Mental sickness
It is when the ego is weak that the conflict is not resolved, and the personality becomes sick. This means, the ego tries to push away the conflict and forgets about it. When this happens the ego is unable to pay full attention to the external reality and deal with it, because the unresolved internal conflict starts pestering the ego for attention. When this happens, the society in which the individual lives becomes intolerant and begins to condemn the individual for the negligence of responsibilities. This makes the individual become withdrawn from society and feel and behave as an invalid. The individual regresses into a childhood mode of behaviour. This is a description of the neurotic personality. The neurotic, though withdrawn from the external social reality, is fully aware of it.
The psychotic, on the other hand, withdraws from the social reality totally. He does not pay attention to it. He lives in a world of his own making, though he is aware of the physical reality around. In doing so, he loses his social identity, and acquires a physical identity. If he identifies with the physical body, he may experience himself as a robot, or if he identifies himself with the totality of the physical reality, he may experience himself even as God. He experiences as himself what ever he identifies with.
Ego psychology
Freud spoke about mental and physical processes, not about persons. What is called his “personality theory” is only a mechanical theory of personality. He called it the “psychic apparatus.” In other words, he saw the personality to be an impersonal process of psychophysical activity. Therefore, his theory is also called the psychodynamic theory. Although Freud saw the personality as a mechanical process of activity comparable to a machine, or an energy system, some of his followers were dissatisfied with the depersonalization and reification of the personality. Some later psychologists and psychoanalysts who were existentialist thinkers, like R.D. Lang, criticized this way of thinking, considering it to be a dehumanizing of the human being, through “depersonalization” and “reification” of the human personality. (The divided self, by R.D. Lang). This latter way of thinking among psychoanalysts came to be called “Ego Psychology.”
Freud saw the ego only as an impersonal faculty of reasoning, the main concern of which was to manage the id impulses, and to resolve the conflict between the id and the superego, as well as to deal with the external reality. Later followers saw the ego as the “real self” whose main concern was to deal with the external reality. They were mainly concerned with the development of the “sense of self” and the strengthening of the “ego” to deal with the external world.
Freud pointed out that the “sense of self” is formed through the infant’s relationship with the mother. This relationship with the mother was seen as an “object relationship,” where the mother was the object. As Freud saw it, the infant does not see the mother as a separate entity from itself, at the beginning. It is later that the infant notices that the mother appears at times, and disappears at other times, and that the mother is not under its control, as its own legs or arms are. This makes it feel that the mother is a person separate from itself, and so a “sense of self” is formed. Then a relationship of dependence on the mother develops. In this relationship, frustrations and disappointments are experienced. These remain as memories, which affect relationships with other people in later life. These memories also affect the self-concept or self- image in later life, where the “self” can be felt to be weak or strong, resulting in feelings of inferiority or superiority, or what is today called lack of self-esteem.
Later followers of Freud became concerned with the development of the sense of self, which they identified as the ego. This psychology based on the concern with the ego and its relations with external reality was called “ego psychology,” or “object relations psychology.” The earlier concern with the id, and its conflict with the ego and superego, was called id psychology, which was rejected by the later followers of Freud who became interested in ego psychology. The new turn took place when the psychoanalysts became concerned with psychosis, which, they thought, was rooted in the ego’s relationship with external reality, and the change in the “sense of self”. Formerly, Freud’s main concern was neurosis, though his concern always extended to psychosis as well.