On the Ego - Between Truth and Inferiority

Written by: Psychologist Isa Pašalić

Ego. A word that usually carries a negative meaning in human consciousness. However, what is the true meaning hidden behind this three-letter noun.

People, when they want to identify excessive self-absorption or a grandiose presentation of one's personality in others, say that someone is an egoist or has a big ego. This understanding of the word does not mean that the ego is a negative phenomenon in a person. In fact, what we consider negative and call the ego is a defense mechanism. This is the case when a person, in order to defend a certain weakness, compensates by presenting themselves grandiosely.

For people who have a big ego in this context, we can also say they have a superiority complex. In fact, colloquially, a big ego and a superiority complex are phrases with the same meaning. In psychology, we say that a superiority complex stems from an inferiority complex. In other words, grandiosity as a phenomenon does not exist on its own but arises from feelings of weakness, vulnerability, and low self-worth. In order for a person to cope with feelings of excessive weakness and vulnerability, they begin to develop a grandiose image of themselves, then try to impose this image on others so that others can confirm that superiority is the real picture of this person.

The ego in its true meaning is not negative, but a necessary aspect of the human being. The ego represents our image of ourselves. It is precisely the place from which our inner 'self' comes. In this part of our psyche, processes take place that aim to keep us alive, and this includes everything from nutrition, health, social success, etc. At the moment when any of these elementary needs is brought into question, the ego is there to activate the necessary reactions to maintain a state of balance and enable us to continue living in the most favorable way. At the moment when our 'self' is brought into question, the ego can react with anger, flight, awakening of the drive to achieve something, etc. The reaction of the ego depends on which need is threatened and which reaction is most effective in removing that threat.

The weakness that we usually register as ego or egoism is actually a phenomenon that does not allow the true ego or our true 'self' to come to expression. Therefore, in order to develop our true 'self', we must know how to free ourselves from weaknesses. In somatic psychology, we resolve these weaknesses by feeling our emotional state and allowing these emotional experiences to naturally pass through us. This feeling of weakness and vulnerability comes precisely from unprocessed emotional experiences; by processing them, we bring ourselves into a state of reconnecting with our 'self', our true ego.

In order to reconnect with ourselves, it is essential to know how to go through the difficulty of old unprocessed emotions. Our duty is to move towards the truth, and we find the truth about ourselves deep behind old emotions in the field of our true ego.