ego

ego, in psychoanalytic theory, that portion of the human personality which is experienced as the “self” or “I” and is in contact with the external world through perception. It is said to be the part that remembers, evaluates, plans, and in other ways is responsive to and acts in the surrounding physical and social world. (Read Sigmund Freud’s 1926 Britannica essay on psychoanalysis.) According to psychoanalytic theory, the ego coexists with the id (said to...