ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Freud’s structural model, and explores the meaning of the ego, superego, and id. It discusses his new drive theory, and he now has a theory where the two drives are Eros and Thanatos. Thanatos is often taken to be equivalent to aggression, but this was not Freud’s meaning, and the chapter discusses this point. The chapter also discusses Beyond the Pleasure Principle, The Ego and the Id and Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The superego is the concept that will incorporate a previous concept, the ego ideal. Freud also introduces the last of his better-known psycho-sexual stages, the phallic stage. The realization of unconscious defences placed Freud in the position of either maintaining that there were two types of unconscious organizations, or of reconceptualizing his views of the structural conditions of the mind. Freud’s extension of narcissism takes into account the new structural theory, and so all libido now exists at the beginning of life in the id.
