Introductory Lectures on Neuropsychoanalysis: Lecture Three Part 4 " How the Mind Functions" Delay Alters Need

So HOW DELAY(EGO)ALTERS NEED(ID) ........... Neuroscience has now taught psychoanalysis that we indeed have seven basic emotional needs as human animals. And that we share these biologically driven needs with all mammals. So then, what is it that makes us different than our primate cousins? It is our EGO. The EGO is that part of our brain/mind that is larger and more developed in us as homo sapiens which gives us the ability to think and reason, to reflect, to use language and symbols, and to experience self consciousness. All of these are functions of what psychoanalysts since Freud refer to as our EGO--the seat of reason in human beings. It is not that our other primate cousins have no EGOS. They have rudimentary language. They have feelings. They have thoughts, etc., but not to the extent that we modern humans do. Chimpanzees can place a stick into a termite mound and pull it out with termites clinging to it. They then eat the termites off the stick. We might say this is a very primitive tool. But chimpanzees cannot make stone tools like early humans made. The same is true for language. Gorillas can be taught rudimentary language, but it does not come close to what was our ancient human ancestors' form of language. Other primates also cannot deceive others or themselves. This remains a uniquely human trait........So we have well developed EGOS as human creatures and this makes a big difference in what we are able to do with our basic needs (ID.) Let's take LUST (sex) for instance. If chimpanzees feel the need for sex, if they are driven by the need to mate with a partner, they just do so. If a male chimp is motivated to have sex then he mounts the first female in heat that he encounters. The female chimp in heat is instinctually receptive to the male and mating occurs. The male may then move on to other females who are also in heat and mate with them as well. This is all very natural, very instinctual, but no chimp is thinking about it. No chimp is wondering, "I wonder what my significant other would think about this?" No chimp is asking, "Am I really all that interested right now with this particular partner?" No one is thinking to themselves, "Is there some other way I could work off this need or sublimate it to a more appropriate time with a more desireable partner?" None of this is happening because these other mammal relatives of ours do not have well developed EGOS that provide them with such thoughts. We however do. And because we can think about our needs, we can better control how we deal with them. We cannot control having them. That is the point. We are just as primally motivated to LUST (sex) as are the chimps....... But we have something they do not have in our EGOS and therefore we have options. We can delay our needs. We can get them met in a variety of ways. We can even decide not to get our needs met. We can sublimate our primal drives/needs. We can defend ourselves against them and pretend they are not there. We can work them off. We can modify them. This why human sexuality, for instance, is so much more compicated than other primate sexuality. We have laws and culture and norms and mores and values, etc. And we developed all of these because we have reasonable EGOS that allow us to do so. So yes, we are animals, and in some ways we are very much like other mammals. But when it comes to having reasonable, thinking, controlling, delaying, "learning from experience" Egos, we are quite different from our chimp cousins...... Both modern neuroscience and modern Freudian psychoanalysis agree on our unique mind/brains ( with EGOS ) as homo sapiens. As Mark Solms says, Human being uniquely "LEARN from EXPERIENCE." We learn how to live in the world--the real world in which we find ourselves. And in reality, if a man decides he wants to have sex with someone else's wife he best think about that choice before he acts on it. He could end up dead. Her husband could literally kill him. He could end up feeling guilty due to going against his conscience. He could also end up living happily ever after. It all depends on the reality of the situation. The point is our EGOS are connected to REALITY and they take it into consideration. Our EGO functions within the Reality Priciple--unlike the ID which is driven by the Pleasure Principle. Using our EGO we learn from experiences in the real world how best to meet our needs, and we alter our behavoir accordingly (Solms 2020.) This is why those men and women who do not appropriately alter there drives/needs are often called "Neanderthals!" Our Neanderthal cousins did not have the same well developed EGOS that we Homo Sapiens do.......The EGO also has other more detailed functions that aid in learning from experience. It is the part of our brain/mind that allows thinking, judgement, memory, delay, defense, reasoning, decision making, and language. It is why we were able to develop complicated civilizations when the rest of the primates were not. In the next section I am going to talk about how this relation of EGO and ID, or DELAY and NEED (neuropsychoanalysis concepts) plays out in our childhood development. When these two mind/brain structures are in major conflict, we may need neuropsychoanalytic psychotherapy in later life.