I dunno about that, I think that having reigns on my id has kept me out of a lot of shit. In my teen years, I was helpless to stop that beast, and it did a lot of damage to me and the people around me.
I would say that the more I mastered my "id" impulses, the less I've allowed it to hijack my control panel, the more my happiness has been increased and my suffering decreased.
There is definitely a problem if you are denying the id everything it wants, but there is a long range between resisting impulses and being a stick-up-the-ass puritan. I do let my id out to play, but ideally, that's a choice I consciously make.
On a whim, I gave up something for lent this year. Without getting into details--it's been an ongoing test of self control. The first few days really made me question my own capacity to change a pleasurable habit. As we pull into the home stretch, I feel like I have exercised something, built up a kind of muscle... and that feels pretty damn good too.
The issue with the Id is that it functions on the basis of the pleasure principle regardless of morals or consequences... it demands satisfaction with no regards to anyone or anything, so I can understand the problems with just letting it loose.
I dont think we really disagree, the Ego after all is the residence of conscience and reality principle, but the Ego in itself has a lot of traps and issues in itself... narcissism, rationalization, the tendency to always being hijacked by peer pressure...
Let the Id run free and you have either artists, psychopaths or psychotics... let the Ego run misdirected and uncontested and you have a suit, or a repressed normie that follows the letter of the law...
So I still personally reject the notion of "caging, dominating" the Id, which doesnt mean im a degenerate follower of Reich or Marcuse (they see all repression or self-control as the root of all problems), id prefer speaking of doing diplomacy or agreements between Id and Ego, between pleasure and reality principles... we cant be tyrants with ourselves and expect a part of us not to revolt, at the end of the day i think its problem of inner governance.
And ill give a very crude example myself, sometimes i dont jack off when im in the mood just so that instead of wasting that powerful energy i can spend it on exersice, reading, writing... in a sense it was a delayed and transformed gratification, but it provides a comparable degree of satisfaction whilst being actually productive.
