Ego: A Defence

From Freud and Jung to the New Age Icarus

Ego is a bad word in our society. Unmoored from its clinical origins in the work of Sigmund Freud, the term has taken on a life of its own as Western culture's part-time boogeyman and full-time pinata.

In the past century the ego has transformed from an obscure Latin word for self into a shadowy demon that must be hunted down and exterminated without mer…