcissist is failed by the ego, not the superego.[2] The sexual aggression of the narcissist is a result of his warped sense of reality. He is not evil by the standards of evil in our reality because he does not exist outside the fantasy world of his mind – a world where only he has needs and desires.

The example of the narcissist shows that true evil, in the most realistic terms, exists when a person knows that he is interfering with the happiness of others, or when he is actively trying to prevent their happiness. Sexual aggression by the narcissist is bad, but sexual aggression by someone who actually knows that the other person does not desire him is worse. If the ego provides misinformed details about reality to the superego, then the superego can be seduced by the id.

No work of art better illustrates this principle better than my favorite piece of literature, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, which was written roughly two hundred years before Freud created his model for the human psyche. Throughout his journey, Gulliver meets both logical, reasonable creatures that represent the ego (like the Liliputians) and impulsive animal-like creatures that represent the id (the yahoos). It is Gulliver’s task in his travels to evaluate both types of creatures and mediate between their existences. Gulliver is the superego. When Gulliver begins to see all humans as yahoos, he starts to doubt the ability of mankind to do anything beyond fulfill their own instinctual desires. That is to say, Gulliver believes that all men are id-dominated.[3] In making this judgment, Gulliver suggests that all men are corrupt. In this way, Gulliver’s Travels raises the question: are men inherently corrupt or do they acquire their corruption over time?

This question is significant to a discussion of the id, ego, and superego because men are born with the id while the ego and superego are developed over time. If the corruption of men is found in the ego and the superego, the corruption must not have existed at birth. However, if the corruption occurs in the id, then the corruption of the person existed at birth. The assumption is that all men have the capability of being villains. Some men are born villains, while others become villains over time. For Swift, this assumption was obvious because of the state of the European government in the eighteenth century. For Freud, this assumption was obvious because of the relatively consistent results he was getting from psychoanalyzing various subjects. The degrees of corruption that Freud found varied, but the presence of corruption, at least at the unconscious level, was reliable.

When studying this phenomenon, I find it helpful to look at an entity that may appear, at first glance, to disprove the assumption that all humans are corrupt. That entity is the hero. The brilliant Joseph Campbell discusses the journey of the hero in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell shows that the hero is characterized by his willingness to face great danger in order to do great good on behalf of something bigger than himself. However noble he may be, the hero is a servant of others. The hero must face trials and temptations that attempt to deter her from accomplishing his goal. It is the presence of these challenges that define the hero, and it is the ability of a person to overcome these challenges that identifies him. As a result, the hero does not disprove the idea that all humans are corrupt. Instead, the hero exists as evidence that humans are in fact capable of overcoming their natural temptation to succumb to that corruption. In Freudian terms, the hero is ego-dominated. The hero is capable of ignoring his own selfish impulses (id) in order to serve a greater good.

It is the goal of my research to integrate Freud’s model of the id, ego, and superego with Campbell’s model of heroism and Swift’s model of villainy. I believe that all people have the potential to be heroes, but instead many choose to let the yahoo in them reign supreme. I believe those who fall in the latter group do so because of a failure in self-reflection as a part of a group. The conscious part of the ego that should be driving their superego to resist the id is lacking because the individual does not feel as though they are a part of anything bigger than themselves. If it is desirable for people to bring forth the hero in themselves, then it is necessary for people to understand their role in the lives of others. In doing so, the strength of the hero can be realized. As Rudyard Kipling says in The Second Jungle Book, "the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack." If my research reflects this concept, I believe I can help people find a peaceful balance between their id, ego, and superego that will unleash the hero inside them that they didn’t know they could be.

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[1] In this paper I will use male pronouns, but it should be noted that the ideas being discussed apply equally to both men and women.

[2] The id can never fail a person because there is no conscious element to the id as there is with the ego and superego.

[3] It is important to recognize that there may be differences to what Gulliver feels and what Swift himself believes.