According to Sigmund Freud, our personality begins to form just after we are born, and the first part of our psyche to emerge is the Id. The Id is the very beginning of forming our individual personalities and is the part of our psyche that ensures our basic human needs are met. He described this as our ‘pleasure principle’. The Id desires anything that feels good at that time and has zero consideration for the situation or anything other than its own satisfaction. When we were babies, and we felt hungry, the Id then conveyed this desire by crying for food. We screamed when we were: hungry, in pain, wanted attention or were uncomfortable. The Id drove this behaviour until our needs were met and all of this regardless of whether our parents were asleep, awake, in a quiet church or on an aeroplane.
As we grew and began to interact with the world, the next part of our personality to form was the ‘Ego’. The Ego, or ‘Reality Principle’, understands that the needs of others are now in the equation and that we have to consider them too. It helps you to find your space within your family, and then it broadens to your interactions with your peers and lastly to society as a whole. It is a common belief that humans have such large brains because they need that capacity to navigate such complex societal structures. The Ego begins to kerb impulsiveness and self-centred type behaviour because It understands that ‘cause and effect’ are now things. The role of the Ego is to meet the needs and wants of the Id while taking into consideration the realities of a situation.
The last ego state to emerge is the Superego, and this is our ethics and moral compass. It gets its blueprint based on the rules and guidance given to us by the adults charged with our care (parents, teachers etc.). Think about that for a minute; it’s big stuff! The Superego comes along when we are around the age of 5-6 years old, and we don’t have the mental capacity to understand that the moral stuff we are taking on board is just that particular adult’s view of the world, their thinking! We take what we hear from them as a version of the truth, and this then feeds into our thinking and becomes part of the reality of the world we live in. At this time we are also beginning to get exposed to belief systems and popular culture, and they come with the free add-ons of piety, intolerance, guilt, shame, but also compassion, love and understanding. As we age, it is as though the negative, doubt-filled thinking stays with us for prolonged periods of time, sticking like Velcro, and positive self-image thoughts, while intermittently attainable, end up slipping off like Teflon.
When I was a wee girl, my mother knew if I was telling her a lie or was taking steps to hide anything from her, she always got to the bottom of it. Also, when I was hurt or in hot water for something that I didn’t do, I’d tell her the truth, and she’d believe me every time. She instinctively knew when I was being authentic or not.
In 1972, for my birthday, I asked for: A Bay City Rollers Jumper, a pair of black brogues, a box-pleat skirt and a blue coat with a faux fur collar (and that had to be from Rita’s shop at the Barras). My parents and I went shopping the week before my birthday and they bought me everything on the list but when we got home, and I went to take my new stuff to my room, my mother said, “no you don’t girl, you can have them on your birthday” and took them from me and put them away in her wardrobe. I was very upset; Friday night was the youth club disco/fashion parade and nothing would do but I had to be wearing that outfit. I begged and begged to be able to wear my new clothes, but mum flat refused to give in. Having tried all of the influencing skills in my arsenal, including sulking in my room and trying in vain to get dad onside, I got together with my best friend and partner in crime, Annette and hatched a plan.
I lived across the back from Annette so it was easy to be conspiratorial over the garden fence. Annette also had an outfit in mind to wear to the dance, but the dress and shoes she wanted to wear were not hers. The outfit in question belonged to her big sister Audrey, and she’d just ordered it from her aunt’s catalogue to wear to a wedding on the Saturday. There was no way on earth she would ever have loaned them to Annette, she was already constantly screaming at her and hitting for ‘touching her stuff’.
On the Friday we snuck home from school at lunchtime after my mum had gone to work. I let myself into the house and went to her wardrobe and took the clothes. I stuffed them into a duffle bag then went into the bottom of the garden to get Annette’s bag from where she had hidden it that morning before setting off to school. We took both bags and I hid them under a hessian sack in my dad’s garden shed. Bags secured, we headed back to school buzzing with the adrenaline of our adventure and our plans for the dance that night.
That night I got ready for the dance with my music playing loudly. I put on my Arthur Blacks, high waisted trousers and my pale blue army shirt. Ready, I went downstairs to say goodbye to my folks and to ask them for my pocket money for the dance. I twirled around in the centre of the lounge asking them “how do I look”? “Like a boy,” said my dad, “like a young Elvis, if Elvis supported Glasgow Rangers” I over laughed at his weak joke, then I affectionately kissed them both and left the house. I headed off towards the youth club and once out of their sight; I swerved back round to the street behind ours to Annette’s house to wait it out. We were going to make our move when the kitchen light went off because this was the signal that my parents were settling down for the night to watch the telly. We gave it a minute or two after the kitchen went dark, and then we climbed over her fence and snuck quietly into the shed. In the dark of the shed, we changed our clothes and snuck back over the fence and then went off in the highest spirits to parade our style at the youth club dance.
For the first 10 minutes or so, we were as high as kites. We were sure that everyone was admiring us in our trendy gear and we were convincing each other that the boys we liked were looking at us differently. Somehow though, and very quickly, it stopped being fun. We were naturally freaked out about getting any marks at all on our clothes, and the slightest spillage seemed to us like the other kids were just wildly sloshing orange juice around, but it was in fact ‘the fear’ that was gripping us. The situation was quickly becoming stressful, and we were experiencing anxiety by thinking about the consequences of getting caught. Our emotions now thoroughly hijacked, we hurriedly left the dance and went as quickly as Annette’s heals could carry us back to the shed to change. We went straight to the bench where we had stashed the bags only to find them gone! I was horrified and felt sick to my stomach. We searched again and then had a cold realisation hit us that someone had removed them. I had no other choice but to go into the house wearing these clothes that I now hated and Annette wanted to come with me in the hope that I could lend her something to wear to go home in.
I opened our front door to see my mum sitting on the sofa with the lounge door wide open looking directly at us. She had a stern look on her face and my duffle bag at her feet. I just stood there rooted to the spot, crying. “Come in here,” she said sternly, “let your dad see what you’re wearing”. With my legs feeling like lead, I moved at an almost unperceivable pace until her voice raised to a level where it would have been more dangerous not to move. I stepped into the light and felt more exposed than I would have done had I been naked. Annette shuffled in behind me, and we stood huddled together a very sorry looking pair. My mum said pointing at Annette and then the door “go home Annette. Your bag’s there, and your mum and sister are waiting for you”. Horrified and bawling Annette left the house and left me to face my parent’s disappointment on my own. “Go to bed”, she said, looking away with disgust “I’ll speak to you about this in the morning”. I ran upstairs crying.
The Id wanted to wear the clothes, the ego said borrow them, and the superego said this is bad, there will be consequences. ‘The fear’, and my love for my folks had me tell myself “you’re a terrible daughter, they deserved better than you” and all along it was my thinking that caused my all of my troubles. Continually thinking about how much I wanted to wear the clothes, led me to take them in the first place. Thinking about how to act “normally” when setting off for the dance, led me to behave as if I was up to no good. Thinking about the consequences of being caught gave me fear and anxiety and ruined the dance completely. Thinking about what I had done caused me a night of emotional pain.
The next day we went to the Salvation Army ‘War on Want’ shop, and my mum made me donate my new clothes to the ‘needy’ (she let me keep the coat). Audrey did get to wear her dress and shoes to the wedding, and Annette got ‘battered’ and ‘kept in’ (Scottish; Smacked hard and grounded). We both spent weeks ‘hard labour’ doing everything anyone asked of us whenever they asked. We had a lot of time to think.
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