I’ve wondered, what is the nature of this common accusation of ego-mentality? Does it make serious sense or is it non-sense?

In college psychology courses students are introduced early to the infamous Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, who divided the human psyche into three parts. This article aims to compare, or associate, Freud’s three developmental parts with certain developmental parts of yogic subtle body anatomy that may be discovered while working the yoga process or another discipline.

The three parts of the psyche Freud identified are:

Id, Ego and Super Ego.

The three parts of the yogic subtle form I will be associating them with are:

Primal Life Force (Kundalini), Intellect (Buddhi), and Core-Self (Atma).

In this comparison the “id” part of your personality is the primal life force, in Sanskrit called the kundalini.

Present in past lives, and, in between bodies while in an astral environment, and present right now in your current incarnation, this psychic energy is primitive and instinctual. The id is driven by survival and immediate gratification of wants and needs. If needs are not satisfied, the result is anxiety, fear, tension.

Easily we can associate Freud’s id portion of his system to the yogic concept of primal kundalini energy found in the base of the spine which is the operator-engine of the body-mind complex in the yoga system. In this context the kundalini or id is the causal energy behind the eventual development and sustainment of the intellect.

The ‘ego’ is the intellect, in Sanskrit called the buddhi organ.

As I see it, if a person accuses another of speaking or acting from ‘ego’, what they are technically saying is that the person is speaking or acting from intellect. Is it really a proper insult to accuse someone of using their intellect? (Possibly the insultee should just thank the insulter.)

According to Freud, ego is a development of the id. It rises up from it, develops from it as we pass through progressive stages. As a child matures out of infancy, it begins to understand, through this natural development, that not all of its desires are going to be met, much less in the timely fashion the id demands. The ego becomes a natural limiter, a smarter, more socially appropriate expression of the primal and demanding, desire fulfilling, self-centered id.

Last and most important in the structures of the self is the highest self itself – what Freud called, The Super Ego. In yogic terms I relate this part, in part, to the Core-Self (Atma). Like the spiritual self, the superego works in contrast to or in a sort of opposition with the drives of the id or kundalini.

The superego should also be looked at as a further evolution of ego intelligence. We can see that intelligence may develop an even higher capacity for what we might call ‘conscience’, or the ego-ideal.

Here is the basic breakdown of my idea:

Id = Kundalini primal life force located in the base of the spine

Ego = Buddhi intellect organ located in the subtle front of the head, forebrain area, the frontal lobe.

SuperEgo = Atma, the spiritual person, who, through use of a developed intellect becomes aware of itself and its own highest ideals of self-hood, found in the center of the head space