The Selfish Beast and Pleasure Principles as Part of the Components of the Mind

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The mind is a powerful vault that can harbour many things and at the same time can easily be influenced by the environment.

Stedman’s Medical Dictionary (2006), described the mind as the organ or seat of consciousness and higher function of the human brain; such as cognition, reasoning, willing and emotion.

It is the element of a person that enables him to be aware of the world and his experiences, to think and to feel. I.e. the faculty of consciousness.

When the infant is born, the mind has only one part, “The ID”The id is composed primarily of two sets of instincts; Life instincts and death instinct.

The life instincts termed “libido”, give rise to motives that sustain and promote life, such as hunger, self-protection and sexual desire.

The death instinct is related to aggression and suicidal urges.
The sexual and aggressive urges are by far the most important of these motives. It is believed that from birth on, every person’s life is dominated by these two motives, “the desire to experience sexual pleasure and the desire to harm others.
Because the id operates entirely at the unconscious level of the mind, we are generally not aware of these motives.

The id is described as a selfish cruel beast, which operates according to the pleasure principle.
The id wants to obtain immediate pleasure and avoid pain, regardless of how harmful it might be to others.

According to Freud, the id seeks to satisfy its desire in ways that are totally out of touch with reality. The id, in fact, has no conception whatever of reality. The id attempts to satisfy its needs using what is called “Primary process” that’s when we day-dream about having sex, think about eating our favourite or angrily plan how to get revenge on the person who embarrassed us. Dreams are also a primary process of means of fulfilling motive.

During infancy, the period of time when we have only an id, we have adults around us who see to it that our needs are realistically and safely met. As we grow up, our interactions with our parents and other parts of the real world, lead us to convert part of the id into two other parts of the mind(the ego and superego) that help us cope more effectively with the world.
The ego and superego help us to checkmate the id. which in turn help us to curb our feelings times and think about others which help life to be worth living.

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Regards @funkylove

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