Hi everyone. I am not in AA, but I have gone to AA meetings and I read AA literature, and I read this forum and use many AA concepts in my recovery.
My question is basically, what do you think the ego is in regards to the AA program? It seems to me that AA considers a big ego as being a bad thing, that the person with it is self-centered and thinks that she is more powerful than her HP. And a person with a deflated ego is a humbled person and more willing to turn it over to their HP.
When I hear the word ego I think of the Freudian concept of the id, ego and superego, where:
Id: is our basic primal selves, our base desires and drives, the id always wants immediate gradification.
Superego: Our "concience," our idea of right and wrong that is taught to us by our parents and our cultural beliefs.
Ego: The mediator between the id and superego, it is our rational selves.
So, our id might want us to eat a candy bar while our superego thinks it should be a salad, so our ego might decide to eat half the candy bar instead.
Or, an example for alcohol: our id wants a buzz, our superego tells us no, and it is up to our ego to decide if we drink or not.
Do you think that we alcoholics have a naturally weak superego, or ego, or both, according to the Freudian theory?
If you want to read more about the Freaudian theory, here is one link:
Thank you for any thoughts and have a great day!