In other articles here I've presented the idea that a dog's behavior operates more along the lines of a natural energy system than it does either as part of a dominance hierarchy or solely as the result of reinforcement schedules. When we examine Freud's view that the Ego's primary role is to suppress most of the unbound energy contained within the Id, we can start to see that there's also a direct correlation between some of the basic precepts of Freudian psychology and with the idea that all canine behavior operates as part of an energy system.

I think that's fitting, because Freud likened the human mind to a horse (Id) and rider (Ego), but he could just as easily - and perhaps more aptly - have compared the mind to a puppy and its owner.

Why?

Because, except when sleeping, puppies have almost boundless energy and curiosity. They're always sticking their noses, not to mention their teeth, into places they don't belong. The owner's goal is to prevent the little guy from doing too much damage to the owner's clothes, furniture, skin, or to the pup himself. This is often a matter of the owner's Ego (both small e and capital E) constantly repressing the puppy's desires. We worry what our friends or relatives will think of us when they come to visit. What if we take the little cutie to the bank and he does his business right there on the floor? Our self-image is often inextricably bound up in our pup's behaviors. (We also often channel our inner parent when we interact with our puppies.) So we do everything we can to repress, and put a lid on - or as Freud puts it, "dam up" - the puppy's desires.

There's almost no way around this. In most cases we're just trying to keep the puppy from danger. And when we're not, we're unable to see the link between the childhood battles we may have fought with our parents and the battles we're now having with our pup. Those battles are locked deep within our unconscious minds; the puppy just does what all good dogs do, he fetches them for us, brings them to the surface for us to deal with.

Think of the words we commonly associate with training: leash, collar, harness, "No!" "Bad!" "Wait!" "Down!" "Stop!" "Stay!" etc. They're all designed to put a lid on a dog's energy.

Over time, the puppy learns to repress his instincts and impulses on his own. This is a matter both of conditioning and an outgrowth of the symbiotic relationship that develops between the pup's mind and that of his owners, a form of embodied, embedded cognition. The two begin to share a single mind, where the puppy is pure Id and the owner is the Id's control mechanism.

The thing is, though, that while puppies may have difficulty learning impulse control - at least initially -, as a species dogs are actually more capable of doing this than any other animal on earth, except humans and dolphins. In fact, impulse control may be an evolutionary artifact, a direct outgrowth of the dog's shared evolutionary history with the wolf. 

A recent study on dogs, "Common Self-Control Processes in Humans and Dogs" shows that dogs exert impulse control in exactly the same manner as humans. And that this ability to suppress one's own desires (alternately called "self-control," "delayed gratification," "volition," and other things), is measured through the depletion of blood glucose levels in the pre-frontal cortex, or "executive-function" portion of the brain. The more impulse control, the more blood glucose is depleted, so the less energy the dog or person has at their disposal for new cognitive tasks. However, once those levels are restored, the ability to learn new tasks, and to control one's impulses, is restored as well. (The dogs in this study were given commands that involved impulse control - they weren't put into positions where they had to do this on their own - which reinforces the idea that this may involve a shared consciousness between the dog and owner.)

The authors say that their study offers "the first evidence that exerting self-control depletes energy in nonhuman animals." (Holly C. Miller, Kristina F. Pattison, C. Nathan DeWall, Rebecca Rayburn-Reeves and Thomas R. Zentall, Psychological Science, March 2010, March 11, 2010.)

This idea originally comes from a 1998 study done on humans ("Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?" by Roy E Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Mark Muraven, and Dianne M. Tice (1998), which was heavily influenced by Freud's psychology (which in turn was heavily influenced by the idea that the mind is an energy system, obedient to the laws of thermodynamics). In it the authors write that the "...theory that volition is one of the self's crucial functions can be traced back at least to Freud (1923/ 1961a, 1933/1961b), who described the ego as the part of the psyche that must deal with the reality of the external world by mediating between conflicting inner and outer pressures. ... Freud also seems to have believed that the ego needed to use some energy in making such a decision. ... [and] he recognized the conceptual value of postulating that the ego operated on an energy model."

If you go back through some of my articles, you'll see that when I talk about behavioral problems in dogs, I tend to describe them in terms of internal pressures - tension and stress - and that one of the best ways to solve most behavioral problems is by giving the dog an alternative outlet for that pressure, specifically through rough-and-tumble outdoor play, which releases tension and also increases the production of brain-derived growth factors.

You'll also find several articles where I talk about how when wolves evolved to form packs (for the purpose of hunting large prey), they learned to sublimate their urge to bite into social behaviors. And that during the domestication process, dogs expanded on this ability to sublimate their urge to bite in order to secure a place within the human household.

I know that in the strictest sense of the word, sublimation refers to a means of redirecting the energy behind raw sexual urges into other, more acceptable social behaviors, such as art and culture. This was one of the primary focal points of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. However, Freud also made a distinction between Eros - the energy inherent to all natural drives and desires - and the libido - the reflection of that energy as it manifests in the form of personality. So while we may not think of a dog's urge to bite as having its origins in sexuality, it does. That's because there is - beneath the surface of both sexual and aggressive urges - an overpowering drive to connect with the object of one's desire. (Don't tell me you've never heard the phrase - usually spoken to a baby or young puppy - "You're so cute I could just bite you?")

So how does this Freudian dynamic play out in terms of a puppy's development?