Id shmid, ego shmego: that has long summarized my Jewish-inflected disdain for most of psychoanalysis. But as I’ve gotten older ... including nation-states – not least our own.

When the Ego’s proposed actions coincide with the impulses of the Id, Obama yields. At the same time, he feels the need to respect the Super-ego in ensuring that those actions do not go to extremes.

The Ego was the reminder that the United States benefited from an open trading system and rash actions would end up costing us dearly in the end. ... Id, meet Ego. The difference ...

Source: "Brain Illustrations," Denise Wawrzyniak, licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 As is well known, Freud divided the human psyche into three functional parts: the id, ego, and superego. The id is a ...