The Yeitzer Superego and the Yeitzer Id

We began discussing Sigmund Freud and his findings in class this week. And though we can debate over and over again about whether he was a genius or an idiot, and we can find ways to use his defense mechanisms to attack other people, there's no denying that he's had a significant influence on the world. A classic inspiration from Freud is the cliche image of a dude about to do something evil while devil and angel versions of him stand on his shoulders and tell him what to do. How was this taken from Freud, you ask? Well, let's take a look at Freud's personality structure. Freud believed that there were three parts to the mind: the ego, the superego, and the id. The id is the part of your unconscious that demands you to fulfill its pleasure needs. The superego is a part of the preconscious that tries to repress those thoughts about pleasure, because they could actually be immoral. The ego is you, the conscious mind being influenced by the id and the superego to act in a certain way. So in case you haven't figured out, the id is the devil, the superego is the angel, and the ego is you. Personally, though I've heard others disagree, I've always imagined the Yeitzer Hara and the Yeitzer Tov in Judaism to be our versions of the devil and the angel, or the id and the superego. It's a stretch, but it's also cool to see some kind of "scientific" (Freud would be proud) or psychological perspective to this classic concept.