Freud''s imagery provides the clue to his ideological power. "Freud''s is a theory or a proto-theory peopled with actors. The characters are from life: the blind, energetic, pleasure-seeking id; the priggish and punitive superego; the ego, battling for its being by diverting the energy of the others to its own use. The image of man which Freud presented "... was thoroughly secular; its ideal type was the mature man free of infantile neuroticism, capable of finding his own way." Freud "has provided an image of man that has made him comprehensible without at the same time making him contemptible.".