egon.

1789 W. Cowper Let. 6 June (1982) III. 282 To thee, both Ego and all that Ego does, is interesting.]

1824 J. Galt Rothelan II. 201 He plainly regarded Ego as one of the most captivating of the human race.

1829 Edinb. Rev. 50 200 In every act of consciousness we distinguish a self or ego.

1846 G. H. Lewes Biogr. Hist. Philos. IV. 174 The Ego is essentially an Activity; consequently free.

1870 W. E. Gladstone Primer of Homer (1878) 142 The harmonious laws of his mind are everywhere visibly at work—but the ego—the mere personality—is nowhere to be traced.

1871 J. Tyndall Fragm. Sci. (ed. 6) II. iv. 51 While the Non-ego shifts, the Ego remains the same.

1913 C. Mackenzie Sinister St. I. i. vii. 103 He was often first with the claimant ‘ego’, when someone shouted ‘quis?’ over a broken pocket-knife found.

1959 I. Opie & P. Opie Lore & Lang. Schoolchildren viii. 134 In private schools a child who wishes to dispose of something..calling out ‘Quis?’ and the boy or girl who first replies ‘Ego’ receives the object and may say (to the horror of the classicist) ‘I egoed it’.

1891 R. Kipling Light that Failed v. 72 I've made a discovery. Torp, there's too much Ego in my Cosmos.

1907 Daily Chron. 13 Feb. 7/4 By ‘exaggerated ego’,..he meant a disproportionate idea of the importance of oneself and a belief that one was clothed with powers, capacities, and ability far above the normal or above those actually possessed.

1953 S. Kauffmann Philanderer vi. 97 The quarrels—which had begun between him and his wife simply because his ego could not possibly be satiated even when fortune was good—increased terribly now.

1962 J. D. Salinger Franny & Zooey 166 You keep talking about ego. My God, it would take Christ himself to decide what's ego and what isn't.

1894 Brain 17 130 By reason of the clouding over of the ego produced in one case by hypnotism, in another by nervous shock, an idea once installed..will further develop and acquire sufficient force for objective realisation.

1910 H. W. Chase tr. S. Freud in Amer. Jrnl. Psychol. 21 193 The incompatibility of the idea in question with the ‘ego’ of the patient was the motive of the repression.

1922 J. Strachey tr. S. Freud Group Psychol. vii. 69 We have been driven to the hypothesis that some such faculty develops in our ego which may cut itself off from the rest of the ego and come into conflict with it. We have called it the ‘ego ideal’, and by way of functions we have ascribed to it self-observation, the moral conscience, the censorship of dreams, and the chief influence in repression.

1927 J. Riviere tr. S. Freud Ego & Id v. 83 Like the dweller in a borderland that it is, the ego tries to mediate between the world and the id, to make the id comply with the world's demands and, by means of muscular activity, to accommodate the world to the id's desires.

1943 Psychol. Rev. 50 454 In a semi-doze we lose all sense of our egos though we may be conscious enough of impersonal items.

1943 H. Read Educ. through Art vi. 197 The super-ego is the direct representative of the unconscious, of the id, and hence the possibility, indeed, the inevitability of a conflict with the ego, a conflict between what is perceptual and real and what is imaginative and ideal.

1873 Brit. Q. Rev. LVII. 79 We must face..the reality of our own ego-hood.

1906 S. S. Laurie Synthetica II. 241 This is his return to God, from Whom his negating Egohood for a time separates him.

1951 E. H. Erikson Childhood & Society iii. vii. 228 The sense of ego identity, then, is the accrued confidence that the inner sameness and continuity are matched by the sameness and continuity of one's meaning for others, as evidenced in the tangible promise of a ‘career’.

1964 J. M. Argyle Psychol. & Social Probl. x. 129 A very important kind of cognitive learning is that in which a person comes to look at himself in a different way—his self-perception or ‘ego-identity’ is changed.

1977 A. Giddens Stud. in Social & Polit. Theory ix. 311 Frustration generated by disjunction between ego-ideal and ego provides the basis for aggression turned against the ‘inadequate’ ego-identity.

1969 It 13–28 June 11/2 They're using the music as a vehicle for character and personality building. I don't think they're half as much a musical ego-trip as people imagine.

1970 Observer 20 Sept. 26/1 His was no musical ego-trip, no money-grubbing Tin-Pan Alley beano feast.

1970 N.Y. Mag. 16 Nov. 6/2 Father ego-tripping on his children's academic and other achievements.

1970 Melody Maker 12 Sept. 29 Ego tripper... That's me, folks!

1972 Atlantic Monthly Oct. 80 What is overlooked in the inevitable discussion of the alleged ego-tripping in Mailer's writing is that these more ‘modest’ selves are often at work in the sounds and turns of his sentences.

1972 N.Y. Times Bk. Rev. 12 Nov. 63 Tate's poems are not..bardic, political, populist, confessional, ego-tripping, hash-inspired or full of fine sentiments and derivative techniques.

1977 Time (Europe ed.) 7 Mar. 2/3 Sadly for Ireland, O'Brien is but one of the ego-tripping ministers in the present coalition government.

1984 D. Lodge Small World iv. iii. 308 All that travelling away from home and duty, staying in swanky hotels, ego-tripping, partying, generally overindulging.