Skinner Explains Freud’s Id, Ego and Superego

“In Freud’s great triumvirate, the ego, superego and id represent sets of contingencies that are almost inevitable when a person lives in a group” (Skinner, p. 131)

Hello friends!

During psychology college, it is common to see heated discussions about the various theories that seek to explain people’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors. After a few periods in college, each student will define which approach he prefers and, with that, he tries to defend what he believes to be the most correct, the closest to the truth.

However, although the defense of one’s own point of view can be an exercise in learning and knowing how to argue, it is important to understand that knowledge is generated and maintained by thought, and not by the judgment of one being better and the other worse. As Jung says, “Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people prefer to judge.” I say this because it is not uncommon to see students failing to read authors with whom they do not agree, while the authors themselves, being thinkers, knew each other’s works.

In the book About behaviorism, of BF Skinner we read in the chapter “The Inner World of Motivation and Emotion”, an excerpt in which he explains Freud’s concepts of id, ego and superego (from his perspective of behavioral psychology, of course).

Check out our Skinner Course – About Behaviorism – on Video

Skinner Explains Freud’s Id, Ego and Superego

Initially, Skinner relates the concepts to the Christian metaphor of the “Old Adam” and conscience. The “Old Adam” is man still in paradise, without conscience, and with the possibility of having everything he wants:

“In Freud’s great triumvirate, the ego, superego and id represent sets of contingencies that are almost inevitable when a person lives in a group. The id represents the “Old Adam” of the Judeo-Christian tradition – man’s ‘sin nature’ derived from his innate susceptibilities to reinforcement, much of which are almost inevitably in conflict with someone else’s interests. The superego – the Judeo-Christian conscience – speaks in a ‘still weak voice’ of a (usually) punitive agent representing the interest of other people” (Skinner, p. 131).

the id

The Christian metaphor of sin brings the idea that man, originally, would have a behavior (“instinctive”) that directs him to the so-called natural reinforcements, such as sex and food. With social interaction, the search for these and other selfish satisfactions puts him in conflict with the interests of others. Thus, over time, people assimilate rules of coexistence and the possibilities of sanctions and punishments if they transgress what other people limit.

the superego

In the continuation of the text, Skinner explains what he means by superego and its relationship with the unconscious. According to him, the unconscious is defined by the inability or inability to describe one’s own behavior.

In an earlier chapter, “Causes and Reasons,” he says: “All behavior, actual or otherwise, is initially non-rational in the sense that the contingencies responsible for it have not been analyzed. All behavior is, in principle, unconscious, but it can become conscious without becoming rational: a person can know what he is doing without knowing why he is doing it” (Skinner, p. 114). About the superego, he writes:

“It is one of ‘the major sectors of the psyche’ only in the sense of being a ‘part of human behavior’ and it is largely unconscious only because the verbal community does not teach people to observe or describe it. It is primarily the product of the punitive practices of a society that tries to suppress the selfish behavior generated by biological reformers, and it can take the form of society’s imitation (‘serving society’s vicar’) as the injunctions of parents, teachers and others become part of your repertoire” (Skinner, p. 131).

the ego

In turn, the ego would be between the id and the superego:

“The ego is the product of the practical contingencies of daily life, necessarily involving susceptibilities to reinforcement and punitive contingencies arranged by other people, but exhibiting behavior shaped and maintained by a current environment” (Skinner, p. 131).

“He says that he satisfies the id when he reaches a certain level of biological reinforcement, and the superego when he does so without entailing an excessive dose of punishment. It goes without saying that these three archetypal personalities are the actors in an inner drama. The actor is the organism, which has become a person with different and possibly conflicting repertoires as a result of adversarial and perhaps conflicting contingencies” (Skinner, p. 131).

Conclusion

Despite reading Freud, it is clear that Skinner does not agree with the theoretical construction of psychoanalysis. Among many other reasons, there is the idea fundamental to his behavioral psychology that it is the environment – ​​and not the psyche (man’s interior) – that controls and shapes behavior:

“Freud’s analysis seemed convincing because of its universality, but it is the environmental contingencies, rather than the psyche, that are invariant” (Skinner, p. 131).

Anyway, it is interesting to know not only that the great authors read the others of other thinkers, but that they tried to understand the concepts to, then, criticize them or explain them from their own point of view.

Check out our Skinner Course – About Behaviorism – on Video

Reference

SKINNER, BF About behaviorism. São Paulo: Cultrix, 2006

Related