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= D.: Es.–Es.: ello.–Fr.: ça.–I.: es.–P.: id.
One of the three agencies* distinguished by Freud in his second theory of the psychical apparatus. The id constitutes the instinctual pole of the personality; its contents, as an expression of the instincts, are unconscious, a portion of them being hereditary and innate, a portion repressed and acquired.
From the * point of view, the id for Freud is the prime reservoir of psychical energy; from the * point of view, it conflicts with the ego and the –which, genetically speaking, are diversifications of the id.
The term ‘das Es’ is first used in The Ego and the (1923b). Freud borrows it from Georg Groddeck (α), citing the precedent set by Nietzsche, who apparently used the expression ‘for whatever in our nature is impersonal and, so to speak, subject to natural law’ 1a.
The word attracted Freud's attention because it evokes the idea, developed by Groddeck, that ‘what we call our ego behaves essentially passively in life, and that […] we are “lived” by unknown and uncontrollable forces’ (1b, β); this notion is consistent, moreover, with the language used spontaneously by patients: ‘“It shot through me,” people say; “there was something in me at that moment that was stronger than me.” “C'était plus fort que moi”’ 2.
The term ‘’ first appears during Freud's revision of his * between 1920 and 1923. The position occupied by the id in the second topography may be looked upon as roughly equivalent to that held by the * system (Ucs.) in the first one–provided always that a number of differences are borne in mind. These differences may be described as follows:
a. Aside from certain phylogenetically acquired patterns or contents, the unconscious of the first topography is indistinguishable from the repressed.
In The Ego and the (Chapter I), by contrast, Freud stresses the fact that the repressing –the –and its defensive operations are also for the most
part unconscious. Consequently, the id, though it includes the same contents as th