In seeking to expose the structural dimension of the split between the ego and the superego, Freud based his findings on two pathological phenomena: delusions of observation and manic-depressive psychosis. Strictly opposed to any kind of spiritual approach, which the theme of the conscience readily encouraged, he focused on the concrete development and instinctual aspects of agency. With the concept of the superego, Freud tackled the thorny subject of what human-kind elevates and makes sublime. After investigating the genesis of guilt in Civilization and Its Discontents, he attempted, in Moses and Monotheism (1939a), to account for the strength of tradition. There, evoking the myth of the primal horde, he had associated the killing of the primal father with the prohibition on incest. When, in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a), Freud raised the issue of a (collective) cultural superego, he was revisiting his earlier reflections on the origins of civilization in Totem and Taboo (1912-1913a). How the superego is transmitted (it is formed in the image of the parents' own superegos), establishes itself, and develops entails in the final reckoning that the Freudian superego is an intersubjective and even intergenerational agency. The main dynamic remains the conflict-laden work of differentiation between the ego and the superego. It is also the carrier of a cultural past that each subject must appropriate and master (the reference being to Goethe's Faust ) through processes of object idealization and sublimation of the instincts. The superego is responsible for transmitting the constraints that culture exercises over the individual, and for imposing the necessary and ultimately excessive sacrifices of instinct demanded by civilization. The term "superego" itself indicates that the superego dominates the ego the tension between the two agencies take the form of moral anxiety.įreud did not detach the superego from the ideal (one of its functions). Within the psychic apparatus, the superego makes permanent the effects of the infant's dependence on primary objects, and it is just as insusceptible of complete integration into the ego as the id and its instinctual impulses. The Ego and the Id (1923b) went on to link the superego as a mental agency to the recognized fact that the greater portion of the ego was unconscious. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921c), to describe the functioning of groups, Freud developed a generalized conception of identification in which individuals identified their egos by creating a common ideal, incarnated in a leader. Two works of Freud's dating from the early 1920s firmly differentiated between the ego and the superego (ego ideal) and integrated this distinction into the whole set of Freud's metapsychological reworkings of the period. In contrast with hypnosis, which put the censor to sleep, psychoanalysis is essentially aimed at acknowledging and working out of the ego's resistances.Īs early as "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914c), Freud already deemed the ego ideal to be autonomous. From the outset, as psychoanalysis uncovered the defensive conflict that arose from a repressed unconscious (childhood sexuality), it encountered the need to posit a repressing agency, a censor associated with self-esteem. It results essentially from the internalization of parental authority. The superego is one of the three agencies making up the psychic apparatus in Freud's second topography, the structural theory (1923b).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |