The id, ego, and superego in relation to the autism spectrum

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well, mostly my students do.

I won't get into why it isn't accepted anymore, but there is copious literature and research available online. If this were a class, I'd feel inclined to post more. But honestly, it just isn't a research paradigm most neuroscientists or even psychologists are prepared to work within anymore. Just speaking from experience.

However, if it provides you some structure and an interpretative window for your life, that is a good thing, I imagine.

most researchers who work at trying to understand the brain. The models are just a bit too simple, and while some of them fit what we know, most of them (speaking mostly of the psychosexual stuff here) just haven't been borne out by a lot of work.

That said, if it is a model for self understanding for you, and it works for you, I have no data that can invalidate your personal experience.




largely agree. I am something of an outlier among my colleagues in that I don't think that the distiction made by modern physiologists of unconscious drives over and against "subconscious" drives is entirely meaningful. But I think, on balance our views coincide.



The cold mother theory? What a horror show that must have been.

I used to think refrigerator mother had something to do with nutrition, that it was about food that came from refrigerators instead of being instantly prepared.
Which makes no sense.

Id/Ego/Superego is much more philosophy than psychology anyway. It's probably something everyone's experienced--knowing both what you want to do, and what you ought to do, and having to balance them. But this is so close to the intersection of ethics/philosophy with psychology that I really don't see how you could base practical therapy on it. Explaining how people make ethical decisions--yes. But autism? I don't see any relationship. Maybe NTs add more social rules to their "ought to do" lists than we do; but when it comes to actual ethics and not just social norms, there's just not much difference.

My id was stolen by hackers and used to obtain credit cards to supply Somalian pirates with Water Wings.



Cogito Ego Sum: 'I think I'm great, so bugger off'.

Best April Fool yet!! !!

That makes sense to me. It's a decent explanatory model for ethical decision making and it does map neatly onto evolutionary brain development. It can make for an interesting discussion but Anbuend described what a horrendous basis it is for actual therapy. Yikes!

I'm largely appalled by Freud's outmoded theories - which were based on an observation of less than twenty middle class patients. Freud's views are simply a theoretical construct, a delightfully illusory model - artifice - a fluttering paradigm that has done an awful lot to undermine the integrity of human beings right across the globe. Appallingly sexist, patriarchal, and dismissive stuff. No wonder Jung got tired of him, and no wonder there was such a groundswell of revolt against his theories in the 1980's (and before.)

Read Jeffrey Masson's "Assault on Truth" for a reconsideration of Freud's proposals.

I suspect Freud would have been about as insightful as Bettelheim when it comes to considering the rich complexities of autistic people.

I can imagine you laughing just like the guy at the end of Easy Money from Larks' Tongues in Aspic. ^^

i agree...

Good one. I thought for a long time that a greenstick fracture must have been named after evergreen trees and that their branches must snap differently to desiduous trees due to a Doctor explaining to me that greenstick fractures are named after the way green wood snaps. This was after weeks of trying to figure out why green sticks would break differently to unpainted or undyed sticks...

Last edited by pandd on 01 Apr 2010, 9:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I've done stuff like that, too. I forget now, what exactly, but that sounds familiar to me.

But then, today's Aspie kids aren't going to be so bad off as we were when it comes to learning these things; when I was a kid, we didn't have Google!

Freud says that you want to sleep with your mother, kill your dad and that you have got stuck at the anal-sadistic stage of sexual development.

The only cure is to have four psychiatric sessions at week for at least four years, which will cost you tens of thousands of dollars and make the psychiatrist very happy.