There is the:
WHAT I WANT – Desires/Needs/ID
WHAT SHOULD BE – Superego/Morals
ARBITER, DECISION MAKER/EXECUTIVE – Ego/Decider/Action
When the ego/self/personality structure does not integrate the ID and superego, there is internal strife.
If the super-ego is too large – there is inhibition by guilt, other-centered martyr. May get exploited.
If the ID is too large – there is the asshole, self-centered bully. May exploit.
Since the ego is the arbiter, the ego will notice it gets hijacked by guilt (super-ego) while the neglected part screams. Similarly the ego can also notice if it gets hijacked by desires and the neglected morals would scream back.
If we take the caricature form:
If the super-ego entirely dominates – we will have a perfect martyr personality, excessive empathy, entirely other focused.
If the ID entirely dominates – we will have a psychopath, 0 empathy, entirely self-confused.
So it seems like, the ego (which is vilified in other spiritual contexts) actually in this model, serves an integrating function, a harmonizing function in consciousness. So we need to have an extremely capable and strong ego that can integrate both the entire Super-ego(morality, empathy) and the entire ID (unconscious) and maintain a beautiful music and harmony between them.
Maybe that is the function of the ego, to balance the infinity on both sides:
(infinite superego, ideals)+ve infinity —————Ego(arbiter)————— -ve infinity(infinite unconscious)
We could look at it in multiple ways:
(consciousness, knowledge, understanding, coherence)Light———–(Ego)————–Darkness(unconsciousness, unknown, mystery/wonder, chaos)
Journey to the Abstract 