What is an ego death anyway?

DAvid Harbor is the latest celebrity that experiences the ego death. At least said what he recently said in an interview with Foreign things Star published in GQ. “It's all just a ego,” he told the magazine during a conversation about his own fame. “Somehow it seems silly to say that, but the art I create [the person themselves]And I think we get lost in the idea of ​​how it really works. And I think it is also dangerous for me to get lost in personality in any way. “

The 50-year-old actor continued and served further word salad: “This is part of the problem of people believing the hype, they get into the picture, they forget that everything just … I mean I am not the same person I was this morning. Everything is changing. Everything will change. And that is very, very deep in my heart, now. [life] wanted to go on forever. “

Harbor may not refer to the expression “ego -death” himself (he is in the heading of the article), but frankly he didn't have to. Because now an ego death is an established part of today's language use. On Tikkok, there are countless videos on this topic with so-called “experts”, which provide short, biting sermons about the importance of an ego death as a form of spiritual awakening. “If people ask what I was going to do, but I cannot say that I wired my whole nervous system, had an ego death and condemned cycles of poisonous behaviors, so I just say” a lot “, says the lettering about a viral clip with a man who goes alone with the hashtags:”

It is something that celebrities are particularly common for, so much that it is one of many punch lines in Apple TVs critical. The studioA razor -sharp satire of Hollywoods makers and shake. At some point, a famous actress accidentally overdo it on magical mushrooms and has to give an important speech while she speaks in tongues. “She has an ego death!” One person calls and improves concerns.

If the term “ego death” itself goes out of these slightly ambiguous references, it could literally mean everything. It has an existential crisis and comes on the other. It has a long conversation with a family member or a close friend and feels changed. It can be seen that the world is not about it and that uses this as proof of spiritual enlightenment. It is a particularly strong trip to psychedelics. It is the revival that comes after a fear-inducing hangover.

This rhetoric is part of a long series of poppsychology that has been dominating the online discourse for some time. On social media, the therapy peak has become so widespread that it is almost impossible to know what of it means, if at all about an offer to chop the Instagram algorithm and become viral.

“Terms such as” ego death “,” narcissism “,” trauma “and” triggered “have become all terms in social media that are hollowed out that it is not always clear whether they are thrown around in an informed way or at all,” says Dr. Greg Madison, an existential psychologist and a charter member of the British Psychological Society. The first thing that makes people wrong about “ego -death” is that it shouldn't be spoken as a fact about it. “It is a hypothetical construct,” says Dr. Madison and finds that his psychological use of Freud comes, for which the term originally simply referred to a person's self -confidence.

“It was a central part of its kind to design the dynamics in the human psyche: the train between our instincts, our conscience and our socialization,” explains Dr. Madison. “The ego tries to rationally and work according to the convention. It wants to keep us away from prison and earn his livelihood. In everyday language, however, 'ego' also means grandiosity and the constant need to collect appreciation in order to prove our superiority, ironic to assure ourselves that we are good enough.”

It is due to this contemporary understanding, which has caused the concept of the “ego death”, also as a constant need that his ego is lifted to create space for other, benevolent parts of ourselves, such as empathy, tolerance and compassion. “A” ego death “can therefore appear like a liberation from the limits of a feeling of too bad and constantly managed feeling of identity or freedom of parochial forms of conventional,” adds Dr. Madison added.

How the ego death became part of the pop psychology pit is Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, for which the term was synonymous for “psychological death”, which refers to a transcendental shift within the psyche. Nowadays it is more often associated with spirituality practices, be it meditation or in psychedelic communities. “It can be associated with an expanding awareness of a greater appreciation of life if we are healing our human weaknesses, uncertainty, vulnerability, uncertainty and our existential condition as something as healing instead of healing.

The complicated is that there is no meaning for an ego death. As it is defined, a person will distinguish to person, although many people seem to be used as an honorary stamp online in any way. “I suspect that it has a certain level of great praise, ironic ego death as another performance that ego can claim to claim his position,” says Dr. Madison firm.

The Harbor has been exposed to fraudulent allegations since the separation of his wife, musician Lily Allen. Neither he nor everyone talked about the rumors, but Harbor refused to go to details of the separation in his GQ Interview, only to inform the publication: “There is no use in this form of integration [with tabloid news] Because everything is based on hysterical exaggeration. ”

Harbor prompted his marriage to collapse, which means that he was on a spiritual journey. “You know it's not that things end, but it is only that I want to do it at a time of growth,” he said. “And I have the feeling that I have the opportunity to be busy and to work is really good and can also go into this deeper spiritual search.”

Several famous men have expressly spoke that he has undergone an ego death after being introduced with allegations of different types. Consider Shia Labouf, for example, which was accused of dating the actor in 2018 due to sexual battery, assault and inflammation of emotional stress in a complaint submitted by FKA Twigs with which the actor was dated in 2018. When the lawsuit was filed, Labeouf recorded many of the shit, but in 2022 Jon Bernthal said in his podast podcast Jon Bernthal in his podcastcastcast. Real: “I lived badly.

Without naming branches, the actor continued: “I injured this woman. And during the doing, I hurt many other people and many other people in front of this woman. I was a pleasure, searching, selfish, selfish, dishonest, unreliable, frightening person.” He thanked her for her: “If she hadn't intervened in my life and not created the way for me to experience the ego death, I would either have a really mediocre existence or I would be dead.”

Armie Hammer also claimed to have experienced an ego death. In 2021 the Call me by your name Star was in the center of an online fire storm after direct messages were said to be sent from a hammer detailed sexual wishes and cannibalist fetishism. The 38-year-old actor was later accused of rape and abuse. Hammer has always contested criminal misconduct and said that all of his relationships with women were mutually acceptable. In the meantime, the district's public prosecutor's office in Los Angeles decided against the persecution of him due to a lack of evidence.

Hammer spoke about the allegations on a podcast last summer and said: “I am now in a place where I am really grateful because I didn't feel good where I was in my life before all of this happened.” He continued to reveal that he had joined a 12-stage program after the allegations had appeared when they caused both an “ego death” and a “career death”.

We do not know whether these men have experienced an ego death or not. However, what we know is that the use of the term is being spread and more, which could give cause for concern if it is inevitably watered down, which makes the concept completely meaningless.

“These terms change very easily from specialized language communities to social media, where the motive for the use of interest or” likes “can be,” says Dr. Madison. Nevertheless, there is still a way to use it to start an important self -reflection on what is ultimately what is all of this.

The best way to draw a meaning from an ego death is to ask the individual what it means to experience it. In other words, to determine whether this is something you just say because you feel that you should or whether you really have a kind of internal transformation. It is a way to see whether the sentence has a substance: if you result in an ego death, how high are the parts of yourself that you let go? And what could they be replaced? This kind of conversations should be far more interesting if you approach.

“Because they go beyond the assumptions and enter into a generative area in which we are ready to go into what we have not thought about so far,” says Dr. Madison.

We can all practice this, as with almost everything, it is probably best carried out by our screens.