What if Humans Did Not Have Superego's?

In class, we talked a lot about Freud’s description of the three parts of the human psyche, which are the id, ego, and superego. This discussion soon lead to the topic of how animals relate to these principles. I found it interesting that most animals have an id, ego, but not a superego. This means that many animals will understand how their actions relate to the environment, but they will not have a greater vision of what is going on in their world. It seems like the superego is a purely human characteristic, and even if animals will have enough intelligence to understand their world in a human-like fashion, they will never have a superego; these animals will never be truly human.

I feel that these ideas bring up an interesting point when you look at some of the main characteristics that humans have different from animals. The main characteristic that comes to mind is the human ability to have strong emotions about any type of situation. For example, I do not think a monkey would ever be sad about the way they look, or because they did not have enough money. I understand that monkeys do not handle money, but the point I am trying to make is that human’s develop strong emotions over learned wants, and desires. Animals can be happy when their simplest needs are covered, while humans have trouble staying happy even when all their simple needs are covered. Animals tend to be always in the present moment, focusing on what task is in front of them, while humans tend to be stuck always thinking about the past or future.

The fact that animals are generally easier to keep happy is very interesting to me. I have read books on human spirituality and happiness, and many times, one of the main subjects in the books is the present moment. If humans can stay in the present moment, all of their stress and worries will disappear; once you fully immerse yourself in the present moment, it is extremely difficult not to be happy. Ancient spiritual practices like meditation and prayer all have something in common: they cause the person performing the actions to be in the present moment. Since being in the present moment seems so important, I find it interesting that animals are good at doing this because animals also do not have a superego. All of this has lead me to wonder if humans would benefit from not having a superego.

I understand that there are many advantages to having a superego, but if every type of being in existence did not have a superego, it seems like our world would function better. I do not think humans would want to take advantage of other beings as much as we do now if we did not have a superego. I also think that the environment would be in a much better situation then it is now. Most importantly, if we did not have superegos, I believe we would be a generally, much happier.

What do you think would happen if humans did not have superegos?

In Response to Jennifer Johnston (3/31/10)

Q: "Do you believe dreams can become reality? Is it just because we spend so much time subconsciously dwelling on situations, that they secretly become our desires and needs?"

I do believe in principle that dreams can become reality, but not in the way that you outlined. As far as I know, everything in the universe is made up of energy; are thoughts are no different. I feel that because of this, things we think about tend to manifest in our outside environment. I know that everyone has had crazy coincidences where something happens that they were just thinking about. People tend to think of the term coincidence as meaning a random occurrence of something that relates to something else. I myself tend to think of the word coincidence in the same context as the math term coincide, which means that two things correspond with one another; this means that coincidences are not random at all.

I feel that once you begin to think about something a lot, that thing will show up in your universe in some way, shape, or form. I do not think it will always be exactly the way the you thought about it, but it will show up. As far as I know, none of this can be scientifically proven (or has been), but I personally feel that there is some relation between are thoughts and our reality. With that said, I tend to think of dreams from an anti-Freudian point of view which means I do not believe they should be looked at as having significant meaning. I think Dr.J was right when he brought up the point that our brain functions at a lower level during sleep, and therefore the pieces of each dream are randomly put together. With that said, I do believe that our brain does choose significant thoughts in our lives to be put in dreams, but I just think that the way it organizes the complete dream is random.

The idea that dreams secretly become our desires and needs is a little to Freudian for me. I think people just make up a story that something was in their unconscious when they cannot explain a theory related to Freud’s Idea's. This relates back to the idea that Freudian supporters often will try to make his theories scientific when they absolutely are not. I think Freud brought up many ideas about our unconscious that have been extremely helpful with modern day science, but the use of the unconscious to explain things like dreams appearing in real life is problematic. The main issue with explaining the unconscious mind is that in principle, it is not testable. For that reason, I am not going to say my theory of why dreams appear in real life is better because I cannot prove my theory scientifically either. I just feel that the energy we send out to the universe through our thoughts (which could be in our dreams) tends to come back to use through the experiences that we have in reality.

Do you think that finding meaning in your dreams would make a significant improvement in your life?