So you think you're self-centred

I have a tendency to write, and think, often about words or situations of egotistic nature, such as hubris. Yet until recently I had never truly known what an ego was and I only found that through the word id.

Your id is the unconscious that craves for gratification and pleasure thus the source of all your impulses. Which then leads into your ego giving preconscious realisation to the id's wants and helping those wants in a way that will benefit the long term and not cause grief to yourself. Finally you have the conscious, or as Freud called it your super-ego. This is where your thoughts lie, your beliefs and the sense of wrong and right. Thus, any guilt you ever feel is created by your own conscious as a mental repercussion of doing something you have judges as being wrong.

So you can see that to be egotistical is to work to realise your id's primal wants without consideration of a moral compass. This would suggest that all the greed and personal gratification people strive for which in turn can cause sadness of others is all due to under developed super-egos, although some may mistake you for being hubris if you where to say 'I have a massive super-ego' even though in fact you are saying quite the opposite.

When you start to think of your brain in this way; id giving the want, the ego the drive and the super-ego the check at the end it can give illumination on why you act as you do. Not that I am suggesting that a lack of super-ego is an excuse to do what you want but it could be a cause.