...King energy brings you courage. It enables you to take control of your life and is profoundly empowering. The Artisan energy which will still be with us in a diminishing role until mid-June, will still give us creativity.... This is a truly transformational month in a truly transformational year. Embrace it; it is a great year to fully define what you stand for; to follow your own path more directly than ever before.

Find out about relationships, business and money--and this month's impact on your role! Call to get your own copy of this month's Forecast!

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To use the Freudian structural model, the mind can be looked at as three separate parts: id, ego, and super-ego (subconscious, conscious, and conscience, respectively). If you’ve never taken psych 101, I encourage you to examine these concepts for yourselves on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego%2C_super-ego%2C_and_id. The driving concepts are that our subconscious mind (id) reacts on impulse to stimulus with a primitive pleasure incentive, while our conscious mind (ego), that part of us which we consider to be the “self”, and lets us judge, think, and reflect; our conscience (super-ego) is our morality, and that part of ourselves that tells us when something is right or wrong. Freud himself went much further into these concepts, as far as to propose things such as the Oedipus complex, but whether or not they are true, they are held in little esteem and I don’t find them to be very applicable.

One might posit that, in the Michael system, the id is the instinctive center and the ego is the intellectual center. In this case, the instinctive center (or id) directs our most basic incentives, e.g. pleasure, fear, hunger, etc, and is completely selfish. Now, if we are to assume that our super-ego, being a structure of morals and prohibitions, is something learned at a young age, and not an innate set of guidelines, God-given or otherwise (just as I have in my previous articles when speaking on morality), we can examine this model from an evolutionary perspective. The super-ego tells us to be ethical, and can be regarded as a mental system designed to promote cohesive social relations. Living beings are designed to reproduce and thrive and for non sentient beings, the instinctive center/id serves this function. For sentient beings such as ourselves, however, our intellectual center/ego allows us to override our instincts and in some cases completely ignore them, which means that we have the ability to act in a way which contradicts our basic needs. Thus, to keep ourselves in check, we have the super-ego, which tells us when something does not benefit ourselves or others, because it helps the survival of the race. If everyone was born with the ability to think practically yet had no feeling for right or wrong, we would never have been able to form societies in which people behave in a civil manner.

When our base impulses lead us to do things which our conscience disapproves of, it’s the job of our ego to reconcile the two, usually in the form of a defense mechanism, e.g. denial. This can be a very revealing model for looking at human behavior, because it shines a different light on our tendencies. For example:

Imagine you go to the store, and realize that you have no money left (you’re quite poor indeed). You stuff some food in your pockets and walk out the door without paying because you’re hungry and can’t afford to pay for your food. You feel guilty so you tell yourself that it was okay because the store would never even notice that one pack of slim jims, or that you only did it because you really needed to.

What happened here? First a base impulse (id), then a conscious decision (ego), then a feeling of wrongness (super-ego), and finally a reconciliation (ego). The conscience serves a very similar function to that of the subconscious instinct; they are both mechanisms for survival, although the conscience does it on a more macro scale (the survival of the society as a whole) while the subconscious is the survival mechanism for the individual. The ego, therefore, can be seen as a mechanism for coping. Volition is one of the primary qualities associated with human existence, and our ego allows us to choose between id and super-ego; selfish needs or the greater good, personal gain or self sacrifice, and so on and so forth.

In conclusion, one should be aware of their own decisions in relationship to their impulses and their conscience. Rather than going through your everyday life assuming the roots of your desires, take a step back and ask yourself “Why do I want this?” you may be surprised by the answer.