About this audiobook
Sigmund Freud revisits his account of mental life through the relationship between the ego, the id and the superego. These concepts describe, within his psychoanalytic theory, different aspects of desire, self-regulation and moral demand. The essay complicates the assumption that a person knows the motives shaping every thought and action.
Freud considers how the ego negotiates pressures from instinctual wishes, internal prohibitions and the external world. He also questions a simple division between a wholly conscious ego and an unconscious realm outside it. Guilt and identification become important to his explanation of how inner conflicts develop and persist.
The work offers a concise encounter with a stage in Freud's theoretical thinking. Its model is presented as his historical argument rather than an established map of the mind or practical diagnostic advice. Readers can follow how he reformulates the problem of personal agency when conscious intention is only one part of his explanation of behaviour.
