Your wild horse analogy reminds me of Jonathan Haidt's metaphor of a rider on the back of an elephant. The rider is able to guide the elephant to the left, to the right, to halt or go forward. He can lead the elephant but only when the elephant doesn’t have desires of its own.
Haidt describes the rider as the conscious, the controlled thought and the elephant as everything else. Its the gut feeling, the visceral reaction, the emotion and intuition.
RE: The Split Personality of Steemit