a century of mistranslating Super-Ego+Id as "Ego"

[Harmonious Emptiness]

I hope this will not be seen as "top-posting," but I realized this while going over the "Ego = The True Self" post, and felt it was too important to get buried in another post + worthy of a separate post.

 

 

Quote

 

We have extensively dealt with the classical, Freudian, concept of the Ego. It is a partly conscious, partly preconscious and unconscious. It operates on a "reality principle" (as opposed to the Id's "pleasure principle"). It maintains an inner equilibrium between the onerous (and unrealistic, or ideal) demands of the Superego and the almost irresistible (and unrealistic) drives of the Id. It also has to fend off the unfavourable consequences of comparisons between itself and the Ego Ideal (comparisons that the Superego is only too eager to perform). In many respects, therefore, the Ego in Freudian psychoanalysis IS the Self.

 

 

Do you know what this means??!

 

It means there's been a huge error in the employment of Freud's terms for like a WHOLE CENTURY, because what is most closely described, here as the Ego, is The Universal Mind/Original Mind - which becomes clouded by what translations term as The Ego. The Ego is defined in The Lankavatara Scripture as being a result of "habit energy." This would indicate the ID to me.

 

We have extensively dealt with the classical, Freudian, concept of the Ego. It is a partly conscious, partly preconscious and unconscious. It operates on a "reality principle" (as opposed to the Id's "pleasure principle").

 

Now compare that with "The 3 natures of the Self" of things, ideas, and reality..

 

The self-natures of things and ideas, and of the six-fold mind system, correspond with the Dharma of [against] appearance, name, and discrimination [which also apply to the Super-Ego, rather than Ego]; the self-nature of Universal Mind and Reality correspond to the Dharmas of right-knowledge and "Suchness" (Lankavatara Scripture, trans. Goddard)."

 

The "Ego" is also a product of, and is tied up in, thoughts of discrimination, constantly comparing this to that, etc.. This could also be associated to the Super-Ego constantly trying to justify itself. Of course some discrimination is necessary, but this is just translation, words.. The Truth is them, but they are not The Truth.

 

 

I'd also like to add that the Buddhist understanding of what can be achieved in The Universal Mind is far more developed (coming from mystical roots) than Freud's later "discovery" (try REdiscovery. Though maybe Freud had never read Chinese canons... At least Jung mentioned the I Ching as one of his favourite books).

 

I've found that Egotism is used interchangeably with Selfishness, so perhaps this is why "The Self [The Ego]" is used to indicate this state of existence. The Super-Ego, so concerned with it's appearance that it will sometimes commit even violent acts to inflate itself. It's not inflation of the Ego that is going on, as inflation of the Super-Ego, since inflation of The Universal Mind/Ego would destroy the Super-Ego and the Id, but the balanced Ego would remain in tact to conduct everything.

 

If you ask me, Freud ripped it off and managed to penetrate the prejudiced Victorian minds by passing it off as his own "scientific research" so that they could understand a non-whites wisdom. The concept is discussed in The Old Testament as well, but not to the same extent (sutra after sutra after sutra).

 

Elvis Presley, Pat Boone, Sigmund Freud

:lol:

Edited May 25, 2011 by Harmonious Emptiness

[Jetsun]

They are all just maps but the maps aren't the territory no matter how complex they are. I'm sure the Buddhists weren't the first to create such a map and considering every person has a mind I don't see why Freud would need to rip any ideas off from anyone, he could just study the people around him and study himself to create a map of the psyche, which is apparently what he did with the aid of hypnosis, it's not that hard to conceive is it?

[ShaktiMama]

just a huge error by the lay public. i recently posted that the ego was a poetic conceit of freud's few weeks back.

Edited May 25, 2011 by ShaktiMama

[Non]

Yea... I thought of that. actually when I first began on the path, someone told me the ego is not bad. What most people refer to as the ego is just really referring to the not-self, but in reality it is the self - the worldly self, just not the real higher self the self that exists in reality. The "bad ego" most people refer to is just when you begin to identify with the ego - worldly self, and the errors of perception arise.

 

Well this is just my understanding anyway.

 

So breifly then my understanding is just that we have 2 selves - the higher self which is our "true" selves (if there was a true "self" at all), the observer. Then there is the observed self which exists in "reality". It is when we start to forget our self as an observer of the observed self, and identify only with the observed self that I think "negative ego" refers to.

 

Then of course there is the stage where you begin to realize you're not actually the observer either you are beyond the observer and of course the "self which exists in reality/the observed self" and they both become part of 'self' just as much as everything is "the self"..

Edited May 25, 2011 by Non

[Harmonious Emptiness]

They are all just maps but the maps aren't the territory no matter how complex they are. I'm sure the Buddhists weren't the first to create such a map and considering every person has a mind I don't see why Freud would need to rip any ideas off from anyone, he could just study the people around him and study himself to create a map of the psyche, which is apparently what he did with the aid of hypnosis, it's not that hard to conceive is it?

 

Yeah, I can concede that Freud was able to come up with a lot of it himself. However, I still have the feeling that he swept a spark of influence under the rug. He had to have been familiar with Buddhism if Jung was reading the I Ching as much as he has said he was. Granted as well, Freud did add a lot to understanding the mind. I just find his "discoveries" too reminiscent of so many other "discoveries" of things that other cultures developed 1000s of years before, only to be accepted by Western culture when "one of their own" presented the exact same ideas.

 

I won't even get into the whole Khemetic/Egyptian thing, but yes I agree that these ideas existed even before Buddhism.

[Harmonious Emptiness]

just a huge error by the lay public. i recently posted that the ego was a poetic conceit of freud's few weeks back.

 

Ha, yes. A poetic conceit, like he was just being more of a poet than a scientist?

Though, I guess every writer/active observer has to have some affinity for the poetic process, and tries to make sense out of our feelings. Is there any other way to do it? .. oh right,

 

I'd have to say, it's been an error the whole way. Paul Carus, though his word usages have been for me some of the most clarifying, seems to be maybe the first to employ Freuds term as Carus was very much a rationalist and wanted the scriptures to find cross-overs with Western paradigms in the early 19th century.

 

It seems that, since that time, Ego sort of took off as referring to the Super Ego and maybe sometimes the Id. Really, I have never seen the term "Super-Ego" in any

translation of Buddhist or Taoist writing.

 

I've shortened this reply and put the other paragraphs in a notepad. It seems I'll be writing quite a bit on this topic

 

Now I just need a co-author

[Jetsun]

Yeah, I can concede that Freud was able to come up with a lot of it himself. However, I still have the feeling that he swept a spark of influence under the rug. He had to have been familiar with Buddhism if Jung was reading the I Ching as much as he has said he was. Granted as well, Freud did add a lot to understanding the mind. I just find his "discoveries" too reminiscent of so many other "discoveries" of things that other cultures developed 1000s of years before, only to be accepted by Western culture when "one of their own" presented the exact same ideas.

 

I won't even get into the whole Khemetic/Egyptian thing, but yes I agree that these ideas existed even before Buddhism.

 

Yes Jung was interested in Taoism, he was one of the first westerners to talk about "The Secret of the Golden Flower" text which he had translated, but yet if you examine his work it is more influenced by western alchemy and gnosticism, whether those traditions were influenced by Taoism is another matter but personally when I read some of the gnostic scriptures they feel Taoist in nature, so it's possible it all comes from the same source at some point in history.

Edited May 26, 2011 by Jetsun

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Yes Jung was interested in Taoism, he was one of the first westerners to talk about "The Secret of the Golden Flower" text which he had translated, but yet if you examine his work it is more influenced by western alchemy and gnosticism, whether those traditions were influenced by Taoism is another matter but personally when I read some of the gnostic scriptures they feel Taoist in nature, so it's possible it all comes from the same source at some point in history.

 

Western alchemy came down from Egyptian mystery schools. There is even the possibility that Taoism was largely influenced by the same in the early years (circa 2000 B.C.) since the Egyptians were traveling all over the world with esoteric practices echoed in every spiritual tradition. Kundalini, chakras, chi and polar yin/yang rhythm (Ma'at), wisdom texts on morality, astrology, gods for just about everything, mathematics, medical science, advanced architecture. The Egyptians (actually black Africans if you look at the statues of the pharaohs and many of the gods) were like the modern Western world of the ancient world, reaching all over the globe with it's culture and knowledge, with the many of the greatest minds of other cultures going there to learn whatever they would be allowed.

 

This is not to say that Taoism and other religions didn't make their own advances, but I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if a lot of the knowledge started with contact from "the cradle of civilization."