As Walter Anderson stated “bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life.” This quotation by Anderson and many like it refer to a way of ‘coping’ in the event of misfortune, and has generally been linked to identifying one’s self in their perception to the external world. Throughout this essay the main concept that will be reiterated is sublimation and its relationship with repression both which are used in coping and their impact on narcissism and its development within the structure of the mind. These will all ultimately come together to further the understanding of todays’ western society in terms of the enforcement of repression against that of narcissistic concerns and the inevitability of sublimatory …show more content…
The id is the oldest part of the personality starting before the child barely has any hindrance with the external world around himself. The id is the place where there is no lid on any of the person’s intuitive, unlearned and desired instincts; there is no organisation of these instincts nor is there any morality of wrong and right. There is only a need to satisfy them (reading 8). The ego is where we start to see similarities with the process of sublimation; the ego is the Id’s organisation. Without the ego, the organism in which the Id is located will allow the body to self-destruct, due to the indifference for the external world, and becomes necessary for the ego to self-preserve the organism. The ego functions to gain control over the impulses the Id may have and decides whether these impulses should be immediately satisfied, or postponed to a later date or if it should be denied altogether, what we come to know as repression. The ego tends to protect, not only the internal environment (the Id) but also from the dangers of the external environment from which the internal environment would direct and lead to (Reading