3 Personality Types: Cerebral - Emotional - Visceral

Before discussing the three basic human personalities, we need to remember that it is no mere coincidence that the human brain, as we have seen previously, is also made up of three main parts. In fact, as we shall see, there is an intimate connection between each of the three parts of the human brain and each of the three basic personality types.

Three brains, three personalities
We mentioned earlier that our brain is one and triune, that is, it is three in one and one in three, like the Russian Matryoshka dolls. The reptilian or instinctive brain is the most ancient, and common to all vertebrates; overlaying this is our second brain which developed with the evolution of reptiles to mammals. The mammalian, limbic or emotional brain is common to all mammals and primates prior to humans in the evolution of species.

Finally, in the passage from mammals to primates, and from primates to human beings, the largest and bulkiest neocortex, the rational brain, formed around the limbic brain. It is present only in humans and in some higher primates, although not as developed and complex as in human.

In the process of acquiring information, the three brains function harmoniously together. We capture reality with our perceptions and our five senses through our reptilian brain, because it is responsible for the proper functioning of the whole organism.

What we perceive through our five senses evokes emotions long before it evokes thoughts. The first interpretive reading of what we perceive of reality is given to us by our limbic or emotional brain, that is, what we see, hear, smell, touch or taste first evokes emotions or feelings and only then thoughts, memories or experiences.

After this first interpretation by our limbic brain, it is the neocortex’s turn to give its opinion and process the information, comparing it with past experiences, taking a position about the topic at hand, and then deciding whether or not to act.

The coordination and harmony that exist in data collection and their interpretation by the three brains do not seem to exist when it comes to applying the received information to the surrounding world and to others. The ideal would be for a person to react instinctively when the situation requires an instinctive reaction as when there is the perception of danger, emotionally when the situation requires an emotional response as when becoming aware of someone needing our help and giving aid in the process, and rationally as when there is a problem to solve.

In reality, this is not what happens. Instead, we act emotionally when faced with a rational problem, rationally and distant when compassion should be shown, and instinctively and impulsively, as if we were in great danger, when we should be using reason and thinking before speaking or acting.

Because of education and certain innate tendencies, some people are more prone to always use the same part of the brain to the detriment of the other two. Using genetic language as a comparison, in the day to day behaviour one brain is dominant, the other is recessive, and the third is almost non-existent. In other words, one is primary, the other is secondary, and the third is neglected, and poorly or barely used.

Cerebral people
These are people whose personality is governed predominantly by reason. In leading their lives mainly through the process of reasoning, they neglect their emotions and instincts, that is, they are not really in touch with themselves. They live in a world of ideas and concepts as if they were inside Plato’s Cave. They are afraid of emotions and do not trust their instincts as they consider them to be intangible and irrational; to them, what is not clear rationally, does not exist.

The predominance of rational intelligence makes cerebral people focus on observation and analysis, and they need to think long before making decisions. Many of them are introverts (having difficulty speaking and expressing their feelings) and they prefer to interact more with the world of ideas than with people. They feel unable to cope with unpredictable situations and are very slow in their reactions, appearing to be apathetic, amorphous and distant.

Due to all this, and because they live in their head and are dissociated or divorced from both their limbic and reptilian brains, they are non-intuitive people disconnected from their inner and outer reality. Intellectuals and scientists are great analysts and specialists in different branches of science and knowledge because their preferred source of knowledge is the logical-deductive one.

Like the instinctive people, the rational ones are also very observant. Unlike the former who prefer to observe people, the rational people like to observe nature and facts instead. They like to understand how things function, to know the rationale behind the facts, and to know and understand how and why things happen, that is, the reason for things.

For this reason they are good at just about anything that strikes their interest. They are organized, methodical, determined and intelligent as they work on any subject that captures their interest.

It is to the cerebral experts that this saying applies, “they know more and more about less and less”. Lost in the detail that they analyze to satiety, they lose sight of the whole picture, so they are not eclectic, and may even be arrogant, intolerant and overbearing.

They are lucid, congruent, clairvoyant and logical; they speak with eloquence and are quick thinkers; they like to debate and discuss, and are skillful politicians with great capacity to convince others to their causes. When a rational person can come to a final logical conclusion, he is rarely wrong because being right and logical is one of his principles.

Much like the instinctive people or may even be worse than them, the great weakness of the rational people is their low sociability. They have a natural tendency to be self-reliant, not to cultivate relationships with other people and to isolate themselves. They also focus more on the absorption and analysis of ideas than on action. For this very reason, they are eternally undecided, doubt everything and everyone, and this makes them indolent and inactive.

Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point – This statement by Pascal was made in the context of religion. Of the three personality types, those who find it hardest to be believers are precisely the rational or cerebral type because faith is more closely linked to the reality of life captured by the reptilian brain or by the heart or emotions of the limbic brain, and less tied to reason because it cannot be rational. I believe that the famous atheists and agnostics like Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, were cerebral and of the rational type.

Faith is for the ignorant – For the cerebrals, only what is captured by the five senses and discernible by reason exists. There is no reality beyond this. They can make materialistic and simplistic statements, such as that from a famous surgeon who claimed to have operated on all parts of the human body and never found the soul; or from the first Soviet cosmonaut, who on returning from his first space travel said he had not seen God there.

Faith is a reasonable gift, it cannot be rational because it is not a matter of science, nor can it be irrational or superstitious; it has to be reasonable, that is, plausible and humanly credible, and it has to make sense. The rationalists cannot understand that if God exist and is the Creator of everything and everyone, he is also the Creator of human brain and reason. Therefore, a created being can never fully know its Creator, just as a part can never understand the whole.

I cannot believe – This is another typical attitude of the cerebral people. As we know from psychology, when someone says “I cannot”, what he really means is “I don’t want to”. In other words, what he is really saying is that he doesn’t want to believe. Similarly, when a smoker tells us, “I can’t stop smoking”, we should ask him, “Is it impossible to stop smoking?” to which he will respond no, that it is possible to quit as others have done it. We can then retort, “Then don’t say that you can’t stop smoking, but rather you don’t want to stop”, because as the saying goes, “Where there is a will there is a way”.

The agnostic or atheist does not want to come down from their high tower of reason, which he understands as the only means to attain knowledge. Since he denies spirituality in all its forms, he has the tendency to be materialistic and even to idolize some material realities. Deep down, more than being materialistic or atheistic, he ends up being a polytheist.

Because of fear and pride in regards to the emotional and instinctive world, rational people are left out of many realities of life. They may be rational, but they are not reasonable. The intellectuals can become dull, boring, monochromatic and depressed. The instinctive and emotional life can be the cause of great sadness and risk, but it is also the only vehicle for joy and happiness.

Emotional people
Emotional people function from the limbic brain and consider themselves more human than the cerebrals whom they disparagingly label as intellectuals, cold and distant, and the instinctive whom they consider subhuman and cruel. The emotional ones proudly think that they are the only ones who are authentically human, only they are able to truly feel, and that no one understands them.

To live is to love, they rightly say, and whoever doesn’t love doesn’t know what life is about or who God is, for even God is love. While a rational person would ask why do I live, an emotional person would find it more important to answer the question of for whom do I live.

People in whom emotional intelligence predominates are more focused on the relationships they establish with other people, making these the center of their lives. Therefore, when conflicts arise in this area, nothing is more important than the resolution of these conflicts. Emotional people tend to worry about their self-image because they want other people’s approval, avoid criticism and show others that they are special.

In Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, we learned that emotions can be either positive or negative and that they are intimately connected to needs that are met when they are positive, and to needs not met when they are negative. We also learned that it is not possible to have the same feeling for more than 40 seconds at a time; with these two information from nonviolent communication at hand, we can conclude that the emotional character is the least stable of the three, they live on a moving roller coaster of ups and downs that can result in manic depression, one moment euphoric, and the next depressed.

On the other hand, it is true that human life has its ups and downs. In fact, both an electrocardiogram and an electroencephalogram indicate that a person is alive by graphically showing lines with ups and downs. If either imaging begins to show less highs and lows, this indicates that life is fading away; and a flat line, without oscillations, signals that life is no more. This is how it is of the physical life, and somehow, this is also the way of the emotional life. However, if the emotional part does not achieve a certain constancy and self-control, the life of the person and those close to him will become hell.

Constancy is the soulful middle ground between the ups and downs, and will allow the emotional person not to lose his head when he is euphoric, when everything seems to be going well, and not to despair when he is at rock bottom, when everything seems to be going wrong. Emotional people must learn soulfully, and not only intellectually, what the proverb says, “There is no evil that lasts for ever, nor good that never ends” -- life can be a heaven or a hell, but neither is here to stay permanently, they are only temporary “guests”.

Sentimental people need the intellect to master their emotions and not be controlled by them. Emotions say more about us, about our identity, than thoughts, but they should not govern our lives. Nobody is responsible for what they feel, we do not own our emotions, but we are responsible for what we do with them. They show us the path to follow, but it is we and our intellect that decide whether or not to take that path.

Purely emotional decisions often mislead the person. We should not decide on anything under the influence of such a strong emotion as love, rage, resentment, and it is advisable to wait until the storm passes. In this emotional state, the person’s reason is nullified, like a drunken person he doesn’t know what he is doing or what he is saying, he is basically out of his mind.

But when he came to himself... (Luke 15:11-32) – The parable of the prodigal son alludes precisely to this situation of making rash decisions under the influence of some passion. Everything that the prodigal son did, from asking his father for the inheritance to wasting it all away, was done unconsciously under the control of one or more strong emotions. When he came to his senses, he became aware of his situation.

Emotions define us better than our thoughts. They are therefore what is most authentic in us. However, although this may seem contradictory, emotions can also divorce us from ourselves, cause us to be out of our mind, abandoning our identity when we are under their control.

Emotional people are highly sensitive people. According to studies, one in five persons, or between 15 to 20 percent of the population, are sensitive or emotional people. Although in the Western world it is culturally considered that women are more emotional than men, in reality this does not seem to be the case. There are equal numbers of emotional men and emotional women, despite the difference in their upbringing.

Emotional people are empathetic people, because they understand their inner world well, and because they are highly sensitive. They easily put themselves in the other’s shoes, and can see and feel things from their point of view. Empathy is one of the most important qualities of human beings, without it there would be no possibility of understanding between humans.

They are certainly more intuitive than the cerebrals, because their center – the limbic brain – communicates with the reptilian brain, anatomically it is directly on top of it. Phylogenetically, emotion is closer to instinct than to thought. Their intuition is used for social relations more than for scientific or material discoveries. In emotional people, intuition is at the service of empathy, for peering at and being in tune with the other. Because of this connatural attunement, emotional people are very humane and well-mannered.

Being highly sensitivity doesn’t always work in their favor, however. In fact, they are also sensitive to criticism, and have little capacity to withstand it and continue to function. For example, the instinctive have the attitude of “the dogs bark and the caravan passes”, in other words, they do not care what others might think of them. The sensitive people, as they want to be popular, to associate and relate to everyone, seek the appreciation of others and cannot tolerate their criticism. This leads them to use techniques to minimize their chances of being criticized, thus making them less genuine and even selective in their social relationships, avoiding the company of those who might criticize them.

They are intense people who live their passions with vigor. This is why they are more susceptible to anxiety and depression, as we have already mentioned. On the other hand, of the three personality types, they are the ones who work best in teams because, in discussions or dialogues, they prefer to lose the argument than to lose the person. They are the most sociable and the most altruistic.

Visceral or instinctive people
People who are predominantly visceral tend to be impulsive because their attention is always turned outwardly on resolving everything. The visceral person is always in a state of alertness to be able to control everything and everyone around him.

The vital energy of the visceral people is anger or rage, which can appear in speech or attitude, even in people who do not openly express their anger as they may have adopted a technique to contain it or may even be unaware of it, but it is there.

They seek power and are very critical of those who hold it in matters of justice and truth, or even in regards to their ability to hold onto the power they have. In this sense, they are skillful at coup d'état or in pulling the rug from under the feet of those who hold power unjustly or undeservedly. At all times, they deal with situations as if they were a matter of survival, of life and death.

As there is a correlation between the reptilian brain and the instinctive personality, it is not hard to conclude that the instinctive people are action people. The reptilian brain does not think or feel, it has only three functions: fight, flight or freeze/hide. Therefore, instinctive people place more importance on action than on feeling and thinking.

The viscera, the gut, or the instinct are the primary motive of their personality, and as human as they are, they need the other two brains. Oddly enough, the instinctive brain tends to bypass the limbic brain to communicate with the neocortex so to humanly justify and enlighten its action, therefore marginalizing emotions and feelings.

The instinctive need the neocortex, but they don’t waste much time with it like the cerebrals who go round and round a question and, consumed by doubts, never come to a decision. The instinctive think, process the problem, quickly reach a conclusion and take action; often, the solution comes through intuition, which is their strongest weapon.

Intuition, the weapon of visceral or instinctive people
Intuition is the process of coming to knowledge and certainty of something quickly, without the slow deliberation of thinking that operates in the logical-deductive way. It is difficult to define precisely because it is not a conclusion drawn at the end of an intellectual process.

Mathematics is a logical-deductive science, just like all other sciences for which knowledge results from observation, experimentation and interpretation of results. However, many of today’s scientific discoveries have not followed this process. The steam engine was an intuition, as well as Einstein’s theory of relativity, for which empirical evidence of its veracity is only now beginning to emerge.

It is likely that intuition is also a logical-deductive thought, but although it follows a process, it occurs quickly at a subconscious level. The conscious mind only grasps the solution of the problem, without realizing the steps taken to get there. It may still come from the observation, experimentation and interpretation of the observer, and if it is, this process is done unconsciously.

It is similar to when we observe someone’s body language and our subconscious mind interprets and deciphers that body language, and we quickly come to a conclusion about that person. Since body language is always true, precisely because the person who emits it is unaware of it, intuition is almost always right.

The instinctive are good observers and no detail escapes them. All details are seen, judged and evaluated even unconsciously, eventually motivating the intuitions. They observe the body language, the tone of voice, the words that others choose to express themselves – everything is thoroughly observed and evaluated.

Intuition is based on the belief that the universe, in all its aspects and manifestations, operates by obeying the same rules and laws. The laws of physics are observed both in the material world as well as in the psychological or spiritual world. The movement of a planet around its star mimics the movement of an electron around the nucleus of an atom, and the movement of the planets in the solar system around the sun seems to trace the spiral of the DNA, our genetic code.

Metaphors, comparisons, allegories, parables, and analogies, they all work and are possible because deep down there is a correlation between all things so that what happens in one matter or theme can help us to understand what is happening in another matter or theme, apparently unrelated to the first.

Intuitive people have brains that work in metaphors; the most important person to walk on this planet, Jesus of Nazareth, possessed a metaphorical mind and easily came up with parables, allegories and comparisons to explain abstract realities like the Kingdom of God. He explained the necessity of his death by saying, “… unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

The instinctive or visceral people instead of operating from the neocortex, taking into account the other two brains, somehow subvert human nature or ignore evolution and operate from their reptilian brain, using or “manipulating” the other two, especially the neocortex to which the reptilian brain connects directly and uses it as a database for intuitions.

For the instinctive people, the cerebrals live on the moon while the emotional are the cry-babies of this world, only they themselves are pragmatic and functional because they have both of their feet firmly planted on the ground and they make things happen. The value of a man is in his works; a person is not measured by what he feels, says or thinks, but by what he does; as the saying goes, “Hell is full of good intentions”. Furthermore, Jesus said that by their fruits they will be known (Matthew 7: 15-20).

Since action is all the instinctive people value, they tend to be impatient and impulsive, therefore inclined to put the cart before the horse and, as many of their deeds are neither premeditated nor deliberate, they often make mistake.

The instinctive are people of action, their minds are full of projects and works that they want to see accomplished. That is why they avoid social relationships, since they arouse feelings and emotions, which for them is like quicksand they cannot control and can distract them from their tasks. We say that the instinctive know the love of power, but not the power of love.

People who are in touch with their instincts tend to be introvert, they need silence and solitude to be touch with themselves. Contrary to what people think, an introvert is not an antisocial person, just as an extrovert is not an altruistically social person.

The extrovert needs others to be himself, while the introvert does not depend on others: he can enjoy the company of others, but quickly tires and needs to return to his solitude, because it is where he regains his vital and mental energy and can connect with himself.

Of the three personalities, the instinctive or visceral get angry the most and are easily irritated, but they are also the first to forgive or to ask for forgiveness, the first to turn the page and move on. They repeat to themselves and to others that “passed waters do not move mills”. The instinctive avoid holding grudges and resentments, or staying angry, sad or depressed, since this takes away the energy they need for their intuition to work.

The three personality types and the Enneagram
The Enneagram is a psychological theory that uses and develops the most this division of human personality into three types, which arise from the fact that we have three brains that are related to the three basic functions of the human psyche: instinct, feeling and thought.

In the Enneagram, we understand that there are 3 centers of intelligence: 1. the visceral, which is responsible for our impulses and instincts managed by the reptilian brain, is located in the abdomen or gut, 2. the emotional, which is responsible for what we feel and how we interpret our emotions managed by the limbic brain, is located in the chest, and finally 3. the cerebral, which is responsible for reasoning, cognition and memory controlled by the neocortex, is located in the head.

We call them the 3 intelligence centers because they are the ways we understand and interact with the world around us. Although we all have the three centers, each person throughout his/her development specializes in one of them and has the tendency to want to deal with life situations using only one of these dimensions.

Why do we limit ourselves to only one dimension? It is our personal history that makes us incline more towards one dimension than another. Let us see how the three functions of the human psyche – instinct, feeling and thought – are related to the three basic needs of every human being: autonomy, recognition and safety. The extent to which these basic needs are met or unmet will influence our personality to be more cerebral, emotional or visceral.

If the fulfillment of one of these needs was problematic and conflictive or traumatic, the child develops the personality or the corresponding antidote or pattern, as an emergency measure to solve the problem and thus reinforcing one or the other intelligence center.

Autonomy – The vital emotion of the visceral is anger in response to the fact that his need for autonomy has not been met. Every human being seeks freedom and independence, in this sense we are all territorial beings as we defend our identity, establishing boundaries between self and other.

Recognition – The vital emotion or feeling of the emotional is shame because the need for recognition has not been met. To be loved and wanted is very important to a child, as in the sense of belonging to a family.

Safety – The vital emotion of the cerebral is fear and anxiety in response to the fact that his need for security has not been met. This means feeling safe where we are, knowing the place well, knowing the truth of things, and feeling clear and confident.

The child who reacted angrily to the difficulty of fulfilling his or her need for autonomy grew up as a visceral person; the child who reacted shamefully to the lack of recognition developed an emotional character; finally, the child who was afraid when faced with the lack of safety grew up as a cerebral.

The Enneagram identifies three different personalities within each intelligence center, this makes a total of 9 personalities (3x3). Due to the lack of space, we will not describe each of the nine personalities that the Enneagram identifies with numbers from 1 to 9 and will put the numbers of each triad in parentheses.

Emotional triad (2, 3, 4)
Emotional people perceive the world through the cognitive filter of emotional intelligence. They are aware of their own moods and feelings, and those of others so that they can retain their sense of connection with them. They are the most dependent on others, so much so that they would adjust themselves to suit others to get their approval. In this sense, they are more concerned with appearance than with who they really are.

Of course, what underlies and motivates this behaviour is the feeling of shame, which makes them feel as if there is always something very deep and hidden in them that makes them feel unworthy or wrong. This emotion or feeling of something is missing in them may be unconscious and hidden under pride or arrogance and contempt.

Because of the pretense and hypocrisy in maintaining an appearance that makes them popular, they end up with identity crises. At some point they no longer know if it is they or the mask they wear to obtain approval from others. In a certain sense, it seems they never grow up, because their self-esteem is always dependent on the esteem they receive or not receive from others.

Evidently, it is not only the types from the emotional center but also all other types depend on emotional intelligence to develop their higher qualities from the emotional center such as compassion, kindness, understanding and empathy.

Cerebral triad (5, 6, 7)
The cerebral or rational people perceive the world and their environment through the cognitive filter of mental faculties. The objectives of this strategy are to minimize anxiety or fear of dealing with potentially painful situations and to acquire a sense of certainty through the mental process of analysis, conception, imagination and planning.

They are clairvoyant, think clearly and may even develop complex theories. Problems arise when it comes to execution. It is as if they are always preparing for action, but that moment never comes, like a motor that fails to start. They are always in doubt which is in itself a manifestation of the fear of making mistakes.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. They would say like Descartes, “Cogito ergo sum”, confusing their essence with only the content of their minds; but this equates to confusing the map with the territory.

Evidently, it is not only the types from the mental center but all other types depend on mental intelligence to develop higher qualities of the mental center such as wisdom, understanding and prudence.

Visceral triad (8, 9, 1)
Visceral people tend to perceive the world through the instinct and intelligence of the physical and synesthetic sensations. They use their position and power to transform the world into how they think it should be.

Centered and focused more on their bodies and action than on their feelings or thoughts, their main emotion or vital energy is anger, which they use as a defense mechanism. This anger which is clear and evident in the 8’s may be repressed in the 1’s and unconscious in the 9’s, but it is real and always present in this personality triad.

They are outwardly action driven, very active and charismatic, hardworking and skillful perceivers of reality of others, but are disconnected from themselves, unaware of their inner selves, their feelings and thoughts, their being and identity.

Evidently, not only the types from the instinctive center but all other types depend on somatic intelligence to access the necessary energy for action, to discern how much force must be applied to different situations and to acquire the solid sensation of being connected to this world. 

 In summary:

	Rational	Emotional	Visceral
Body	Head	Chest	Abdomen (Gut)
Brain	Neocortex	Mammalian	Reptilian
Facing reality	Observe/think	Relates	Act/control
Feel	Insecure/anxious	Ashamed	Angered
Seek	To understand	To be accepted	Autonomy
Under stress	Worries	Cries	Shouts
Goal	Wisdom	Love	Courage

How can I develop the other intelligences?
One suggestion for developing the other weaker intelligence centers is to live with people in whom these centers are predominant.

To develop a certain intelligence center there are specific strategies. In order to develop the rational intelligence, we must avoid quick reaction, in other words, stop, take a deep breath, give time, count to 10, practice meditation, and ask ourselves why or what did he say, that is, observe and try to interpret.

To develop the emotional intelligence, it is enough to always ask ourselves (before acting or responding to something) how we feel; we must be able to identify the emotion that we currently feel; on the other hand, try to identify the other person’s feelings and especially ask how we would feel if the other person were to say or do with us what we want to say or do with them?

To develop the visceral intelligence, we should pay more attention to the sensations generated by our body, exercise, practice martial arts (as these help us to connect with the vital energy of the visceral, anger or rage); the practice of dynamic meditations also helps.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

3 Brains: Reptilian - Mammalian - Human

Created in the image and likeness of God, a human being is, like his Creator, one and triune because the existence of an individual presupposes the coexistence of two others.

He exists in three tenses – past, present and future – and at three levels of consciousness -- unconscious, pre-conscious and conscious. In his psychosexual development, he undergoes three phases – oral, anal and genital – his mind is divided into three parts – Id, Ego and Superego – and he has three brains that function autonomously and differently within one another, like a three-doll matryoshka. 

The concept of the three brains or the triune brain was formulated by American neuroscientist Paul MacLean (1960s) who proposed that the stages of the evolution of life in different animal species to self-awareness in humans had repercussions on the origin and evolution of our brain.

The triune brain and the evolution of species
The human brain is a recapitulation of evolution, that is, it includes within it all the contents of previous evolutionary phases; our first brain is reptilian, from the time when reptiles dominated the Earth. After this came the reign of mammals, thus our second brain is the mammalian or limbic brain. From among the mammals came the primates, our ancestors, and with them, our third brain – the human brain or neocortex.

From invertebrates to reptiles
The first living organism on our planet was a unicellular microorganism, that is, it was composed of a single cell, like the present day amoebae. When multicellular organisms appeared, cells had to develop mechanisms to communicate with one another. These mechanisms occurred either by electrical impulses or chemical signals, and so neurons were born, cells specialized in transmitting messages.

These cells began to clump together near the eye and mouth of the organism and the first brains were formed like those found in mollusks and insects, which came before the first vertebrates, fish and reptiles. It is believed that this type of brain first appeared 750 million years ago.

The brains of invertebrates (mollusks and insects) are very different from those of vertebrates (fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) in that they are more like pre-brains as not all vital function controls are packed inside of them. For example, many insects can survive for days without a head because their main survival functions are not all concentrated in the brain. The first type of brain to control all vital functions of an animal was the reptilian brain, common to all vertebrates mentioned above, including primates and humans.

From reptiles to mammals
“Better to be alone than in bad company” – Reptiles do not create affective ties with anything or any animal. For a reptile, all living beings besides itself are either enemies or food, or both. Reptiles are solitary animals that do not live with their own kind or even with their young which are hatched alone from eggs that were previously laid and hidden.

“Unity is Strength” – Mammals, unlike reptiles, are intrinsically social animals. They give birth to live young with whom they maintain a strong bond for some time even after birth. The young are fed and taken care of by the mother or father and relate with their equals for the rest of their lives. Contrary to the reptiles that look with indifference at their offspring, among mammals, parents nurture their young physically and affectively, protecting them from the hostile world to the point of risking and sometimes even losing their lives in the process. Such a different life has to be based on a more complex brain which assumes, integrates and encompasses the reptilian brain but going far beyond it.

Contrary to the reptilian brain that lacks the mechanism to develop relationships, the mammalian or limbic brain has developed motivations and emotions that regulate relationships that are established between animals of the same species and those not of the same species. If for reptiles, survival comes down to eating and fleeing or attacking the enemy, for mammals, survival, not excluding what it means for reptiles, goes further and involves pain and pleasure.

A mammal is not content with just surviving, it wants to be happy and therefore it seeks pleasure and avoids pain. It records both pleasant experiences that it repeats again and again, and painful experiences that it always tries to avoid: “Scalded cat fear cold water”. Happiness, comfort, and feeling good are goals and motivations of our mammalian or limbic emotional brain and not of the neocortex.

From mammals to primates and human beings
If we observe the figure that illustrates this text, we see that most of our brain is made up of the neocortex, that is, the human brain. There is a great qualitative and quantitative leap between mammals and primates, and still another leap between primates and human beings.

In the last 2 million years, the human brain has tripled in size and weight: “What makes a great man is not the size of his body”. In the animal world including humans, the brain size is not proportional to a species’ body size, but to its intellect. An elephant may be much larger than a human yet it is not very intelligent in comparison.

Chimpanzees, the closest animals to us in the evolutionary scale, have never abandoned their environment, the savannah. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, have emigrated to places of varying climates and topographies. This effort to adapt to their environment, as well as the relationships between counterparts in terms of mutual aid in the struggle for survival in hostile environments led to the development of language and abstract and scientific thinking. A brain made up of emotions alone was not enough to advance in the evolutionary scale and was forced to evolve to overcome them.

The evolution of Homo sapiens and their cultures and civilizations took place side by side. The creation of language seems to have been the great evolutionary leap that made the human brain grow considerably in size and intelligence. If we evaluate intelligence by the number of synapses or connections between networked neurons, language likewise reflects a greater connection of concepts between one another.

To this we add human curiosity, which makes us want to know more, and creativity, the complexity of social structures, abstract thinking and self-consciousness. All of these things are what distinguish the human brain from its ancestral counterpart, the limbic brain.

Infant – child – adult
Although an infant already has these three brains at birth, and in adulthood he never loses the blueprint of the earlier stages of development and may even regress to them, greater emphasis is placed on one brain over the other two, depending on age.

During the early part of his life, an infant draws all his information from the reptilian brain with his sole preoccupation being to be fed, to sleep and to ensure that all his basic needs are met. He lives for himself alone, ties are not important. It is at this stage that he is so similar to the reptiles that he even moves like them, by crawling.

During childhood, the child develops a blind faith in his parents and so stops being concerned about his own survival and safety, taking them for granted and devoting his full attention to the ties he develops with his parents, teachers, siblings, friends and peers. Before the age of seven, he is unaware of himself and therefore lives fully in his mammalian or limbic brain. It is the idyllic time of emotions, during which to love and to be loved, to be accepted or rejected affectively, is more important than to survive.

From the age of seven, through adolescence and adulthood, not forgetting the earlier ages, the focus shifts away from creating ties and concentrates more on seeking one’s own identity. The pursuit of this need is so strong and important that a person can even antagonize the ones he loves the most: his parents – and even break ties with them.

This is what happened to St. Francis of Assisi when his father told him in public that even the clothes on his back were not his own; in response, Francis stripped off his clothes in public to give them back to his father, and walked away naked. At this time, the search for the meaning of life and his vocation or place in the world were more important than his feelings and emotions; the latter are often sacrificed when the individual pursues the meaning and vocation of his life.

Three in one, one in three
As in the evolution of species, the higher animal species did not eliminate the lower ones; that is, when certain reptiles evolved into birds and mammals, reptiles continued to exist. Similarly, certain amphibians have become exclusively terrestrial animals, without the amphibians disappearing. When certain primates evolved into Homo sapiens, others continued to exist – chimpanzees and gorillas.

This is the case with the three brains – each of them represents a stage of evolution of species, progressively closer to human beings, from reptiles to mammals to primates. The later brain assimilated the earlier one, in other words, built upon the earlier one without eliminating it, adding functions and capabilities to the existing one. A human being despite being human does not cease to be an animal and has much in common with them.

These three brains function in an unconnected or poorly integrated way, as each has a degree of autonomy over the other two. This autonomous functioning is necessary and is positive because it frees us from great difficulties and can save our lives in emergencies. But it can also cause us great social turmoil because the visceral or reptilian brain influences the limbic or emotional brain and the two, together or independently, influence the rational brain.

However, according to what science tells us (and this is a bit frightening) the opposite does not happen; in other words, the rational brain has no ability to influence/alter/transform the limbic or the visceral brain. My daily experiences prove this: for as much as I know that cockroaches are harmless, I will always be afraid of seeing let alone touching them.

Although the neocortex, largest in volume, is responsible for more functions and commands than the other two which do not disappear but maintain the same functions as always since the neocortex does not bother them: they are sovereign in their own right. The neocortex is the seat of reason, the limbic the seat of emotion and the reptilian the seat of instinct.

For this reason, when faced with a new situation, the reptilian brain signals fear and asks itself if the situation is safe, the mammalian asks if it’ll result in pleasure or pain, if it’ll be loved or hated, and the neocortex wonders about its meaning, what can it learn, and to what extent can it be useful.

The neocortex can become confused, stressed, anxious, and not sure what to do; the mammalian can become depressed, unmotivated and unwilling to do anything; the reptilian is always active, always alert and always knows what to do: “in times of war, you cannot clean your weapon”. The reptilian brain is never confused, never depressed and is always prepared for action in defence of life, to protect and defend itself. However, if the neocortex decides to commit suicide, the reptilian brain can do nothing about it. The neocortex which sits on the other two, literally on top of them, is the Supreme Court with no possibility of appeal.

The reptilian brain
This is common to all vertebrates, that is, to all animals with a backbone and spinal cord. It lies precisely at the top of the spine. It occupies 5% of our brain mass and its job is to react to environmental stimuli. A snake, for example, is basically a spinal column that crawls on the ground, with a small brain at the top of this column that formed about 500 million years ago. The reptilian brain is composed of four distinct parts:

Basal Ganglia – these are found in the deepest part of the cerebral cortex, and they process information regarding our body movement, adjusting it to different situations.

Reticular activating system – located in the brain-stem which is continuous with the spinal cord. It regulates the state of sleep and wakefulness and filters information that arrive from the five senses, separating what matters from what does not matter which does not even reach the level of consciousness.

Cerebellum – is extremely compact and ancient organ located in the posterior part of the skull and its function is to maintain balance, posture and muscle coordination.

Brain-stem – is located in the posterior part of the brain, continuous with the spinal cord, formed by four distinct areas linked to the diencephalon. It serves as a circulation pathway for all sensory mechanisms, with the exception of smell and vision.

Overall, the reptilian brain is small and relatively simple but highly functional and efficient. The other two brains may be dysfunctional and even get sick – the mammalian or limbic brain may become depressed, the human or neocortex may become confused, neurotic, schizophrenic or psychotic. The reptilian brain, however, never stops working, never gets sick, is always alert, and watches over us when we sleep. Only death deactivates it.

There is only the here and now
The reptilian brain does not have a memory of the past nor does it project into the future. It exists only in the here and now. It does not learn from past experience nor does it need to, because it is 100% regulated by instinct that in itself follows the law of nature, and is immutable and deterministic, not subject to change with time.

In constant fight for survival
Internally – it never tires, never sleeps, never disconnects; it regulates the automatic, routine, habitual and unconscious functions of our body, such as the heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, body temperature, and wound healing.

Externally – it also stays alert, except when sleeping or in lethargy or hibernation. In alertness, it has reflexes that act through a simple and immediate mechanism called stimulus reaction. In cases of emergency, it is this brain that saves us.

If we accidentally touch a very hot surface, this mechanism triggers the quick and unconscious withdrawal reaction that does not come from a conscious decision of the neocortex, as it is too slow. The instant decision comes from the reptilian brain that watches over the defence of life in all situations.

“Word out of your mouth is like a stone out of your hand” – when we speak without thinking, we are behaving reactively; all our reactive behaviour comes from this brain. Proactive behaviour comes from the emotional or rational brain because it requires time. But when we respond or act without thinking, we do so from our reptilian brain that, rightly or wrongly, judges the situation as dangerous.

Seek the satisfaction of basic needs
Its sole preoccupation is to meet the basic survival and self-preservation needs of the individual. To this end, it is concerned with breathing, drinking, eating, sleeping, and also with survival and preservation of its kind. For this reason, it seeks to mate in order to reproduce.

The so-called “love at first sight”, precisely because it is so sudden, is instinctive, devoid of any emotion; it is pure sexual attraction that comes from the reptilian brain which motivates sexual instinct and conduct for the purpose of preserving the species.

The territorial instinct
The simplistic reptilian brain has only three types of action or reaction to the environment in which it finds itself: fight/flight/freeze (or hide). For the reptile, all living beings are classified into only two categories: predator or prey. Faced with another living being, the reptile decides in a millionth of a second whether it is a prey or a predator. If it is a predator, it will be eaten and attacked, therefore it takes flight or hides; if it is a prey, it will eat the prey and, therefore, attacks.

We sometimes see a sign in the field indicating a private hunt reserve: humans also have a territorial instinct. We could take the borders between countries as one manifestation of this instinct.

This survival mechanism makes much more sense in animals starting with the reptiles because they need a certain amount of land to sustain themselves, grow and reproduce. Once the territory is demarcated by their own urine, as mammals do, they defend it tooth and nail, and spend the day patrolling it, from north to south, east to west.

When triggered by fear, becomes aggressive
We know from psychology that anger or rage is a secondary emotion, it is a reaction or response to a situation that inspires a primary emotion: almost always it is fear. It is true that in the context of the reptilian brain, fear cannot be an emotion, but a perception of danger that triggers one of the three actions: fight, flight or hide.

The reptilian brain is not aggressive by nature, it does not hate, does not take revenge, does not hold grudges because it has no memory of the past. In other words, it does not keep past experiences to compare with the current ones so to respond adequately, like the mammalian brain; it does not attack anyone if it is not threatened; unlike the limbic brain, the reptilian brain has no friends nor enemies a priori.

The visceral or instinctive character
As we will see in a later article, from the psychological point of view human personalities can be classified under visceral/instinctive, emotional or cerebral.

The person with a visceral or instinctive character, similar to reptiles, is a loner, he does not need nor is attracted to social relationships or establishing affective ties. He is more action oriented, to carry out tasks and to do things. Probably only looks for his own kind in order to mate; everything else is antagonistic.

He forgives easily because he does not keep memories of past offences. He has a very selective memory and only memorizes what interests him; past offences are not part of this interest; he can be vindictive at the moment, but if he lets time pass, he loses interest in seeking revenge as he easily turns the page, not wasting energy in keeping grudges.

He is peaceful, content to be by himself in his own corner, but he is territorial, does not want to bother nor be bothered, and responds aggressively if threatened or provoked.

In the face of danger, the instinctive person is more likely to get out of it alive because he keeps his cool, does not allow himself to be influenced by the negative emotions of the limbic brain, or by the anxiety, worries and stress of the rational brain, not panicking and preserving the calm and frigidity of the instinct that is rarely deceived. Many of those who drown at sea are oftentimes good swimmers, but as they were emotional or cerebral, panicked and died of a heart attack prior to drowning; if they were visceral, they would not have drowned.

“Better known evil than good yet to be known” – the reptilian brain is not given much to change, is friendly to routines and is lost when faced with fast changes. Because of this, it tends to be conservative and reject all kinds of innovation, since it fears changes as it is unable to cope with new situations and adapt to them.
 
The mammalian brain (limbic system)
It is present in lower mammals and incipient in birds. It is the size of a lemon, and was formed 150 million years ago consisting of the following structures:

Hypothalamus – means that it is below the thalamus; it is so small that it represents only 1% of the entire brain, about the size of a pea. Although small, it regulates many important functions in our body. With respect to emotions, it triggers the secretion of hormones such as adrenaline.

Amygdala – we have two, one on each side of the brain; the amygdala is the centre of aggression, fear as emotion and anxiety. It associates emotions to memories, so that the most traumatic memories are not remembered.

Thalamus – is divided into two main parts, the ventral and the dorsal, and is responsible for four senses with the exception of smell. It plays a role in the sensation of pain, temperature, and pressure from the surrounding registered by the ears. Its importance in emotion is clear since without the five senses there are no signals for emotions to arise.

Hippocampus – plays a crucial role in the formation of new memories; it converts short-term memories into long-term memories which can invoke emotions.

Creating ties
One of the most expressive characteristics of mammals relative to reptiles is their tendency to live in groups. For the sake of survival, these animals evolutionarily tend to stick together, so that they can more easily sustain themselves, ward off predators and ensure the continuity of the species.

For example, the plant-eating mammals tend to stick together and often manage to ward off predators due to strength in numbers; on the other hand, many meat-eating mammals do not hunt alone, but in groups, such as a pride of lions or a pack of wolves, because they have a better chance of catching the prey.

The mammalian brain reflects this evolution, creating mechanisms of acceptance, rejection and expulsion from the group with its specific emotions. The role of the mother and the relationship it establishes with her offspring is important for their survival; in fact, sometimes mothers reject their offspring, and they die. I myself saw in a flock of sheep a rejected calf that had to be bottle-fed by the shepherd to survive. Whenever it tried to get close to its mother, it was rejected, and as an adult it always grazed alone, outside the flock, because if its mother rejected it, so too would the other sheep in the flock.

Seat of emotions
The mammalian brain is the seat of emotions over which we have no control. We do not decide to be angry or to feel love or hate. Emotions did not come out of nowhere, they were somehow already latent in the instincts of the reptiles; emotions are longer lasting than instincts, they are comparable to prolonged instincts with historical memory.

Love comes from the sex instinct, which first brought two beings to unite, using each other as objects of pleasure and only later developing the feeling of affection for each other. This still happens today between people who have one night stand and end up spending the rest of their lives together. After the sexual act, the unconditional love for the offspring, so typical of the mammals, appears.

Fear with the perception of danger provokes flight; but as an emotion, it accompanies and arises out of the act of flight, hiding, immobilizing or camouflaging. Anger accompanies and arises out of the act of attacking the prey. Emotion is a mental state that flows autonomously in the nervous system and can be positive or negative, because it is linked to a need being met or not met. Therefore, it is negative if the need is not met and positive when it is. Instinct is an innate and inherent disposition of a living being, it is a reaction to a particular stimulus.

Learning and keeping memory
With respect to habitat, mammals are also one of the most adaptable groups of animals. Reptiles stay confined to hot and moderate climates, hibernating during winter; mammals, on the other hand, exist in all climates because they are able to modify their behaviour to suit their environment. They have learning ability due to their brain’s short-term and long-term memory centers. Reptiles do not learn, and therefore they need an environment that does not change, as they lack the ability to adapt.

Runs away from suffering, seeks pleasure
If we compare a cat to a snake, we see that the cat has a set of emotions and emotional responses, which are absent in the snake. The cat has a brain that allows it to seek pleasure and avoid pain, having more freedom than the snake because it can learn because it has memory, can keep experiences that caused pain or pleasure, and know in the future what to repeat to get pleasure and what not to do to avoid pain.

The emotional character
As we have seen, reptiles are usually solitary, not coexisting; mammals, in contrast, establish ties with members of their own species that are important for their survival from birth. Therefore, great emphasis is placed on moods and feelings of others in order to preserve their sense of being connected to them.

More than other types, the emotional character depends on the approval and recognition of other individuals to preserve his self-esteem and the feeling of being loved. For an emotional person, to ensure this recognition and approval, he will even create an image of himself that will make others accept and see him as an amiable person.

The human brain (neocortex)
It is the outermost layer of the brain, wrapped around the mammalian brain. It is the final phase of our brain development. Formed 3 million years ago, it represents 76% of all gray matter and is present in all primates, such as gorillas and chimpanzees, as well as in higher mammals, such as whales and dolphins. However, humans have the most developed and unique version. The human being is in fact the only mammal that has such a high concentration of neurons in such a small space.

The human brain is divided into two hemispheres: the left hemisphere which is associated with logical reasoning, analysis and decomposition of a whole into parts and language, and the right hemisphere which is associated with creativity, imagination, global associative processes, processing of emotions and spatial relations.

Parietal lobe – there is one in each hemisphere of the brain and its function is to receive external sensory stimuli and interpret them cognitively with the help of memory of past perceptions. It is important for the attention and development of mental maps.

Occipital lobe – there is also one in each hemisphere. It processes visual stimuli in a permanent way, analyzing distances, shapes, colors and movements.

Frontal lobe – there is also one in each hemisphere. It is the motor area of the brain, it controls all the functions of movement. It is also in the dominant hemisphere of the frontal lobe that the Broca’s area is found, which is responsible for language in all its forms, spoken or written.

Prefrontal lobe – it is one of the most interesting and decisive areas to understand our abstract thoughts and even our self-consciousness. It is also in charge of executive processes, decision making and different aspects related to the regulation of emotions.

Temporal lobe – there is also one in each hemisphere. It has various functions, without specializing concretely in any; it is for this reason that it is “polisensorial”, because it integrates auditory, sensory, visual and limbic neural pathways.

Language and logic
This brain is much larger than the other two and much more complex. It works in the field of logic and reasoning: it processes information, has a language and expresses itself through speech, and body and written language. It lives in the present, but has access to memories of the past that serves as a database, and draws upon the future by projecting it through conjectures, anticipating and preparing for it, setting objectives and goals.

Abstract reasoning
It has to do with the creation of innovative ideas, starting with finding connections between apparently different concepts without any logical connection. It is a thought that is disconnected from reality, from facts and also from the here and now. It works with general concepts and not with specific things. It is the thought of the philosopher and some scientists.

Curiosity and creativity
It uses the past as a database for the present and for projecting into the future, but it is not dependent on it. It can also ignore it and be 100% creative and innovative, and can face new challenges in a creative way, without the need to refer back to past experiences. “Necessity is the mother of all invention”, when it truly needs something, creativity is stimulated. In general, man is curious, and has an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

Self-consciousness and decision-making power
Self-awareness is the great qualitative leap between man and the rest of the animal kingdom. Human beings are aware of their surroundings, themselves and their processes, and have power over their own life, even to end it if they so choose. They have the power to make decisions and to orient their life towards an objective or an ideal, according to their vocation or talent.

In relation to animals, man lives while animals are only alive, since they are not masters of their own destiny. They are symbiotically connected to nature, obeying it without the possibility of rebelling. Man does not depend on nature in a symbiotic and uncritical way, and even has the power to adapt it to his own designs and needs.

Projection for the future
He has the ability to identify a problem and find a solution to it; he is far more creative than other mammals, and therefore has a much greater capacity to adapt to the environment. More than adapting, Homo sapiens adapts the environment to himself, something no animal can do.

Since, unlike other animals, man has the power over his own life, he can program, project and make plans for the future. And to a great extent he is right, using the analysis of past experiences and his increasing knowledge of nature, things and his own human nature.

The cerebral character
A person with the cerebral character tends to perceive the world through the cognitive filter of mental faculties. The goals of this strategy are to minimize anxiety, deal with potentially painful situations and acquire a sense of certainty through mental processes of analysis, conception, imagination and planning.

He retracts from reality when there is a chance of losing and takes refuge in the world of ideas where everything obeys parameters and paradigms, where everything is predictable, accountable and qualifiable. When faced with emotional experiences, he uses subterfuge or defence mechanisms such as rationalization and denial.

Trapped in the reptilian and mammalian brains
The mammalian brain has no concept of time, past, present or future; it lives in an eternal present; a dog can greet you in the same way in 3 minutes as in 3 months or in 3 years, as it has no concept of time.

This phenomenon also helps to explain how the trauma mechanism works. Trauma is always an emotionally negative experience that belong fundamentally to the mammalian brain since the reptilian brain has no traumas because it lacks memory.

It may seem that traumatized people have been trapped in the past. For them, something that happened 50 years ago is felt as if it is happening now. When something similar to their traumatic experience, or of the same nature, happens in the present, it triggers the same reaction that the person had in the past. It is not easy to convince our brain that, as Heraclitus says, “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”.

A good example would be the young man who panics every time he pulls a turtleneck over his head; eventually he discovers that during labour, his mother’s pelvis did not dilate enough and his head got stuck in the birth canal for some time. Now every time a similar situation passes by, he feels what he felt then.

Neuromarketing
It is said that 95% of our purchasing or voting decisions are irrational. That is why those who sell products or run political campaigns do not appeal to the rational brain or neocortex; they appeal to the other two, over which as we have already said, we exercise less control.

Commercial advertising
Logically, it makes more sense to advertise a car using a famous Formula 1 driver than a beautiful, sexy and attractive woman; however, this is what happens in most advertising car campaigns, even when it is commonly thought that women are not good drivers.

Political advertising
Europe is being invaded by populist parties that use both fear and disproportionate unrealistic optimism to sway votes. Pessimists and realists do not win elections, however. The people do not want to hear the truth, but prefer a convenient lie, a lie that by repetition begins to sound like the truth, not the true reality, but an alternative reality. Easy solutions to complex problems.

The political propaganda of our days has a lot of Machiavellian, irrational appeals to the reptilian and mammalian brains. Democracy is being perverted because we are being dominated without even realizing it.

Conclusion
The three guests of our soul – reason, instinct and emotion – are not only different in nature, but also come from different brains; among them, coexistence is not always fraternal, decisions are not always made by consensus, and reason is not always the determining factor in our behaviour. As Pascal said, the heart has reasons that reason does not know.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

3 Entities of the Mind: Id - Ego - Superego

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939), the Socrates of Psychology for liberating it from the realm of myths, legends and misconceptions, and elevating it to the category of human science, saw Psychoanalysis as a submarine to submerge below consciousness and journey to the deepest part of the human mind.

Similarly, as the Einstein of Psychology, Freud was the first great psychologist and psychiatrist humanity ever had. Part of his theory has been surpassed, however, by others but the fundamental still remains and, like the theory of relativity, belongs to the scientific heritage of mankind.

If our dreams and future projects influence and shape our present, the same occurs with our traumas and past experiences. Freud proved that both the negative as well as the positive experiences present in our subconsciousness inadvertently surface to our consciousness, influencing and even determining the choices, feelings, desires and decisions that we make at the present moment.

Our past is much more than our historical memory which contains our identity, that is, who we are to others and who we are to ourselves. Freud proved that this past is not “dead” in the sense that it has ceased to exist. The proverb that alludes to a physical law of “passed waters do not move mills” does not apply to human existence. Effectively, in human nature, past waters do move mills. And they move us by definitively influencing our present behaviour so much so that we resemble airplanes that on reaching cruising altitude start to operate on autopilot.

Psychoanalysis is both a type of therapy and a theory of personality that emphasizes that the main cause of our behaviour resides in the unconscious. The goal is to know and bring to consciousness the material in the subconscious in order to analyze it and neutralize the power it has over us, and the influence it exerts on our behaviour. What we know of our past we can control, because to know means to possess, to control; what we don’t know of our past, controls us.

Trinitarian or tridimensional mind
Like God, human beings are also one and triune. They have an individual dimension and a social dimension in such a way that one cannot exist alone but co-exists with two others. The existence of one presupposes the existence of two others, as we saw in a previous articles. In addition to the undeniable social dimension, we are social even in our own individuality. Our mind is not monolithic, or made up of a single piece, it could not function if it was made in that way.

Like everything that God creates, our mind is also trinitarian or tridimensional, because it is divided into three parts, three different partitions that interact with each other in the best interest of the person. Frequently, this interaction assumes a form of an interior dialogue that we have with ourselves. Simplistically, we can say that one part, the oldest, represents our interests, the second the interests of the society and finally, the last one is the arbitrator that tries to harmonize each other’s claims and decides the best way. 

What then will this child become?
(…) All these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him. Luke 1:65-66

At birth, we have only one of the parts – the id – the other two entities come later, as we grow and develop, they appear relatively quickly, in such a way that by around the age of 5, according to Freud, or by the age of 7 as we believe today, our personality is completely formed and the rest of our life, according to Freudian determinism, is pure repetition.

The belief remains that the first few years of our lives are foundational to the rest of our lives. As infants, we are virgins in every way. Without anything written in our mind, the first facts naturally carve a deeper impression than the second or third and so on; when we are adults or seniors, very few things have the power to impress us anymore.

3 levels of consciousness
The diagram illustrated in this article shows a bust of Sigmund Freud inside the sun, indicating that it is his understanding that we use today regarding the human psyche. Like the picture shows, Freud used the iceberg metaphor to explain the composition and functioning of our psyche. More than two-thirds of the iceberg’s volume is below the waterline – and so it is with our mind.

There is in our mind an invisible “waterline” that divides the conscious from the unconscious. The mind is divided into three compartments: the Id, the Ego and the Superego – that correspond to three different levels of consciousness. As the image indicates, the Ego and superego are subdivided into two parts – one part is submerged in the unconscious and the other above the water line in the conscious. The Id is entirely in the unconscious.

The unconscious mind
Our subconscious is made up of feelings, emotions, needs, desires, impulses and instincts that are beyond our consciousness which doesn’t have access to them. In other words, it is as if they don’t exist. Our consciousness is not prepared to deal with these intimate and secret desires. If they were to emerge freely into our consciousness, they would disturb our daily life in such a way that we could become completely dysfunctional.

Because they are disturbing, dangerous and threaten the peace, harmony and balance of our mind, our psyche represses them in the subconscious which, in this case, functions as a maximum security prison. Our consciousness does not have access to these repressed desires, feelings and instincts, but they on the other hand have access to our consciousness as uninvited guests and influence our behaviour from thought to feeling and action. They influence and in some cases even determine our behaviour without us knowing how, when or in what way.

Much of the subconscious is formed by the two basic survival instincts that Freud calls Eros, the life instinct or affectivity, and Thanatos, the death instinct or aggression. These are like the positive and negative poles of our psychic energy, and are present here as a raw energy storage, without being transformed or sublimated for everyday use. In the subconscious lies all the negative and traumatic childhood experiences, so painful that the child is forced to disconnect from them because his childhood consciousness or mind is not strong enough at the time to deal with them.

As we shall see later, the superego is the last entity to arise in our mind and is formed by the cultural, moral and legal restrictions that society imposes on us. Despite appearing during the child’s socialization period, like the diagram shows, part of this superego is also submerged in the subconscious.

Carl Jung (1875-1961) was a disciple of Freud, but later left the master not so much for his psychological principles, but for Freud’s atheism as the latter understood that religion was a sick consolation that prevented human beings from developing and being fully mature.

Jung deepens the unconscious and subdivides it into two: the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious which is older and somehow precedes the former. The collective unconscious are ancestral memories that are organized into archetypes or themes and when a person’s existential situation requires it, the collective unconscious surfaces to consciousness influencing our behaviour. There are archetypes for every situation in our lives. The experiences of our ancestors on any subject are organized into these archetypes that all individuals have in common in their collective unconscious.

These archetypes exist in the form of thoughts, symbols, images, and memories; they are a model, a paradigm, a prototype that tells us what to expect of others and how we should behave in every situation of our lives. For example, there is an archetype or concept called “mother” that regulates the way how mothers should act with their children and children with their mothers, what can or cannot be expected from the other, what we can or cannot do.

Taboos are the clearest examples of what archetypes are; for example, the taboo of incest prohibits sexual relationships between parents and children, and between siblings. The taboo of parricide prohibits children from raising their hands aggressively against their parents. These are all in the collective unconscious part of our superego.

The preconscious mind
Facts, thoughts, feelings, emotions that we are not aware of at the present moment, but are within our grasp if called for, reside in the preconscious; we can look for them like we search for a book in a library. The mind is like a store window that displays the most important items in front, but has many more items stored in the back to fulfill orders. For example, I don’t constantly think about my phone number or email address, but if someone asks me for this information I can provide it immediately, as it is stored and organized in my preconscious.

This material is not in the conscious or the unconscious mind, but in an intermediate state. What distinguishes this material from the material in the unconscious is the fact that a person has more power and control over it and is not accidentally influenced by it. Most of the time it comes to our conscious mind only when it is solicited, unlike the material in our unconscious mind over which we have no control whatsoever.

With the exceptions of traumas and taboos, the material in the preconscious has the same nature as the material in the unconscious – memories, feelings, thoughts, facts etc. – except that it is not repressed and is always accessible to the conscious mind like a database.

The conscious mind
The conscious mind contains thoughts, memories, feelings, and desires that we are aware of in the present moment, in the here and now of our lives. Comparable to the RAM of a computer, or even the processor, our consciousness is the operating memory that reads and processes the data that the preconscious or senses provide; it is the rational thought or reason that analyzes, decides and sets the action.

Consciousness is the ability to know and reflect on our reality; we are conscious of what we perceive through our five senses, of what we remember. Our consciousness is the attention that we pay to a thought, what we experience existentially through our five senses and through our inner reality, the world of imagination and rational thought, our mental processes and rational analyses.

Contrary to the other two levels, the conscious mind is fully under our control, unless we are drugged or asleep. It is through it that we relate to others and to ourselves, it allows us to be free, autonomous and independent. However, experts say that this level of consciousness in relation to the other levels, keeping in mind the image of the iceberg, takes up only 10% of our mind, the remaining 90% is made up of the preconsciousness and unconsciousness.

The Johari window
Created by psychologists Joseph Luft (1916-2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916-1995), it is one of the most popular concepts of psychology, a direct application of the Freudian concepts of consciousness and unconsciousness. Based on what is conscious and what is unconscious in us, these psychologists have distinguished four types of identities inside of each person: the open self, the blind self, the hidden self and the unknown self.

The open self – It is the part of myself that I know and others also know because I choose to reveal it. It is the point where my opinion about myself coincides with others’ opinions of me. For example, I recognize that I am a good speaker and others also recognize me as such.

The blind self – It is the part of myself that I do not know but others know. I never see my face as it truly is but others do. What I know of my face is an image that the mirror reflects, but it is still only a reflection, it is not truly my face because there are no perfect mirrors. The other, precisely because he is outside of me, has an unimpeded perspective that I cannot have. Only those who are outside the forest can see the forest, those inside it see only trees. We have an experience of the blind self when we eat with others and a speck of food gets stuck on our face – I don’t see it, but others do.

The hidden self – It is the part that I know about myself which I decide not to reveal; it is my intimacy and privacy, the skeleton in the closet. Eventually, part of this material is revealed to a close friend, depending on the level of trust and how old is our friendship.

The unknown self – It is the part that I do not know about myself and others evidently also do not know. We are a mystery to ourselves and to others. This is the unconscious part that we have already spoken about, it is made up of materials that I do not know but at any moment can emerge and be seen by me or by others through my body language.

3 divisions of the mind
According to Freud, our mind is divided into three different compartments that communicate with each other. We can also understand them as three entities with different functions that interact within our mind.

These three entities are not of the same age; the oldest, the first to be formed, or that which has existed since the beginning is the ID – it is made up of a set of uncoordinated instinctive drives and urges. The next to be formed is the EGO, the organized, operative and realistic part of our mind. Lastly, the SUPEREGO emerges and acts as the ambassador of culture or society in our psyche and as such is made up of rules, norms, laws and moral values to be observed and respected, but it is also the power or the judge and police that enforce these laws and regulations.

THE ID
When a baby is born, he only has the id, a simple and archaic psyche. The infant is not aware of himself, does not know that he exists, and only has survival instincts and needs that must be met without delay, and for that he uses crying. Hence the saying, “whoever does not cry does not suckle”.

In the id mode, the baby is self-centered, completely self-absorbed and selfish, without the slightest consideration for others: he alone exists and others must revolve around him. If he is hungry at 3 a.m. he cries at this hour until he is fed, it matters not to him if his father and mother need to sleep to work the next day.

When the id wants something, there is nothing more important in this world than its will, because it operates on the pleasure principle, that is, it seeks pleasure at all cost and avoids pain. No matter how old we are, the id never disappears, nor is it replaced by the other entities that arise later. It remains always as the seat of the most basic instincts, those of survival, the Eros and Thanatos, affection and aggression, as well as the most basic needs – hunger, thirst, warmth, comfort and the deepest desires.

THE EGO
Around the age of three and by virtue of the relationships between the child and his caregivers, the surrounding environment, another entity called the ego is born. The child starts to understand that other people also have needs and desires, and that being impulsive and selfish is not the best way to have his needs met, and can even be counterproductive in the long run.

The ego is not against the id’s needs, on the contrary, it is completely in solidarity with the id, but the ego realizes that it must be smart in finding ways to meet id’s needs, taking into account the requirements of reality, especially the needs of others. The ego works on the reality principle; this does not mean that it has given up on pleasure and self-fulfillment, it only gives up on its immediate realization, taking the longer and more time-consuming path, and adopting a more realistic and safer strategy, conforming to the reality of the situation.

If life’s objective for the id is to avoid pain and be happy, so it is for the ego, only their strategy is different. The id thinks that it can be happy alone, the ego discovers that it cannot be happy alone, that this is not realistic. Meeting the needs of others is as important to my happiness as it is to theirs.

The ego is the conscious part of our personality that uses reason and logic to try to obtain the cooperation of the unrealistic id. It operates under the reality principle, seeking to reconcile the demands of the id with those of the superego, deciding on the most realistic route.

THE SUPEREGO
Around the age of five, the last entity of our mind is born. The superego is our moral conscience, what we are “called to be” that develops due to the moral or ethical restrictions that our caregivers place on us. The superego or moral conscience tells us what is right or wrong, what is good or bad, what is appropriate and socially correct and accepted, and what is not.

It is our cultural baggage, the way society expects us to act; it is made up of endless lists of rules, laws, norms, moral values, traditions concerning everything and everyone. When you follow the commands of the superego, you may be rigid and repressed, but proud. If you don’t, you may feel anxious and guilty.

The protagonists or characters that interact in many, if not all, our inner dialogues are these three entities: Id – Ego – Superego. The id that claims unconditional satisfaction of its needs and enjoyment of pleasure; the ego that attempts to fulfill its needs, same as id’s, by taking a more realistic approach that is, harmonizing its own needs with the needs of the others; lastly, the superego as the voice of moral conscience that tries to persuade the id and the ego to abandon the search for pleasure to dedicate themselves to the cultivation of ideas and high moral values, and is what makes us feel guilty when we are not as what we could be.

In order to differentiate in our mind the voice of the ego from that of the superego or moral conscience, we need to pay attention to certain words. If the inner message begins with “you must…” or “you should…”, it most certainly comes from our superego and is an inner voice that during our upbringing was an outer voice. In the process of learning and internalizing these outer messages, some parents have noted that upon receiving these messages from them, their children would repeat them quietly to themselves.

The superego, as we’ve said before, is the enforcer of culture or society within our psyche, and it works more or less like a Trojan horse, through which society invades our thoughts and conquers us from within, making us its servant. Under the superego we are uncritically obedient to the dictates imposed on our ego without verifying them. In short, the superego is a little dictator within us that represses both the id and the ego, and replaces them at command of our thoughts, feelings and actions.

Towards a consultative not executive superego
As an example, the interaction between these three entities of our mind could take place in the following way: the id says, “I feel like eating cakes”, the superego says, “you can’t, you shouldn’t”, the ego analyzes the issue and decides saying either “I want to eat cakes” or “I don’t want to eat cakes”. The matter can be different, but these are the operative lines of our behaviour; the id says “I feel like it”, the superego says “you can’t, you shouldn’t, you have to…”, and the ego says “I want or I don’t want”. What is good for the id, and eventually also for the ego, is translated by the superego as illegal, bad for the health or a sin.

Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication has taught us that everything we do out of duty, obligation, or imposition subverts our psyche, making us slaves because we had no choice in the matter, it was imposed on us. We are not born to be slaves, human life exists only in freedom, freedom is the oxygen for the soul.

“You have to...”, “you should...” are words that a psychotherapist would never use with his patients, even if the patient asks for advice saying, “What should I do?” The psychotherapist’s respond would certainly be, “What do you want to do? What would you like to do?” What a psychotherapist doesn’t do with his client, we shouldn’t do to ourselves either.

That is why, as Rosenberg used to say, in life we do only what we like; “whoever runs for pleasure never tires”, whoever runs out of duty or obligation, does it against his will and out of negative energy, so sooner or later he abandons it.

We don’t need a superego that massacres and suppresses the id and the ego imposing on us behaviours that we don’t understand and did not choose. We only need the ego as the referee, an internal regulator. The ego is the son of the id, born from natural means, when the id realized for itself that it wasn’t possible to satisfy its personal needs to the detriment of others’ needs.

Therefore, the same mechanism that led to the formation of the ego from the id, is what should accompany each of our daily decisions. It is possible to maintain a dialogue between the ego and the id, without the superego having an active voice, but rather be used as a simple consultative database without any executive decision making power.

In a mind where the superego has executive power, the id and the ego are forced to act this or that way, and they usually go underground and act in a sneaky and subversive or terrorist-like way as we see in countries ruled under dictatorship. The superego is the law, the king, and accountable to no one. The superego rewards the ego and the id with the feeling of pride of duties accomplished, even though they have acted against their own will and nature, even though they have sacrificed their true happiness. When the ego and the id, unwilling to give up their identity and happiness, rebel and disobey the superego, the latter punishes them with the guilt complex.

On the other hand, in a mind where the executive power does not belong to the superego but to the ego, this latter being faithful to the natural way the id was formed, does not seek to impose anything on the id, on the contrary, it seeks reasons to appease it and make it see for itself which way to go.

Unrestricted satisfaction of all desires is not conducive to well-being, nor is it the way to happiness or even to maximum pleasure. ERICH FROMM, To Have or To Be?

What Erich Fromm, a follower of Freud, discovered is that the id with the help of the ego can discover things for itself: the unlimited satisfaction of our desires, without any restrictions, does not lead to maximum pleasure, but to self-destruction. The restrictions that limit pleasure do not come from the superego, but from reality.

We know that a small amount of alcohol, especially in red wine, is good for the health; exceeding this quantity however overloads the liver. If this is done regularly, it will lead to cirrhosis and death. To continue drinking, that is, to continue enjoying the pleasure of drinking, this needs to be limited or restricted. This is not an imposition of the superego in the sense that drinking is a sin, but rather an “imposition” of reality.

For the ego, the question is not what I should or should not do, but rather what are the consequences of my actions, where will they take me, what kind of person will I be by taking this or that road. We are what we decide to be, each decision that we make has contributed in some way to the person we are presently.

As we saw above, the id acts on our mind in an unconscious way. The aim is for the ego to act on the id, and in this way the two are interactive in a constant dialogue where the superego is consulted. Saint Francis of Assisi used this technique to overcome the so-called bad or sexual thoughts.

The id says to the ego, “I feel like having sex with that woman”, the ego does not suppress the id, but follows its line of thought and says, “very well, but you know that she can fall in love with you; are you willing to have a relationship with her? This relationship may require a lifetime commitment, are you ready for that? This same sexual act can lead to a new life, are you ready to be a father?” With this type of dialogue, the id ends up accepting that it is not convenient to have sex with this woman that it is attracted to, because it would take it to where it does not want to go.

In all this process the superego was not needed for anything, it remains as a database that can be consulted in case of doubt. The cultural traditions, the idiosyncrasy of our culture, our faith, the Bible, the doctrines of the Church, the examples of the saints and other heroes of society, all belong to this database of how society understands it should be.

If the above dialogue was between the id and the superego, it would be entirely different. “I want to have sex with that woman,” says the id, ”You can’t,” says the superego; “Why not?” asks the id, “Because it is a sin,” says the superego and here the dialogue ends. It ends like many father and child dialogues, “Because I said so,” says the father.

The ego, on the other hand, is rational and reasonable, and is guided fundamentally by the reality of the situation, by the knowledge of human nature, by its own experience, learning from its own mistakes and from the experiential mistakes of others. For example, from the experience of others I know that drugs are harmful, I don’t need to experiment them myself.

In summary, these are the questions that must be present in a constructive dialogue between the id and the ego in a given situation that requires a decision:

1. What is it all about? Realistic analysis of the situation and what it requires realistically?
2. Where will this course of action take me, what kind of person will I become if I take this path?
3. Who, besides myself, will be affected by my hypothetical decision and by the actions that this involves?
4. Are there alternatives? If there are no alternatives, there are no moral problem: what has no solution, is solved. The question now is whether or not to accept reality.

 3 psychosexual stages of development
Freud understood that the first five years of life are crucial for the rest of our lives. In this first period of our psychosexual development, we cross through three stages. In each of these three stages our psyche focuses its attention exclusively on one part of the body. When the basic need of this particular part of the body that must be met is not adequately met, the individual becomes obsessed, fixated, trapped or held at this stage, having difficulty transitioning to the next one.

Oral stage from 0 to 1
As food is the primary concern of an infant, his sexual satisfaction is obtained through this means, which is both a source of nourishment and a source of pleasure. The infant finds gratification through oral activities such as feeding, sucking on pacifier or finger, and babbling. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the adult stage there is a sexual practice called oral sex.

An excessive stimulation and prolonged stay beyond one year of age in this stage can lead the child to acquire addictions in adulthood such as tobacco and alcohol, and to be very talkative. On the contrary, poor stimulation and forcing the child to move to the next stage before his time can turn the child into a sarcastic and overly argumentative adult.

Anal stage from 1 to 3
The time arrives for toilet training, or sphincter control training especially the anus. This is the child’s first act of humanity, as animals have no control over their sphincters. Since the child is aware that parents attach great importance to bowel movement or controlling the anus, he begins to transfer the pleasure he feels in the mouth from eating, to the pleasure that he feels in the anus when defecating, retaining or eliminating feces. Evidently the practice of anal sex is linked to this stage, in as much as oral sex is attached to the oral stage.

Excessive training period beyond what’s reasonable leads the child to be stubborn, stingy, retentive, to be a lover of wealth and thrifty. On the contrary, sloppy training leads the child to be unkempt, to be a disordered adult, with little connection to wealth and a spender.

Genital stage from 3 to 5
Probably due to their proximity to the anus and self-exploration, the child eventually discovers the genitals as a source of pleasure superior to the first two areas. From this moment onward, it is in this zone that the child seeks pleasure. At this age, the child is aware of the gender difference, masculine and feminine, falls in love with the father and is jealous of the mother if the child is a girl, or falls in love with the mother and is jealous of the father if the child is a boy.

Inadequate management of this stage makes the child fearful and anxious in relationships with the opposite sex. This stage is important because while oral and anal gratifications are selfish and lead the child to focus on self, genital gratification, by virtue of the fact that the genitals exist in two incomplete modalities, leads the child to go out of himself or herself and seek the opposite sex.

The pleasure principle
It seeks the immediate fulfillment of one’s basic needs, urges and desires, hunger, thirst, anger and sex. As we have seen earlier, this is the principle by which the id operates: to seek pleasure at all costs, give to those who hurt and avoid pain.

A person fixated at this stage of human development kills and dismembers without mercy, without any accusation from his conscience. He seeks sexual pleasure by raping and abusing children because it matters not the pain he causes others, but only his pleasure; others do not exist, they are reduced to instruments of pleasure.

The reality principle
It is the principle by which the ego acts; under the influence of this principle, the person seeks the fulfillment of these same desires and urges, because they come from human nature, but in a realistic and socially appropriate, accepted, and sustainable way like the principles of ecology. The reality principle logically assesses the cost and benefit, the pros and cons of an action before deciding to act on or to abandon an impulse.

For Freud, psychological maturity is the child’s passage from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. The person who successfully makes this transition does not need the superego, in the same manner that a person who is just, supportive, psychologically mature does not need the police or the courts because he does not prevaricate in his social life. The police and the courts are needed for those who have never really transitioned from the pleasure principle to the reality principle.

Defence mechanisms
They are the immature ways of resolving the conflict between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, between the id and the superego, in line of a weak and uninfluential ego.

Repression – The form that the ego takes to avoid pain in face of traumatic experiences. A child who is physically or sexually abused forgets everything in its entirety because he or she cannot cope with the pain; the consciousness does not have the capacity to deal with the event or withstand the pain.

Displacement – To direct feelings of aggression towards a less threatening object. For example, the boss mistreat the employee, who unable to mistreat the boss in return, abuses his wife instead, the wife in turn mistreats the son, and the son mistreats the dog or cat.

Rationalization – In order to defend oneself from pain or other setbacks, such as guilt or trying to avoid taking responsibility for what has happened, the person finds a logical explanation to justify a behaviour. An obvious example is the tale of the fox and the grapes: since it cannot jump high enough to reach the grapes, the fox declares them unripe.

Reaction or Self-deception – To think and behave in a way contrary to what one truly thinks and feels. A woman who loves a man whom she cannot have, behaves as if she hates him. We see this defence mechanism at work in many movies; there is also a saying that alludes to this: “Whoever disdains wants to buy”. Whoever points out defects in an article is because he wants to buy it.

Projection – To attribute our socially unacceptable desires and urges onto other people. A constantly grumpy person complaining that it is very hard for him to relate to other family members because they are all so difficult.

Regression – To return to behaviours characteristic of a previous stage of development. For example, after the parents’ divorce, the child does not want to sleep alone and sleeps with the mother.

Denial – To distort reality to accommodate the deepest desires. For example, an alcoholic who insists he is not one; a smoker who brags that he can quit anytime if he wanted to do so; or another who jokingly admits that it is easy to quit smoking, he has done it 20 times.

Techniques of psychoanalytic therapy
As we have said, psychoanalysis is not only a general theory of the genesis and structure of our personality, but also a form of therapy. There are five techniques that Freud used to call the subconscious to the consciousness of the ego and thus be able to interact with it to solve problems.

Free association – The patient is invited to say whatever comes to mind in an uncritical way, without hiding anything, without previous judgment; to say everything that comes to mind without taking into account how painful, irrelevant or stupid this can be.

Interpretation – The analyst explains to the patient the meaning of everything he said during the free association.

Dream analysis – It is the highway to the unconsciousness; some memories are so far away from the consciousness of the patient, so suppressed and hidden, that they reveal themselves only in dreams and express themselves in a phantasmagorical and symbolic way to get the mind’s attention.

Resistance analysis – During the course of therapy, resistance can be created on the part of the patient who manifests this by not paying for the appointments, arriving late or inventing reasons for not coming to the therapy. This type of resistance must be analyzed in order for the therapy to be successful.

Transference analysis – Finally, transference is something that arises in the course of therapy both on the part of the patient and on the part of the therapist. In order to avoid collusion between the psychotherapist’s personal issues and the patient’s or client’s personal issues, the former needs to deal with his own transference in a psychotherapeutic session that he regularly has with his supervisor who is also a psychotherapist. The client or patient is made aware of his transference by the psychotherapist when he asks questions like, “Who do I remind you of? What significant member of your past am I representing to you now?”

Conclusion
Mature human behavior requires the SUPEREGO (Morals) to be only consultative, therefore exempted from any legislative and executive power which are to be carried out by the EGO (Reason) with whom the ID (Instinct & Emotion) gets along better.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC