Is it possible to locate the ego in the human body?
Has the ego always been part of the human race or has it developed according to the development of man? If so, what has been the cause for it’s existence?
And I don’t mean the concept ego that Freud invented I mean the need for human beings to ‘feel good or accomplished or accepted or superior” (sorry I can’t describe it more accurately. I don’t choose Freud’s concept of ego because that’s his theory and I don’t consider that necesarily as ‘truth’. it’s his construct.
Do you mean the ego as in “id, ego, superego” (freud)? Or do you mean the ego, like how good someone feels about themselves?
The exact physical location of the concept explain by Freud of as the “ego” is not really the point. If the organism is inanimate (dead), then the ego clearly does not exist, unlike the frontal lobe, or an organ. Rather, it is accepted that the ego is a phenomenon requiring dorsal stream processing, and thus is perception based. This “dorsal stream” is an anatomically and functionally distinct subsystem of the visual system that projects to dorsal temporal and parietal cortex and is highly responsive to motion. Therefore, it isn’t specifically attributable to one part of the brain or the other.
Self awareness is one of the major differences between complex and simple organisms and as we relatively defensless organisms developed our brains to overcome our natural disadvantages, we developed higher conceptual abilities such as abstract thought.
Forensic anthropologists believe that the reason homo sapiens exists (and possibly is not a descendant of homo neanderthalensis (neanderthal man)) is that Homo Sapiens was able to develop these higher process which facilitated social cooperation and abstraction. Homo Sapiens, after all, means “thinking man”.