EGO, in classical psychoanalysis, that portion of the personality that mediates between an individual’s biological drives and the obstacles to those drives that are presented either directly or indirectly by the environment. Of the other uses of the term, the most important is that current in analytical psychology, which defines the ego (from Latin ego, meaning “I”) as the individual’s awareness of his continuing selfhood. The functions of the ego, which has both conscious and preconscious components, comprise sensory perception, thinking (including distinguishing between objective and subjective reality), memory, and voluntary motor control.

自我，是经典精神分析中人格的一部分，它介于个体的生物性驱动力与由环境直接或间接呈现的那些驱动力的障碍之间。在该术语的其它用法中，最重要的是分析心理学用法，它将自我（来自拉丁语ego，意思是“我”）定义为个体对其持续自我的意识。包括感官知觉、思考（包括区别客观现实与主观现实），记忆以及自发的运动神经控制。

The concept of the ego was first developed by Sigmund Freud around 1895, but it was clarified in its present form only with the publication of Freud’s The Ego and the Id in 1923. Freud held that personality consists of THREE portions: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id, which is the reservoir of biological impulses, constitutes the entire personality of the infant at birth. Its principle of operation, to guard the person from painful tension, is termed the pleasure principle. Inevitable frustrations of the id, together with what the child learns from his encounters with external reality, generate the ego, which is essentially a mechanism to minimize frustrations of the biological drives in the long run. It operates according to the reality principle. Freud held that the ego had no energy of its own, its dynamics originating in the id. The superego comprises the conscience, a partly conscious system of introjected moral inhibitions, and the ego-ideal, the source of the individual’s standards for his own behavior. Like external reality, from which it derives, the superego often presents obstacles to the satisfaction of biological drives. In general, the function of the ego is to find ways in which such drives can be satisfied within the limitations imposed by the conscience, so as to relieve physical tensions without incurring guilt.

自我的概念是由西格蒙德·弗洛伊德大约在1895年首次提出的，但直到弗洛伊德于1923年出版《自我与本我》才以目前的形式得以明确。弗洛伊德认为，人格由三部分组成：本我，自我和超我。本我，是生物冲动的蓄水池，构成了出生婴儿的全部人格。为保护人免受痛苦的紧张，其运行原则被称为快乐原则。本我不可避免地会受到挫折，连同孩子从接触外部现实中学习的东西，产生了自我，从长远来看，在本质上它是将挫折减少到最低限度的一种机制。它是根据现实原则运行的。弗洛伊德认为，自我没有它自身的能量，它的动力来自本我。超我包括良知，融合了道德禁忌的一部分意识系统，而自我理想，是个体自己行为标准的来源。就像它源于外部的现实一样，超我常常对生物驱动力的满足带来障碍。总之，自我的功能是在良心施加的限制内找出能满足这种驱动力的方法，这样，既能缓解身体的紧张，又不会导致负罪感。

The ego adopts various means to perform its task. Most commonly, the discharge of an impulse originating in the id is simple postponed until the situation is suited to it. In many cases, however, such an impulse can never be discharged directly, and the ego must utilize one of many defense mechanisms in order to protect itself from conflict. It may succeed in transforming the impulse so that it may be EXPRESSED without danger to the individual; otherwise, the impulse may be repressed, in which case its psychic energy accumulates as tension within the personality. When such tensions become excessive, because of deficiency in the ego or external circumstances, neurosis or psychosis result.

自我采用了各种方式来完成任务。最常见的是，简单推迟源于本我冲动的释放，直到情况合适为止。然而，在许多情况下，这样的冲动是永远无法直接释放的，而且自我必须利用许多防御机制中一种来保护自身免受冲突。它可能会成功地转化冲动，这样它就可以得以表达，而不会对个人带来危险；否则，冲动可能被压抑，在此情况下它的精神能量就会在人格中积聚成焦虑。当这种焦虑由于缺乏自我或外部环境，变得过度时，就会导致神经官能症或精神病。

Later psychologists have altered or abandoned Freud’s conception of the ego. Some neo-Freudians consider the ego in some sense autonomous and maintain that it functions sometimes to satisfy its own needs not exclusively those of the id. Among non-Freudian conceptions of the ego, that of the social psychologists Muzafer Sherif and Hadley Cantril defines it as a set of attitudes such as “what I think of myself, what I value, what is mine and what I identify with.” Gordon Allport, a psychologist of personality, distinguished the ego as a process from the ego as an object of knowledge, anticipating the distinction by a later writer (Isidior Chein) between the ego and the self. See also PSYCHOANALYSIS.

后来的心理学家已经改变或放弃了弗洛伊德的自我概念。一些新弗洛伊德主义者认为自我在某种意义上是自主的，并且认为，它有时承担了满足其自身的需要，而不仅仅是本我的那些需要。在非弗洛伊德的自我概念中，社会心理学家穆扎费尔·谢里夫和哈德利·坎特里尔将它定义为一组态度，诸如“我如何看待自己，我看重什么，什么是我的，以及我认同什么”的概念。人格心理学家戈登·奥尔波特，将作为过程的自我与作为知识对象的自我区分开来，预料了后来的作者（Isidior Chein）对自我与自己的区分。也可参阅精神分析词条。

                               AUSTIN E. GRIGG, University of Richmond

                                 奥斯汀·E. 格里格，里奇蒙大学

                                         2023年2月25日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第9卷，第760页）