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The upcoming discussion will update you about the difference between personality and ego.
Personality is different from the ego or the individual self. The word ‘ego’ may be used for that unified part of one’s personality which in ordinary language we call T’. Warren defined ego as “the individual’s conception of himself.”
This ‘I’ or ‘ego’ makes one distinguish himself from external objects or other personalities and it is distinct as a restricted unity in comparison with other elements of personality. An impulse may, for example, be left coming from outside the system of the ego as when we say “I felt an impulse to hit him but I resisted it.”
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To psychoanalysis ‘ego’ is the superficial part of the ‘Id’ (the whole body of impulses or tendencies) which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world through the senses, which has become imbued with consciousness and whose functions are the testing of reality and the acceptance in part of the demands or wishes made by impulses emanating from the ‘Id’.
There has always been a fierce metaphysical controversy regarding the nature of the ego or the self. Sometimes, it is identified with the “pure spirit” and sometimes with what Warren calls “an individual regarded as conscious of his own continuing identity and of his relation to the environment.”
The ‘self’ is sometimes understood as the core of personality. According to Healy, the social and private behaviour which manifests the specific texture and colour of one’s personality is only the external and observable side of the fabric which is woven upon a more abiding and sustaining structure as the internal core and which defies the empirical or the introspective approach.
This internal and supporting structure of personality is the self, according to Healy, and this has formed the central problem in recorded philosophic thought for three thousand years. It is difficult to discuss the nature of this thread upon which all growths and experiences, physical or mental, are said to be strung as beads are strung in a string, since it is out of the scope of this study to go into metaphysical discussions.
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Suffice to say that personality is more than the ego or that the ego is the pivot of personality and a personality is weak or strong as the ego is weak or strong, but a heightened sense of the ego does not mean a wholesome or well-developed personality since a strong personality is not necessarily a healthy personality.