One problem with the concept of ego is that it is improperly used a great deal of the time. In popular language, 'ego' is often used to indicated vanity or an overindulgence of oneself at the expense of other people. In fact, ego simply refers to a psychological mechanism that protects the vulnerable self.
{Please note that this is a very, very simplified explanation of ego. Lots has been written about ego in great depth but for our purposes here we are only exploring how the ego can be viewed in the light of coming to terms with how it affects our perceptions of life which create our behavior.}
It is precisely because the ego is a protective mechanism for the self that we end up with both kinds of ego: defended and healthy, running around in our psyche. In the last article I described the self as likened to a set of Russian nesting dolls: persona, personality, defended ego, the child and the essential self. The outermost doll is the persona and this is the 'me' that the majority of us are very familiar with as this is the self functioning in the positions we assume in the world. The 'persona' self is seen very clearly in how we do our jobs, how we react to authority and pressure,how we take on responsibility, how we define our expectations in doing those things and is much the 'outer shell' we present to the world in life roles like commitments and parenting.
Personality is the next doll and this is the 'me' describing my personal temperament and nature as well as my 'natural' inclinations for interacting with life. Temperament and nature refer to our natural inclinations toward interaction whether those interactions are social, relational or educational. Our inclinations tend to push us in directions such as introvert or extrovert, detail oriented or conceptual, observer or take-controller, impulsive or cautious - and probably literally dozens and dozens more categories that when mixed together can describe 'personality.' Another mistake we often make is to confuse our personality with 'me' as personality is generally simply the 'clothing' my 'me' wears. And the persona is the 'vehicle' the fully dressed me drives in the world.
If you were playing with a set of nesting dolls while we talked, the two largest dolls would now be out with (in a normal set of 5 dolls) another doll in your hand that contains two smaller dolls. I think of this doll that is your hand as the ego for it's job is to protect the two that are inside: the next smaller one which I think of as the child: the unspoiled natural you that engages the world with wonder and creativity. Inside of this doll is the tiny complete (nothing else is in it) doll that I think of as the 'essential' self: the self that was sent here on earth to carry the love of Creation into the world using the wonderful blend of gifts, abilities, temperament, nature and personality that is you. A totally unique, never been created before, wonderful you. I believe that every person sent to earth contains this tiny, complete absolutely wonderful, totally unique self.
It is also my belief that the 'work' of mid-life is to retrain our ego so that the two inner, truer selves may be released to be a gift to the world. Now, why do I say that I think this is the work of mid-life? Why don't we just live out of the truest selves all the time? In an ideal world, we probably would live out of our truest selves all the time and maybe in the Garden of Eden we did. However, not only do we not live in an ideal world - and in terms of developing true personhood our contemporary culture is probably less ideal in this way than at almost any time in history - but the 'child' in us must grow up and it's that growing up process that tends to really 'seal' our defended ego.
What is unfortunate is we tend to have this idea that once we are on our own with a good job and some reasonable life acquisitions: maybe a house and kids, maybe a career that is highly successful, maybe an advanced educational degree, maybe a marriage or two or long-term committed relationship that we are now all grown up. No, you've just completed phase one and if you are at mid-life: around age 40 or so, now it's time to begin the next phase of growing up. Oh, and near as I can tell from my friends, at age 60 or 65 you get to begin a whole other phase - possibly the final one - of growing up.
We don't just get 'grown up' and that's it: accomplished that, now I'll just coast along. Maybe when people died at around age 40, that was the way it worked, but that structure no longer applies to our living. Here's the great news: you now live long enough so that you are able to begin to leave behind some of the 'cocoons' of ego that you developed. You see, as each of us take on major life roles and grows into those roles we tend to solidify the defensive ego needs that we feel are required for doing that job or role in life. As the intensity of those roles change we must let go of certain ego definitions: I've been a mother for almost 30 years now and I will always be a mother, however, the way I am a mother and the how of being a mother has changed considerably and most especially in the past couple years. Seems obvious that I would change my perceptions of self as my major life role changed but it's not as easy as it seems.because 'mother' took up so much of who I was that letting go of it did not feel pleasant at all - I was dissolving like that caterpillar. Changing a definition of self is very difficult interior work but if it is not done, your ability to grow in new ways as you age will be severely compromised.
The reason that it is difficult to change a definition of self is because of the defended ego that is well, defending the self. The ego does not want to change. It does not matter that all the kids are grown and are on their own, the mother -ego - the self that poured it's energy and sacrificed pieces of life that were important in order to be a mother, and was a mother for a very long time (usually a couple decades) wants to retain the perks of the definition. The ego is afraid that if it lets go of the perks, then it - and I - will be worthless.
The fear of not being worthy and the fear of not being acceptable - just for being me - is the core of the defended ego. This is one reason that the word 'ego' is thought of as referring to vanity for at the core of the fear of worthlessness and unacceptability is the narcissism of a child - all children are narcissists - for all children are at heart survivors. Survival narcissism - which is the posture toward life of a child - is the attitude of 'looking out for number one.' If, a person is truly, truly stuck in their childhood defense mechanisms then when we interact with them we tend to think of them as narcissistic or self-centered. Because that is how people stuck in those mechanisms tend to interact with life: survival makes a person naturally self-centered or they don't survive.
The sort of obvious question is, how do we as adults get stuck in childhood survival defenses? Why is it that we don't seem to notice that we really do not need them any more now that we are adults?
Terrific questions and the two short, very short answers are: we get stuck because most of us cannot accurately remember what we decided to believe about ourselves in relation to life when we were around 8 years old. The next answer is that most of us beginning in our mid to late twenties and continuing until our mid to late forties are very, very, very busy just learning and surviving. Those two middle decades are when most people take on about three major life roles: career, committed life partnership and parenthood. Major life roles take a lot of learning, it's just that we don't really think about all that we're learning because we are so dog-gone busy doing! And then there's the little caveat about life roles that no one ever really explains, that just about the time you figure out what you're doing, some role (or during particularly difficult times) two or three of those roles, switch to a new phase and you need to learn - and do - that new phase!
This is why it is my personal opinion that for most people the decade of their forties is when they either find the courage to begin to really explore life or they give up and remain a 'stage one grown up.' The problem is that if a person lives into their seventies or eighties stuck in the ego defenses of stage one adulthood, they will never truly be happy or satisfied with life. And the reason that it is so easy to remain stuck in stage one of being a grown up is that the more a person 'sacrifices' in order to achieve what they have, the more the ego will defend their right to cling to what they have. It is very, very difficult to face the possibility of 'losing' what has been gained in order to be open to a very unknown future. And to add to the difficulty of making changes at mid-life, that pit bull of a snarling defended ego will do all it can to keep things as they are. Why would it do this? Because 'things as they are': position, social standing, material goods, security and comfort have been achieved at a price and it is the job of the defended ego to protect what has been accumulated.
Protecting what has been accumulated during those decades of defining our position in life with our life roles is the job of the defended ego because we have often, quite mistakenly, pinned our definitions of self-worth and self-acceptance on what we have worked to accumulate. And, it is the job of the defended ego to protect the territories of self we claimed as the definitions of worth. And this is the part of the defended ego that is often traced back to around age eight and this is why it is so difficult to remember what we trained this defended ego to do. Remembering and then retraining the ego so it becomes healthy is the work of the mid-life adult. (The good news about life is that if you were really busy or had an 'extreme' experience that prevented the decade of your forties for moving onto stage two of grown-up, you'll get another chance. It's just a matter of being willing to recognize what is occuring and agreeing to the process)
Remember the third doll that has been revealed when the first two were removed? The third doll is the one I call the defended ego and inside of this doll are the unspoiled child doll and the essential self. The job of the defended ego is to do exactly what it is doing: carry the other two and protect them. The problem here is that this 'defended ego' doll gets this job at around 8 years of age and makes an awfully lot of powerful decisions for an eight year old: who can be trusted, what behaviors are expected of me in order to feel I belong, who I must please in order to feel chosen, what parts of myself I must enhance and use in order to feel worthy of being chosen and what parts of myself should I 'tuck away' because living from those usually has me feeling 'unsafe' in some way. Wow!!! Huge decisions that define how I will perceive life and therefore how I will act in life. Why would anyone give this kind of responsibility to an eight year old?
It's really just a quirk of developmental psychology that sort of sets us up for life. This quirk of 'fate' tends to happen to each of us somewhere around seven to ten years of age (depending upon the individual) where developmentally the awareness of being a single unit - an individual - happens, kind of out of nowhere. Until this moment of awareness, a child experiences life as being part of or attached to even when they are alone: me + mom, me+dad, me+siblings and/or me+significant others (aunts, uncles, grandparents). This experience of life as a me + another provides security and security provides safety. Both security and safety are essential in order for the massive amount of physical, mental, emotional and social growth which occur between birth and about age seven or so. But at some point the 'crack' in the picture is revealed and the child experiences 'aloneness' - that mystical sensation of awareness that it is just me in a very, very big world. Now, let me say that quite obviously this is a simplified explanation of this and reading Carl Jung would give you a much more in-depth explanation but this is all I have room for and Carl does a much better job so I would heartily recommend his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections for some expanded knowledge. But, and this is important, once the 'crack' in the psyche has been created by the awareness of being a single unit, it will only widen and gradually move us into the phase of life called 'individuation.' The good news is that for most of us this is a very gradual process of awakening.
Here's what people do when they discover that they are in fact a single unit in the world: they - quite unconsciously, we are after all only around seven or eight years old - discover how to make themselves feel safe and secure. And the way we make ourselves safe and secure when we are very little and have absolutely no real external power, we use the power we do have: our internal power of perceiving and therefore defining life. This is the beginning of our ego.
Ego is a statement of fact in that we all have an ego if we are functioning in the world. The amount of defended ego and the amount of healthy ego will vary greatly from person to person based primarily upon life experiences and the amount of consciousness the person brings to living. When you are very young and first handed this pit bull puppy, you actually have very little consciousness (consciousness is not related to intelligence) for making the decisions you are about to embark on because most people at that age are primarily conscious of where they belong in life, who they belong to and how best to feel chosen, worthy and acceptable by the people with authority over them. We figure out very early in life that it is people who have authority over us that can make life pleasant or miserable and this is why 'issues with authority' remain a problem well into mid-life: most of us just don't get around to dealing with this until then or maybe never.
So, here's the really short course in this: if you grew up knowing absolutely that you were worthy and acceptable just for being you and not because you made someone else happy (or unhappy) you probably had the opportunity to develop who you are as a person fairly well before resorting to defense mechanisms. If however, in order to feel worthy and that you had the right to belong and that it was essential for you to please others in order to be acceptable, then you would have begun to train your newly acquired pit bull puppy fairly quickly in how to guard the real you and keep it safe. Unfortunately, keeping the real you safe generally means, unseen and away. When we grow up in this situation (and the majority of us to one extent or another do) then we begin to live from our defense mechanisms.
Defense mechanisms are those ways of perceiving and acting in life that I use to make myself feel worthwhile and what is confusing about defense mechanisms is that generally they are reasonable or decent attitudes gone awry by using them for the wrong reasons. For example, I grew up as the oldest child in a family of ten children and so I learned how to be responsible, how to work hard and how to be competent at a very young age. I also learned how to do all of those things very, very well. And, competence, responsibility and a good work ethic are very good traits. But even good traits taken to an extreme are not healthy traits (although it is often difficult to convince those of us who have them of the truth of that - oh, yeah, that's because of my pit bull defended ego!) Suffice to say that even good traits when lived from in order to feel worthwhile and acceptable become crippling.
What makes good traits crippling? The fear of doing anything that does not engender the praise and approval of being competent, responsible and hard working will eventually 'cripple' the person living from those needs, out of fear of not living up to the expectations of someone who has authority over them. The funny thing about 'authority figures' is that being dead does not necessarily make them dead to us emotionally and there's the strange reality that we allow all kinds of people to have authority over us even when they do not: living up to the expectations of others is a very difficult habit to break!
None of us ever has a completely undefended ego, well, except maybe Jesus or Buddha. The goal in dealing with the concept of defended ego is simply th idea that by exploring your defenses and retraining the pit bull, you might find life more satisfying. That's the next column; learning to make friends with your guard dog so you are able to train it to guard adult territory and let go of the training of the eight year old - which means your ego will eventually be as reasonable much of the time (never all) as the delightful image of the scarecrow.
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