THE THEORY OF THE 3 SOULS by Joel Sattler

Mr. Freud has a theory of mind in mind, a model if you will, of the three parts of the tools of the psyche: Id, Ego and Superego [first suggested in his “Jenseits des Lustprinzips” in 1920 {“Beyond the Pleasure Principle”} and solidified in “Das Ich und Das Es” in 1923 {“The Ego and the Id”}]. In my own peculiar shorthand, I define the Id as “need”, the Ego as “will” and the Superego as “conscience”.

But it’s only a theory.

Still, it’s quite useful. You can make all sorts of complex games out of it. You might even get to the point where you can understand some things that were mysterious and/or unknown to you before.

Or, at least, pretend to.

Or, at the very least, succumb to the delusion of knowledge.

I have been musing and amusing myself for some time with a “Theory of the 3 Souls” as a key to the toy box of models we call the brain. Perhaps you may find it of some use, even if you are a religious fundamentalist and/or God believer or dualist/Taoist and/or hardcore atheist.

The first “soul” in you is what grew: the mind and body you were born with, with its memories both mental and physical, its conditioning and behaviorisms, its intellectual and moral educations. You carry it with you and it is not separate from your body and/or your mind. It does not exist or act or survive outside of you.

The second “soul” is the reflection of “God” in you. Or “Jesus”. Or, if you are a non-believer, the “Universe” with a capital “U”. That is to say, reality itself both modifies and mirrors the personality and psychology in such a way as to be perceived as the self outside of the self. You perceive it as existing outside of you, but it does not.

The third “soul” comes from outside of you. Perhaps you may think of it as a “spirit”, but this is dangerous if you come to perceive it as being evil/malevolent. Perhaps you may think of it as “Jesus” or some supernatural creation, informing you what to think and telling you what to do. Is it outside of you? I do not know.

In the course of your life, you may have a number of #3’s pass through you.

The phenomenon of becoming “another person” is well known. How many times have you heard someone say “I was different then” or “I am am/was a better man” or “I have been born again”?

Perhaps it is what Emmanuel Levinas calls “the Other”, i.e., the superior/earlier self that dominates all other internalized selfs. But the concept has been struggled with by de Beauvoir and Lacan and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and many others including that bore Hegel and that putz Sartre.

Perhaps it really is the incarnation of supernatural selves that are disembodied egos looking for a id-particle/person to charge and change [caveat: I don’t have faith in the idea of the “supernatural”, but I also believe that our understanding of such is that of a flea on the Big Dog].

But, as my pal Wittgenstein seems to indicate: words are models, ideas are models of models, theories are models of models of models. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

And reality is a think wholly Other……

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