Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!actnyc!gcf
From: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: superego/ego/id : some general questions
Message-ID: <797@actnyc.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 88 19:28:53 GMT
References: <6171@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <14830005@hpisod2.HP.COM>
Reply-To: gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch)
Organization: InterACT Corporation
Lines: 49

In article <14830005@hpisod2.HP.COM> decot@hpisod2.HP.COM (Dave Decot) writes:
>             ....  The theory is that the reactive mind records perceptions
>only when the analytical mind is totally or partially inactive.  When a person
>is fully conscious, all of the perceptions are recorded by the "ego",
>or analytical mind, and are fully available to it later. 

I don't know about anyone else, but I cannot recall every perception
that passed through my ego in the several decades of its existence.
I have also experienced the recovery of information not consciously
"recorded"; this is common under hypnosis but sometimes occurs 
spontaneously.  It does not seem to me that there is a strict division
between the conscious mind and the unconscious; a lot of material
passes back and forth.

>....
>Your analytical mind is not something you have to consciously "think" with,
>it simply performs logical tasks on data accessible to it.  You
>cause your mind to perform the tasks desired, but the "default"
>task (recording and analyzing) is not something you have to "make"
>to happen, and that's certainly useful.

Mostly what seems to happen is association and pattern-recognition,
not logic.  And often thoughts seem to spring out of nowhere, which
I take means from some unconscious process, absent ESP or the like.

>
>...[about id and superego and whether they are necessary]...
>
>They're vestiges, and even as such today they waste large amounts of energy.
>I'm sure you can think of illogical and irrational things done by
>persons that waste large amounts of energy.  These persons are not dead,
>and lots of them will have children.
>

I don't know whether they waste energy or not.  Unconscious processes
must relieve us of what would otherwise be an enormous burden of
cogitation, all the way from what temperature shall I keep my body
at, to what shall I call a yellow car that picks up passengers.
Most of them probably do a good job and therefore we're unaware of
them -- just as we're unaware of most of our internal organs when
they're OK.  It may be that it's very difficult for an aggressive,
intelligent being to figure out how to live with other aggressive,
intelligent beings, and that what seems illogical and irrational to
the casual observer is actually as good a strategy as can be devised
given the circumstances.

Until very recently in terms of evolution, human beings were subject
to evolutionary pressures.  Only a few hundred generations ago, a
person who acted foolishly stood a good chance of dying promptly.