DEVELOPMENT OF EGO AND PERSONALITY

From childhood onwards we accumulate experiences which affect us in our thoughts, feelings and actions so that we develop a specific personality. It may be an orderly, comfortable personality or it may be the opposite. The personality is formed by the interplay between our attempts to protect, satisfy and express ourselves and the world in which it finds itself. It is never independent of the social, cultural conditions under which one grows up and lives. Thus, personalities may harmonise more or less well with the surrounding world and people vary as to the degree of inward harmony and fruitful outward relationships. Persons whose characters are formed in one society can therefore have major problems adjusting to having to live in another, while a relative misfit at home may thrive abroad.

Much investigation on the growth of the ego has been done in modern times, even to the virtual exclusion of any higher aspects of personality. The very extensive and diverse results and viewpoints in psychological research can hardly be summarised here, but some salient features of the ego can be noted, as seen from the viewpoint of the higher psychology.

The origin of the ego is sought in identifications made in very early development and in how these have taken part in forming the particular personality and character. The ego-feeling arises with the first assertion of 'I want', of possessiveness, and its growth is closely connected with the need to feel pleasure and avoid pain.

The normal human identity is developed in part precisely through perceiving and learning distinctions between 'I' and 'the other', between 'mine' and 'not mine'. The sense of 'me, mine and I' are obviously unavoidable in the growth of the normal human person, though personal growth eventually stops if these identifications are not later transformed. Conditions of extreme psychic unbalance - from alienation, identity crisis, intense withdrawal to certain states of depression and amnesia - usually involve a self-negating disruption of normal processes of ego-affirmation, especially in early life.

A basic thesis of modern developmental psychology is that "some sense of self does exist long prior to self-awareness and language. These include the senses of agency, of physical cohesion, of continuity in time, of having intentions in mind and other such experiences..."¹

Controllable experiments combined with well-grounded inferences have shown, contrary to most previous psychological opinion, that a subjective sense of self is present at least from birth onwards as the infant gradually relates to its body, its surroundings and to persons as being other than itself. That is to say, the infant is not a passive object of external stimuli that gradually generate a sense of self and experiences connectedness of things, events and actions so as slowly to form the ego or personality, but is from the start an active participant in the organisation of the personality.

The natural and healthy development of the ego-feeling from early childhood, attendant on the growing discovery of self as 'me/mine', relates identity to body, possessions, abilities and thought (mind) in a progressive discovery of selfhood ('I'). Early on the ego-identity becomes related to the body, yet whether the sense of 'I' as subject is or can be present prior to these body-identifications cannot be tested definitively, not least due to the child's lack of language at that time.

Unbalanced parental reactions to a baby's burgeoning desires to control its environment - when to feed, sleep, move etc. - can stunt the growth of a healthy ego-personality. The mean between over-indulgence and unreasonable discipline has to be found. The process of allowing babies to learn self-regulation and to behave within a reasonable sphere of autonomy furthers the establishment of a more harmonious ego. The drives on which the ego is founded can be wrongly diverted into unusual channels, giving rise both to feelings of inadequacy, and compensatory egotism. Undue frustration or regulation of these drives leads to destructive tendencies and/or undue passivity and can lay the ground for complex inferiority and superiority feelings.

One is not born with the sense of me and mine, but with the capacity for developing it, along with the mind and the ego. Even the reflexive idea 'my body' does not arise until the child is many months old.

The ego is the worldly identity resulting from three main desires: the urges to be, to know and to experience pleasure (joy).² The desires are (presumably) not personally articulated at birth, but receive specific form and structure from the growing person's interaction with the environment, physical, social and spiritual. This does not mean, however, that one is not born with predetermined tendencies of a psychic nature. Vedantic thought insists that we are born with 'tendencies' (vasanas), karmic inheritances from the previous existence of our souls. This accounts for the controlled observations showing marked differences between individual children at very early ages indeed, differences that are not explainable by any known environmental influences. Whether or not these are formed by genetic means, as for example in the case of genes which are shown to predispose some people to impulsivness, and whether underlying karmic conditions are also at work cannot be demonstrated.

The genetic hypothesis that traits are exclusively the result of biochemical mechanisms has a sound physical basis, yet it has so far been unable to account for the specific qualitative differences in very early personality characteristics between babies that both experienced parents and child psychologists recognise. The Vedantic view is that these are 'carried over' from the end of the preceding existence in the form of the life principle (prana). Symbolised as the breath, the life principle or subtle pranic energy bears our karmic tendencies. The 'last breath' at death allegedly contains the cumulative effects of the actions (karma) of the individual (jiva), which in turn are the determinants of forthcoming tendencies in the next birth(vasanas). There exists a wide range of evidence to support the rebirth thesis.³

The sense of identity and patterns of behaviour that sustain and protect it can be said to form an 'ego-structure', which may for example be more or less weak/strong, rigid/flexible and so on. How a person reacts to whatever opposes the satisfaction of desires or to what hinders straightforward personal development will influence the particular kind of ego-structure. This raises issues like whether there is a need for so-called 'defence mechanisms' to protect the ego when (felt to be) threatened. This again leads to the question of the origin of personality disturbances and pathological states caused by irregular ego-development.

Many studies have been carried out on the role of the environment in the development of specific patterns of personality, including the ego. It is likely that the more harmonious and less prone to conflict the family, local environment and society in which one grows up, the less likely that strong self-defensive and dominating ego traits will be required and hence developed. Also, the earlier in life that difficult emotional and social burdens have to be borne, the less likely a well-balanced ego pattern with good self-control can be developed.

An ego-structure refers to those personal characteristics by which the individual's identity is established, known and asserted through words and actions, whereby this structure becomes indirectly accessible to empirical study. The ego comes to expression in and through the social environment, where it can be studied through reconstruction. For example, an ego-structure can include strong possessive attachments to certain persons and properties, negative and fearful feelings about other persons, difficulties in expressing positive feelings verbally and a tendency to criticism, back-bite and slander. Many fine distinctions between differing ego-structures can be made according to one's purpose.

One can distinguish a continuum between the strong, assertive ego and the weak, self-denigrating ego. The types of ego at these extremes are generally less suited to positive developments than those types in between, according to psychological researches. The overbearing ego, with its sense of possessive attachment, often disturbs learning and its related processes such as perception, judgement, memory, capacity to abstract and symbolise etc. Extremely egocentric behaviour includes manipulative psychopathic tendencies and other mental derangements. The ego is also the main cause of most kinds of projection onto others of one's own emotions and thoughts or distorted variants of these.

The alternative to ego-centered living with 'defences' against whatever is perceived as a threat to the fulfilment of desires, is self-experience without defences, that is 'being oneself'. What being oneself implies depends in each case upon the individual and the stage of self-fulfilment reached.

How we best may control or transform a (developed) egocentric tendency and its likely motivations includes questions of self-discipline, social control, self-knowledge, self-transformation and eventual self-mastery through transcending the ego-feeling.

VEDANTA AND THE FREUDIAN CONCEPT OF EGO

The Freudian concept of ego is the most commonly-known psychological conception of ego, which is largely different from the general Vedantic view. Freud saw that part of the psyche he called ego as necessarily formed in a 'struggle' between interposing inner forces ('the id') and outer influences (internalised as 'the superego'). He regarded the ego as those conscious resources of a person which defend us from being overwhelmed by the 'id' or instinctual drives and other irrational, unconscious or narcissistic tendencies which aim to maximise pleasure at all costs (i.e. 'the pleasure principle'). These he considered to be 'blind urges' which are mainly opposed to our real and longer-term needs in living a civilised life (i.e. 'the reality principle').

Vedantic psychology agrees that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are basic drives in the human and that our instincts and desires are at the basis of the ego, which is seen as an instrument of adjustment to worldly reality. The difference arises in that, by and large, the Vedantic view of ego is but a temporary identity; a form of 'artificial selfhood', mostly being more of a hindrance to the avoidance of pain and the attainment of pleasure when all factors and the long term are taken properly into account.

The psychoanalytic concept of superego is usually thought to include our conscience. One very great difference between Freudianism and Vedanta lies in the origin of conscience. In the physicalistic view of Freud it could only have arisen exclusively from the environment... that is, in the form of ideas impressed on the child's feelings and mind in the process of upbringing and social adjustment. The ego (Freudian) stands between the diametrically-opposing forces of the id, which seeks unrestrained pleasure, and the superego, which seeks to impose the restraints of all types of civilised norms on the ego... especially rational thought and behaviour.

Psychoanalytic thought holds that over-restrictive and rigidly moralistic childhood influences produce too powerful an 'internalised conscience' (i.e. superego). The ego then has to struggle for its very survival against this inculcated will of others (eg. father, authorities, and the mainly punishing type of 'God'). When there is too weak a superego, the person may be too much at the mercy of the id and be unable healthily to regulate instinctive impulses and bodily desires. A 'healthy ego' in the psychoanalytic tradition is, at best, a condition of personality structure that creates balance between two constantly opposing tendencies. In short, psychic health is viewed as a compromise rather than as a condition that is fundamentally natural to the human being.

Conscience is regarded in Vedantic teachings as originating internally from the spirit (Atma) and not from the social environment. Contrary to the scientific assumption, neither human conscience nor the pure intellect are themselves generated primarily from sense perceptions, though these are necessary to its development and manifestation. The conscience is inwardly informed in its essence by intuition from a higher source. Conscience is held to be entirely independent of the ego because, contrary to the ego, its moving spirit is altruistic and all-inclusive. The dictates of conscience are never merely utilitarian or only self-seeking, for they represent universal ethical law.

Conscience becomes available to us in daily awareness in varying degrees according to accompanying inborn tendencies (vasanas) and outward (samskaric) circumstances of birth (body, family, social class, culture etc.). What one imbibes or learns from the social environment is itself not the origin of the power of conscience or moral intelligence (i.e. buddhi) but at most the formative instrument for its expression, through which it either thrives and becomes part of the habitual character or else is weakened etc. However, experience is required before the conscience can become a conscious influence, for small children do not distinguish between moral right and wrong until they have learned it in some way, whether by example, observation or teaching.

A more traditional school of Freudian analysis regards human nature as in danger from 'the unconscious' and atavistic and chaotic influences it can harbour, a potentially unbalancing threat to healthy minds, having to be guarded against by aid of defence-mechanisms. This contrasts directly with the emphasis of the Vedantic perspective, which sees human nature as originally and essentially being one of purity, a benevolent and unchanging truth-consciousness-bliss. This purity and childlike natural goodness, which characterises our true Selfhood (Atma), becomes obscured, however, by the uncontrolled profusion of the mind's many desires and is restrained from proper expression of its natural purity and goodness by nothing more or less than the 'mechanism of adjustment' to worldliness: the mainly acquisitive, possessive and selfish ego.

STRUCTURES IN THE BALANCED PERSON'S EGO

The ego-structure in a balanced psyche must be determined both across the spectrum of human qualities and for all types of socio-cultural environments. It includes, for example, the ability to recognise both one's strengths and weaknesses or limitations and to be relatively free from 'projection', whether emotional or mental. Further, there must be a certain interactive balance between feeling and thought, between imagination and reasoning, so that the personality is not overwhelmed and brought out of true by strong impulses or ideas that arise from time to time. Too many perceptual derangements, consistent or systematic errors of interpretation of the world or of others', and one's own behaviour speak of unbalance and even serious psychic disturbances, which may have physical causes (like brain tumours) or may be more due to the disorder in 'internal' psychic processes.

Signs of a well-functioning ego-structure - and the contrary - are detectable in social relationships. A person having little internal tension such as sense of insecurity will tend to be widely able to relate to others with sympathy or tolerance and without losing self-esteem. Ego-adjustments have been made so as to suit the environment, whereas chronic difficulties with everyday social surroundings indicate an unbalanced ego. The ability to recognise one's failings is, perhaps rather paradoxically, the beginning of permanent strength, for it is a key to self-discovery. Failure to see or face one's own weaknesses is the greatest of weaknesses. One common way of failing here is to place the blame elsewhere. This may be done quite intentionally, and with good reason, but it may also be an expression of an ego-disturbance.

To understand the ego, we must have a considerable amount of information about the nature of the challenges set by the social environment and a person's particular circumstances. Also, when someone enters a much altered situation, such as immigrants, refugees and many other displaced persons do, their psychic balance may be unduly disturbed even after a very sustained period during which a well-balanced ego would otherwise normally be able to adjust.

The relative imbalance of the ego can arise between the demands of an over-active 'internalised conscience' (eg. Freud's 'superego') and pressing needs or desires, or between experienced needs and the limits or conditions imposed by the social environment. A combination of all such factors may often be at work. For example, the over-possessive mother may become thus unbalanced partly through an unfulfilled life of loneliness combined with ingrained beliefs about the extent of the duties of motherhood in conflict with - or otherwise not pertinent to - the child's unhindered development. This conflict can occur in many social contexts, such as when people of Eastern origin move to Western societies.

The underdeveloped ego-identity: Many studies in child developmental psychology from the time of Freud onwards have dealt with problems of inadequacy due to early suppression of a reasonable ego-growth. Upbringing and socialisation vary very greatly with culture, society and family and this vastly complicates the formation of generally valid guidelines for satisfactory or optimal development. Those with the sort of 'weak ego' that occurs where personal autonomy and choice is almost absent in the main strata of strongly traditional, conformist societies may well not be problematical until the social order is radically disturbed, such as where revolution or the effects of modern warfare destroy the economy of roles and social traditions. A huge body of materials evincing the evidence of modern world history strongly indicates that radical disruptions of rigid social orders can lead to 'eruptions' of suppressed tendencies both at the individual level (egs. the Malay 'running Amok' or the sudden psychopathic mass killer) and at the racial or national level (eg. the excesses of the Nazi and of the Japanese forces which finally turned inwards as Gotterdammerung and mass Hara-kiri.

Particularly in modern and highly pluralistic societies, the consequences of continuous suppression of a child's autonomy, such as through denial of self-regulatory behaviour appropriate for the age and peer-group, seems easily to lead to ego unbalance.

The fortified ego-identity: At another extreme is the strongly fortified ego with extensive and well-constructed defences. These defences are ways of forcible or manipulative reactions, designed to protect the ego's perceived interests, which imply a person who experiences unusually strong needs and desires. Such an individual may also sometimes forward the interests of others while this supports or, at least, does not conflict with his or her own aims. The 'strength' here involved is largely of an outward nature, and is not necessarily experienced as such inwardly. Strong desires and needs, whether inborn or acquired, whether normal or the result of abberrations in development, are rather a sign of psychic weakness than the contrary... a lack of self-control and mind-discipline. This is because the very basis behind such ego is insecurity of some sort or another. Of course, a fortress ego is, by its very nature, vulnerable.

EGO-CENTREDNESS CONTRASTED TO SELF-EXPANSION

The ego is characterised by its original impulse of 'me and mine' and thus is not entirely separable from self interest. Self interest within reasonable bounds is the basis of healthy self-dependence and a certain degree of it is unavoidable as long as anyone lives, though its role can be reduced by some persons to almost nil. Degrees of egoism that are self-destructive are seen in selfishness, systematic egocentricity and intense narcissism. Such egoism obviously takes on many shapes and forms. It may be blatant or deceptively hidden. It may trumpet itself in self-certainty that is at least outwardly knowing or it can dissemble as shrewd charm and manipulation. What is but an appearance of self-confidence in egoists is opposed to authentic self-confidence. Clearly, the inventiveness of the human being is such that no reliable catalogue could ever be devised to account for all the varieties and shades of egoism. More than psychological studies and classifications, the arts, especially great literature, surely provide the best range of descriptions in both its inner and outer aspects.

Though the ego is a natural and necessary part of personality, it is still only a part, and one which is but a stage in spiritual evolution. As egoistic tendencies wax, self-realisation wanes and vice-versa.