What happens when your Ego gets out of the way

What exactly happens when your EGO gets out of the way? Especially if you live in a world dominated by technology and cyberware and you plan to make some bodily changes of your own?

In order to use psychoanalysis and posthumanism as the foundation for David’s analysis (a character from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the anime series based on the role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077), we should specify what exactly concerns us from the two theories already mentioned.

We know that before Freud’s revolutionary ideas, the “common view of the human mind was represented by reason vs. feeling” (Lorelei Caraman). What is of interest for this essay is Freud’s tripartite structure of the mind – ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO – and the “Three Blows to Man’s Narcissism” (Lorelei Caraman), specifically the 3rd one, the psychological one, that states the fact that “man is not the master of his own mind” (Freud, A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-analysis).

Before we turn our focus on posthumanism, we need to mention that we are interested in the branch called ‘transhumanism’ and what this entails, i.e. the anthropocentric view of ‘human’ that is being challenged by what this theory stands for – the enhancement of humans via technology. That means that we no longer believe that “humans alone possess intrinsic value” ("Anthropocentrism"), but we look at the human being as something that can be enhanced. This idea is also reinforced by the definition of transhumanism “the belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology” ("Transhumanism"). The downside of the evolvement beyond mental limitations is encompassed in the susceptibility of developing a mental illness known as cyberpsychosis.

Before we start to apply these two theories to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, we need to explain what psychosis and cyberpsychosis are. Psychosis appears as a reaction to the fact that the EGO principle is taken over by ID, so the reality principle is not functioning because it is taken over by what we call the “reservoir of primal instincts” (Lorelei Caraman). Cyberpsychosis on the other hand is defined as “a mental illness, specifically a dissociative disorder, caused by an overload of cybernetic augmentations to the body” ("Cyberpsychosis"). If we look more closely at Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, we can see that cyberpsychosis is the equivalent of psychosis in a world dominated by technology. Analyzing David Martinez’s case, we will be able to detect that cyberpsychosis also appears as a reaction to the loss of the reality principle. This reality principle is being represented in the anime series by David’s mother – Gloria. That being said, the loss of his mother needs to be accompanied by cybernetics modifications to the body in order to make him more prone to developing cyberpsychosis than others: “cyberpsychosis can eventually affect anyone modified with cybernetics, but the less empathetic or psychologically stable a person is, the more susceptible they are to it” ("Cyberpsychosis").

The event that marks David’s descent into what Foucault explained as ‘mania’ in Madness and civilization. A history of insanity in the age of reason “The essential symptoms of mania result from the fact that objects do not present themselves to the sufferers as they are in reality” (142) is when he accidentally kills a civilian that resembles his mother, known to us as the embodiment of the EGO. After he symbolically kills his ego, he starts experiencing episodes of mania, delusional thinking, and even hallucinations. This state of delirium is being explained by Foucault as “(The delirium of maniacs is) not determined by a particular error of judgment; it constitutes a defect in the transmission of sense impressions to the brain, a flaw in communication” (Madness and civilization 142).

Now that we have uncovered everything that we need, we can proceed to answer the question mentioned at the beginning of this essay. What exactly happens when your EGO gets out of the way? Especially if you live in a world dominated by technology and cyberware and you plan to make some bodily changes of your own? We know now that augmentations to the body lead indeed to an enhanced human, from the perspective of physical abilities, just as the theory of transhumanism states, but it can make way for developing mental illnesses. Changing one’s parts of body with cyberware helps in creating a better human (H+) in both physical and mental respects, but those that suffer from recent traumatic experiences are more susceptible to becoming cyberpsychos. When someone becomes emotionally destabilized, just as David was, and has already had some major changes done to his body, it can lead to the evolvement of cyberpsychosis. An “(…) overload of cybernetic augmentations to the body” ("Cyberpsychosis") leads to the loss of the EGO and thus, the arise of cyberpsychosis, showing once again that “man is not the master of his own mind” (Freud A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-analysis) even if he can be the master of his own body, via technology and cyberware.

Works cited:

1. "Anthropocentrism". https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/anthropocentrism#:~:text=Anthropocentrism%3A%20What%20is%20it%3F,or%20in%20their%20instrumental%20value . Accessed on 3 January 2023.

2. Caraman, Lorelei. Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theories. “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iași, 2022. Course handout.

3. Cyberpsychosis. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Cyberpsychosis . Accessed on 2 January 2023.

4. Foucault, Michel. Madness and civilization. A history of insanity in the age of reason. Translated from french by Richard Howard, Vintage Books, New York, 1988. PDF file.

5. Freud, Sigmund. A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-analysis. London, 1955. PDF file.

6. Transhumanism. https://www.google.com/search?q=transhumanism+meaning&rlz=1C1JZAP_enRO1008RO1008&oq=transhumanism+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512l9.7446j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 . Accessed on 3 January 2023.