in his later work, freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: id, ego, and super-ego. freud discussed this model in the 1920 essay "beyond the pleasure principle", and fully elaborated upon it in "the ego and the id" (1923). the id is the impulsive, childlike portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and only takes into account what it wants and disregards all consequences.