Concept
Structural model
Freud's division of the mental personality into three agencies, the id, the ego and the super-ego, set out in Das Ich und das Es (1923). It supplemented the earlier topographical model of unconscious, preconscious and conscious systems once Freud recognised that the defending ego and the moral agency are themselves largely unconscious, so that the conflicts of mental life could no longer be mapped onto the line between conscious and unconscious.
Read more- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1923 Finding that much of the ego and its defences is itself unconscious, Freud in Das Ich und das Es replaces the division by consciousness with three agencies, id, ego and super-ego, and in the New Introductory Lectures (1933) gives the model its best-known diagram.