Upstairs, Downstairs...

The intention of psychoanalysis, Freud explained, is "to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego, to widen its field of perception and enlarge its organization, so that it can appropriate fresh portions of the id.... It is a work of culture," he added in the closing words of the lecture, "not unlike the draining of the Zuider Zee."

- Freud, "New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, vol. 22" (lecture 31, "The Dissection of the Psychical Personality"), Complete Works, Standard Edition, eds. James Strachey and Anna Freud (1964).