Super Ego Research Paper

A big part of civilization consists of morality. Morality is the knowledge of the right and wrong and the ability to distinguish between them. Following good and avoiding doing evil helps people not to get into trouble and always be in the safe side because doing evil might put people in danger and thus be questioned from the society. According to Freud, naturally, people are driven with the pleasure principle, which is the ‘Ego’, and it is suppressed and controlled by the ‘Super-Ego’. And the tension between these two produces emotions known as ‘the sense of guilt’(Freud, 40). Super-ego motivates the ego to behave according to the social norms; manners. Since childhood, parents and society play a role in the development of super-ego in children, the sense of guilt children

Civilization would collapse and society would turn into a chaos in the absence of the sense of guilt, because it awakens in people the knowledge they obtained through their life and reminds them of the difference between right and wrong, and the different laws and rules that must be obeyed. Moreover, civilization oppresses the death and revenge drives people have. Humans are naturally aggressive. Hence, this knowledge is essential for the survival of civilization.
Being enlightened would make people civilized. Kant states that through the use of one’s own reason and obeying the rules, one can get enlightened. Because enlightenment is a long process to be achieved, and therefore people need to understand why they are obeying the current laws and what effects such laws have on them, in order to be able to think how to make their future better than the present. In this sense, knowledge needs time to make people more aware and conscious of what is happening which eventually helps them to avoid chaos. Furthermore, Freud agrees that civilization requires people to obey the laws and restrictions imposed upon them through taboos,