I’ve been thinking, and as a result writing, more about ego lately. Like many words, ‘ego’ has webbed into multi-use meanings that can reduce its utility. I like getting to the root of things—words, ideas, people. Looking for what’s underneath the layers that time and groupthink have piled on. I especially enjoy doing this with language. Words are themselves a layer between our thoughts and how we relay them to ourselves and others. When we lose the root, and begin using a word for disparate meanings, communication then gets more layered—more complex and error-prone.
Alas, as ‘ego’ has come up more in my recent spew of sharing my psychedelic experiences, I felt it time to connect back to the meaning so we’re standing in the same place when I write it and you read it.
To do this, I’ll go to the word’s beginning—to psychoanalytic theory, Freud and Jung. According to Sigmund Freud’s Personality Theory, the personality is composed of three elements: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id consists of our primal desires and urges, while the superego is the moral compass that operates from internalized rules we acquire from our parents and society. The ego is the mediator between the urges of the id, the idealistic standards of the superego, and the demands of reality.
The ego, then, forms the identity that helps us best fit in the world—it defines who we are to ourselves and how we project ourselves to others.
We need an ego to function productively and collaboratively, but when we are unconscious of it, when our ego is one and the same with “I”, our emotions get wrapped up in maintaining it. This leads to pain, fear, or shame when the ego is bruised, and we form protective, often limiting, walls to avoid that sort of pain in the future.
How does it develop? In a process that ping pongs between what our primal self wants and what society says is good, attempting to find a safe happy middle ground. In healthy cases, that’s a stable center. In unhealthy cases, it’s a wide pendulum swing. Childhood fame is a good example of this—an over-focus on societal validation is later compensated with consuming primal urges like sex or drug addiction, even insanity (love you Britney…).
How does it present itself? The ego directs you. Where to live, what to wear, where to work, who to befriend, who to date. In healthy cases, there’s an awareness of the ego’s pull, allowing one to control it. In unhealthy cases, that directing is unconscious. It's an unfortunate truth, and I think the root of many of our problems in the world, that for many the ego is an unconscious steerer. It was for me, and probably still is in many aspects that I continuously look for and work on.
Why is an unconscious ego unhealthy? An unconscious ego leads to the wide pendulum swinging—the time- and mental energy-consuming zig-zag life path between what society wants and what you want. It’s what leads to grinding in a career not for happiness or fulfillment, but for power or money. It leads to choosing and staying in relationships not for love, but for status. Or buying cars, clothes, and homes not for comfort or utility, but for appearance. The responding pendulum swing to these societally-driven choices is internal turmoil—neurotic behavior, OCD, addiction, insomnia, depression etc etc.
When we become conscious of our ego, two things happen. 1. We can control it, keep the pendulum balanced and centered and avoid the frenetic swings that disrupt our work, relationships, and wellbeing, 2. We can detach from it. If we don’t identify with our ego it’s far less debilitating when we don’t meet its expectations. Allowing for a much quicker get up, shake it off attitude that makes for a more productive, happy life.
How do we become conscious of our ego? Psychedelics are one way. Working with them in therapeutic settings, thoughtfully and intentionally. It’s not the only way, but in my experience it’s the most direct. Meditation, psychotherapy, studying and practicing mindfulness, dream analysis—all these can help as well they just might take longer.
What can psychedelics do? Much of the therapeutic power in psychedelic experiences is their ability to temporarily suspend the Default Mode Network (DMN) of the brain.
The DMN is a section of correlated parts of the brain thought to be responsible for our ego. Experiments using fMRI and MAG have shown that during a psychedelic experience—where it’s said “ego dissolution” occurs, the DMN also temporarily shuts down.
This is why people often speak of returning from trips with a whole new perspective on themselves and their lives. Prior to the experience, their perspectives were likely shaded by their ego identity. The quieting or even fully dissolving of the ego during a trip allows one to see that the ego is an object just like thoughts are objects, things that live in our heads but they are not “I”.
The “I” is the observer to it all in the dance that is life, but internalizing that truth is easier said than done. Psychedelics are a powerful way to help us proverbially get out of our own way, to detach from the shade of our ego and confront and take down the protective walls it’s built.