Who’s in Charge? You or Your Inflated Rogue Ego?

You are not your Ego. No matter how big it’s become.

As psychologists use the term, your Ego should simply be the part of you that serves an executive function. It deals with reality and gets stuff done. It should help you navigate the difficult waters of an often unfriendly world, but it should not be the one that decides where the ship is going. Too often, like a mutinous ship captain, the Executive Ego turns to the Dark Side and becomes an Inflated Rogue Ego. It decides to go to Baltimore rather than the Bahamas. It takes command rather than taking orders.

It’s supposed to be a servant, not a master, and to represent the interests of the larger personality, not, like a jaded politician, its own interests. To expand on the sea-captain metaphor, it should be taking directions from whoever owns the ship. That would be you. The bigger you, with all its different parts.

Problem is, the Inflated Rogue Ego may block the rest of you from making itself known.

Self-Esteem and the Not-So-Egotistical Inflated Rogue Ego

Now some of you may be thinking, “This doesn’t apply to me. I am not egotistical. In fact, I have no Ego. I suffer from VLSE (Very Low Self Esteem).” Not to worry. You may still well meet the criteria for the condition I am describing-Inflated Rogue Ego Syndrome, or, IRES.

This is not about conceit. It’s not about feeling better than others. That’s a common misunderstanding about the Ego, which is supposed to be there just to help you execute what you want to do. Intead, in it’s never-ending quest for practicality and safety, it makes you a human doing rather than a human being.

The Executive Ego Versus the Conceited Ego

But too often it does become about conceit. Though not the conceit you may be imagining.

You see, the problem with an executive function that goes rogue is that it becomes too big and crowds out other parts of the personality. Even if it thinks it’s the Sorriest Little Ego in the World (SLEW), it still thinks it’s the only part of you that’s worth considering-the know all and be all. As proud of its accomplishments as a toddler is of his first poop in the can.

It forgets that there is more to you than executive functioning, that you also have desires to play and rest and muse and celebrate and savor and love. To Be, rather than just Do.

As Carl Jung said in many different ways, we all walk in shoes too small for us.

This ego becomes inflated when it feels that getting things done is all there is to us. We imagine, however unconsciously, that it will save us from our insecurity, so we turn over our power to it. We let it take the wheel of our ship to guide and supposedly protect us, when it would be better that it cleared a path for other parts of us, such as our poetry, connections with people, or passion for popular mechanics. All the things that give us meaningful direction.

To shift the metaphor slightly, it’s as if the Ego becomes a cancer. It thinks it’s protecting you by proliferating, but it crowds out your essential functions instead.

The Conscious Ego’s Lack of Consciousness

It believes that it knows how things should be and convinces itself that that is the . This is how over-control gets started. The over-controlling Ego likes to think that it operates based on correctness, when really it only evolved these ideas to handle such situations as overly demanding parents, unforgiving environments, and bullying adolescent peers so horrified of their own inadequacies that they needed to push you down so they could get a leg up.

Forgive ego, for, ironically, it knows not what it does.

I am simplifying, of course. Reasonable adults could have a heated discussion as to whether what I am describing as the Ego is “anatomically” correct from a psychoanalytic point of view. Or whether there is actually anything in the brain that we could point to as the ego-executive or inflated. Go ahead and have that argument if you’d like. In fact, I’ll join you when I take a different perspective in another post soon.

But for now my intention is to describe it from an experiential point of view, how it actually feels. And my point is that the “I” we usually identify with, the conscious Ego, has lost the major point of the activity-which would be living life, not merely surviving it. To make the most of this post, notice as your read if you can feel the control and presence of Inflated Rogue Ego.

The Healthy Ego

But before I continue to put the Ego in its place, I really should give it its due. The Ego, in its healthy form, serves a necessary function, and we couldn’t get by without it.

The executive Ego that I am referring to helps you to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and helps you to act in accordance with that reality. When functioning well, it doesn’t use denial or avoidance when things get scary. It helps you to tolerate frustration and stress, delay gratification, restrain overly selfish desires, and manage internal conflicts well enough that you don’t go apoplectic when the waiter brings you ceviche instead of cerveza.

It gets you to pay your taxes, shovel snow, and brush your teeth no matter how boring those things are. It will get you a car, put gas in the tank and drive within the lines.

But it has no idea where to drive or what it’s driving for.

It’s kind of a bummer, but the reality is that we have to spend a couple of decades building up an Ego, only to have to trim it down to size eventually.

The Unhealthy Obsessive-Compulsive Ego

The Inflated Rogue Ego is the embodiment of the unhealthy obsessive-compulsive personality. The compulsive part fights for order even when it’s not necessary. The obsessive part likes to think, and it likes to think that life is all about control. The emotions that it values most are those of and righteous , not so much peace, love and that feeling you get when you savor a piece of finely crafted caramel chocolate truffle.

Gratification is allocated strictly on a morals-and-merit-based system.

Like any dictator, the unhealthy Ego convinces you that it can solve all of your problems if you hand things over to them, and then it conveniently forgets that it said it was going to serve. Typically, in the case of those with obsessive-compulsive personality, it says that it can save you by fixing that disturbing doubt about whether you are good-morally good. It says, “Just let me run your life with discipline, planning, and perfectionism and all will be well.” Instead of serving you, it demands that you serve it. It promises protection but delivers depression.

Hubris, Dionysus, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding

The ancient Greeks were warned against the dangers of hubris, seeing themselves as the center of the world rather than acknowledging the role of the gods. The gods symbolize different aspects of the personality, archetypal forces that are always present and always influential. Whether that influence is conscious and intentional is determined partly by whether the Ego allows you to be aware of it. In its hubris the Ego denies the relevance of parts such as the Explorer, the Hedonist, the Romantic, the Innocent, the Jester, and the Trickster. Will these forces be shadowy and rebellious, or consciously integrated?

Just ask King Lycurgus, whose Inflated Rogue Ego imprisoned Dionysus and his followers instead of joining in their celebrations. Dionysus is the god of merriment, wine, theatre, and ecstasy, and man did he show King Lycurgus a thing or two. Lycurgus’s kingdom stopped bearing fruit after imprisoning them. He became mad and killed his own son. Afterward, his madness ceased, but his country remained barren. Dionysus said it would remain so until the King died. His people, in despair, put Lycurgus in chains, and Dionysus had him torn to pieces by horses.

To translate psychologically, if you don’t give your inner Dionysus some respect, he will drive you crazy with obsessions that tear you apart.

Think about that the next time your Inflated Rogue Ego wants to crowd out celebration with to-do lists.

Compare Lycurgus with Gus, the domineering and ever-controlling patriarch in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Gus eventually learns to get his Big Fat Ego out of the way so that his daughter can flourish and marry the man of her dreams. The celebration goes on and they all live happily ever after.

Carl Jung’s Realignment of the Ego

This was the essence of Carl Jung’s method of psychotherapy: see what aspects of the personality the inflated Ego has been blocking, draw those parts out, and enlist the healthy Ego in supporting those parts rather than repressing them.

One way that Jung described the human psyche was as comprised of Personality One and Personality Two. Personality One is practical but lacks meaning. It values status and security more than growth and evolution. Personality Two embraces the meaning inherent in becoming as whole a person as possible. His goal was to have Personality One in service to Peronality Two, which is not always so easy.

So, the issue is not necessarily that your Ego is conceited because it thinks it’s better than other egos. The problem is that it thinks it’s better than all the other parts of you, the ones that would rather live with spontaneity, joy, and ease, than with order, self-control, and fastidiousness.

Recovering Other Parts

Each of us is different and I can’t say what parts of you your Ego may be repressing. But for many people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies these repressed parts are the ones that value passion more than perfectionism, wonder more than work, and connection more than castration.

Not to mention play more than production.

No matter how overused the concept of the Inner Child has become, it still denotes something very useful, especially to compulsives-who have typically locked the child in the trunk as it drives off with no meaningful destination in mind.

Worse, the Inflated Rogue Ego can pose as if it carries meaning and works for justice, but really only carries empty righteousness and fights for security.

It likes to think of itself as a hero, but has forgotten what the real quest is for.

It may take on the mantle of the artist, but uses that mantle to prove worth, forgetting that you originally wanted to express truth and beauty.

It may use a caregiver role, originally entered into out of genuine love, to control the opinions of others, proving that you are morally good.

You and Your Inflated Rogue Ego

My hope is that this post will help you to develop a healthy and conscious relationship between you and your Ego. That little conjunction “and” is meant to first differentiate, and then to connect, these parts of you that have been driven so far apart. Maybe I should have titled it, You and Your Ego Should Go to the Playground Together and Have Some Fun.

Don’t confuse Ego with I. And don’t let it chart the destination of your ship.

Originally published at https://thehealthycompulsive.com on September 12, 2023.