Jim,

I've pondered on this and found the ego to be a fairly useless way of describing any aspect of self other than the most superficial, the front we present to our environment. I believe that self is an emanation of the driving force of our lives, the soul though the term is a bit ambiguous (it means different things to different people, and to many it's the source of delusion: they think they are au fait with their souls when their outward expression (awkward though words are) suggest otherwise. I can't pretend to know my own soul though I hope to get closer as days pass).

But anyway, it drives us - or tries to, working through conduits and/or layers to our fronts. We have what the systems people call "requisite variety" the ability to adjust to ensure our survival. We can adjust the way we transact in society to meet the demands of the moment, the people we meet and their relevance in our lives. So I see us as playing roles much of the time.

Therefore I conclude that ego is a social process. We adjust it as we go, learning, adapting, diverting. At times people transact with awkwardness or misgivings, going against their intuition etc, so deliberately distorting the connections with Self.

So ego isn't a fixed thing. But there has to be a bedrock on which this can happen: a very real self, close to the soul. It's what we would be if we could find it. Alone therefore it wouldn't allow us to interact with others in our environment. Within it (or connected to it) is the repository of material (experiences, perceptive interpretations) that allows us to make those external adjustments. There's traffic from our sensory inputs to this repository, cross referring, reaching into other archives, as we go.

I see our fronts not as disconnected from the "real self" but an extension of it going through processes that connect us with the mundane world. Awareness of this processing gives us more power and scope over how we interact because we can adjust our roles to our advantage (not in a selfish way as much as to make transactions simpler, more appropriate for our (spiritual) needs and less vulnerable to the vagaries of emotions).

Generally I don't hold with the Freudian model of psyche. It was revolutionary in its time but needs revisiting. His model is still useful for situations where compartmentalising mental processes is enough but once we move into the realms of assimilating experiences, creativity etc, it fails.

An interesting discussion.

...