STREET DOGS: Perils of an overactive ego
Steven Pressfield: Ego — the enemy of what you want and of what you have; of mastering a craft
Freud was fond of explaining the ego through analogy – our ego was the rider on a horse, with our unconscious drives representing the animal while the ego tried to direct them. Modern psychologists tend to use "egotist" to refer to someone dangerously focused on themselves and with a disregard for anyone else. The ego most commonly seen goes by a more casual definition: an unhealthy belief in our own importance. It is arrogance; a self-centred ambition. It is that petulant child in every person, the one that chooses getting his or her way over anything and anyone else. The need to be better than, more than, recognised for, far past any reasonable utility — that is ego. It is the sense of superiority and certainty that exceeds the bounds of confidence and talent. It follows when the notion of ourselves in relation to the world becomes so inflated that it begins to distort external reality, when, as football coach Bill Walsh explained, "self-confidence becomes arrogance, assertiveness...
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