The Misanthrope's Corner.(changing ideas of Freudian ego)(Brief Article)(Column)

Nobody talks about "Yankee ingenuity" anymore but it used to be a proud catchphrase. Americans were the people who could invent anything, from machines to ourselves.

We used the same technique for both. First, we discerned what was needed and produced it, then we identified the kinks and tinkered with them until we came up with a new, improved model. On the personal level we spoke unabashedly of "reinventing ourselves," celebrating the practice as an essential part of the American Dream.

As long as we confined our ingenuity to machines and self-improvement we had the advantage of dealing with physical matter. You might lose an arm in a machine or a spouse in a quest for a new image, but at least these things are tangible.

The same cannot be said for our latest venture. We're tinkering with concepts now, and the one we have decided to improve upon is so abstract that we don't even realize we're tinkering with it: Freud's theory of Ego, Superego, and Id.

The Ego is a nice young man with rosy cheeks and good prospects. The commonsense realm of the psyche, the Ego urges us to act out of self- interest; to do things that grease our path through life and make us look good, such as deferring to the boss, being neat and clean, and telling white lies. This Freudian Ego, once the American beau ideal, was derailed when the Sixties enshrined "authenticity" and demanded unconditional acceptance. We granted it, carefully refraining from finding fault with anybody for anything, until the new, improved American Ego brought about the collapse of civility that the best and the brightest bemoan and ponder on every op-ed page.

Freud's Superego is a teacher's pet in a Roman toga. The idealistic realm of the psyche, the Superego governs abstractions like duty, honor, nobility of spirit, and making decisions on "a matter of principle." But duty, honor, noble spirits, and matters of principle are lofty stuff, and we can't have that: Somebody might feel "threatened."

There is something Roman about lofty abstractions, but there is nothing Roman about easily threatened Americans unless you count the gelatinous blob that washes ashore at the end of La Dolce Vita. Give them a choice between acting on principle and following the bumper-sticker injunction to commit a random act of kindness, and they will take the bumper sticker every time. No country that has declared war on elitism can tolerate a Freudian Superego, so we have produced an American model, the Make-Nice PDQ. It runs on empty.