(Ich)
A central concept in psychoanalysis which is present in Freud, Sigmund’s earliest writings, but gains in prominence with the elaboration of the second topography in 1920. The ego is that part of the psychical apparatus which acts as an agent of the self. However, it is only one part of the psychical apparatus and cannot be fully understood in isolation from the other components, namely the id and the superego. It is the product of a gradual process of differentiation in early childhood between the internal impulses of desire rising up from the id and the equally powerful pressures of external reality (whose avatar is the superego). In contrast, Lacan, Jacques treats the ego as a kind of mirage, an illusory product of what he calls the mirror stage phase. The ego is organized, whereas the id is not; it is a focal point for ideas, and more importantly for cathexis. It is the ego which calibrates pleasure and decides what is and what is not pleasurable. Freud described the ego as being like a rider sitting on a horse, the horse being the id; like a rider, the ego draws on the energy of the forces it sits astride (namely the instinct), but it must also take care to defend itself against those very same forces, which have the power to unseat it. Symptoms like anxiety and hysteria are the ego’s pathological response to the pressures of the id.