Let’s talk about ego.
Ego is a word that quite often comes up in the work that I do. And this is a way of thinking about ego, that hopefully sheds some insight on some of the difficulties that we sometimes experience.
So ego is just Greek (εγώ) for ‘I’. And one of the ways of thinking about this would be to imagine a continuum; a spectrum from an ego that is too small all the way through to an ego that is too big.
One of the reasons why people who do the sort of work that I do are called ‘shrinks’ is because of the idea of ‘shrinking’ an ego that is too large down to an ego that is the right sort of size. With this is the idea of, ‘the right sort of size of ego’. So an ego that’s not too small, and not too big. This is sometimes referred to in psychology as ‘sufficient ego strength’.
What that means is, is that I care sufficiently about myself. That I get myself up on time in the morning. I get myself out of bed. Clean my teeth. Have a wash. Comb my hair. Get dressed. Go to work. Do my work. And then maybe come home thinking ‘I’ve done a good day’s work there’. I deserve to rest and relax in the evening. And make sure I put myself to bed on time, so I can get up and do another good job tomorrow.
So I’m taking good care of myself and valuing myself. And this ‘middle position’ is sometimes referred to as having ‘sufficient ego strength’.
So one of the difficulties that we might experience through childhood, if we are subject to say, trauma, abuse, neglect, is that our ego is too small. We’re not seen. We’re not validated, affirmed, recognised. And it’s kind of like, we don’t exist.
So some time, somebody, once described this to me as, ‘I have an annual appraisal with my boss. My boss says some good things about me. But it’s like I wasn’t built with the the hooks to hang this on to. So my boss says something good about me. And it just falls to the floor. Like I can’t retain this. It just doesn’t fit for me.’ So this is an ego that is too small. And this is the sort of terrain that gives rise to things like a dependent personality. Where I don’t believe in myself, I can’t believe in myself. And I don’t believe in my ability to get stuff done. So I’m trying to depend on other people to take care of me and do things for me.
One of the ‘solutions’ sometimes to having an ego that is too small, in this way, is to go the other way. And to overly inflate my ego. So now I’m ‘larger than life’. Big. Bold. Smart. Intelligent. Capable. Rich. Good looking. All of those sort of ‘big’ things. So my ego is now ‘overly inflated’. It’s more than who I am. And it’s a compensation for my ego being too small. One of the risks of having an ego that’s overly inflated in this way, is that something might come along that punctures our ego. And we go all the way back ‘down there’, again. And because we know how horrible it is being ‘down there’. We will do all we can to retain our inflated ego. By maybe denying that information, or denying what somebody said, or arguing, or anything, to stop ourselves going back ‘down there’. So this is the area sometimes referred to as ‘narcissism’. And that sort of ‘anger’, would be what they would call ‘narcissistic rage’. ‘I’m not going back ‘down there’. It’s horrible down there.’
So egos that are too small. Egos that are too big. And then the right sort of size of the ego; where I am who I am. So these are some of the issues that come up in therapeutic work to do with ‘ego’.