Buddha had enough of an ego to realize that people were listening to him. Didn't he?

I don't know if "enlightenment" is really a concrete state of being, or if it's just an ongoing goal to strive toward, a kind of carrot on a stick to make sure you stay aware. Either way, I personally don't see that enlightenment needs to arise from a destructive process, much less through the destruction of a concept invented by Sigmund Freud to categorize habituated social behavior.