Id in psychoanalysis

Id is the most basic and unconscious component of the personality in Freudian psychoanalytic theory. It consists of the instinctual drives—especially sexual and aggressive impulses—and is governed by the pleasure principle, seeking immediate satisfaction without concern for logic, morality, or reality. Present from birth, the id functions entirely outside of awareness, producing psychic energy (libido) and operating through primary processes like fantasy and dream-fulfillment. It is in contrast with the ego and superego, which emerge later to mediate and regulate its demands. (Compare with: ego; superego)

Source: APA Dictionary of Psychology (2018)

The id is the wholly unconscious and instinctual part of the mind, containing the drives (Triebe) and the psychical representatives of somatic stimuli. It operates entirely according to the pleasure principle and is devoid of logic, morality, or temporal awareness. Freud described it as “the dark, inaccessible part of our personality… a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations.”

Sources: Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923); Laplanche & Pontalis, The Language of Psychoanalysis (1973)

Freud conceived of the id as the psychic reservoir of instinctual energy, in which impulses are timeless, illogical, and driven by biological needs. The id is not governed by coherent mental processes or a sense of self but is instead dominated by primary process thinking—such as condensation and displacement—that finds symbolic expression in dreams and neuroses. Its operations remain inaccessible to consciousness and are often inferred indirectly through slips of the tongue, symptoms, and fantasies. The id has no moral orientation, making it the source of both vital energy and potential destructiveness, depending on how it is managed by the ego and superego.