Das Es

Before making a few comments to which I wish to call your attention regarding this new concept, Das Es, I wish to say only a word about the term itself. It has been translated both as the It and the Id. The translation of Es as It is what would be called a literal translation, though this is hardly true because the German significance of Es is not quite that of the English significance. The use of the English It has not been altogether satisfactory because, while it is without gender, that is, it is neuter, it does not suggest dynamic qualities, nor, on the other hand, structural properties. The word Id, on the other hand, which has been frequently used as a translation, is free from these objections. Biologically it suggests a complex structure of great dynamic possibilities, at least so it has been used for many years as one of the concepts of the Weismann scheme of heredity. Therefore Id is probably a better translation, all things considered, than It.

I have selected the concept das Es to speak about because from the psychoanalytic point of view it seems to nucleate more clearly than any other of the psychoanalytic concepts the change which has come over our thought during the present century. To my mind the most significant accompaniment of the twentieth century, the most significant thing that has happened and which differentiates that century from its predecessor, is the changed way in which we have come to think about the various aspects of the cosmos in which we may be particularly interested, and I am thinking now especially of man and his affairs, man as an organism and his particular parts, including his mind. It is true that evolution in its progress comes constantly back to the same problems, but I think that it is also true that in returning to these same