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=Freudian Dictionary=
<blockquote>In the course of the individual development a part of the inhibiting forces in the outer world becomes internalized; a standard is created in the Ego which opposes the other faculties by observation, criticism, and prohibition. We call this new standard the Super-ego.<ref>{{M&M}} Part III, Section II</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>The Superego is the successor and representative of the parents (and educators) who superintended the actions of the individual in his first years of life; it perpetuates their functions almost without a change.<ref>{{M&M}} Part III, Section II</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>When I set out the relationship of Ego and Id I kept back an important part of the theory of the psychical apparatus. It is this: we were forced to assume that in the Ego itself a special agency has become differentiated, which we name the Super-Ego. This Super-Ego holds a special position between the Ego and the Id. It belongs to the Ego, shares its high psychological organization, but stands in an especially intimate connection with the Id. It is, actually, the precipitate of the Ego's first attachments to objects; the heir of the <Edipus complex, when that has been vacated. This Super-Ego can set itself against the Ego. It can treat it as an object, and often uses it very harshly. It is just as important for the Ego to live in concord with the Super-Ego as with the Id. Discords between Ego and Super-Ego have great significance for psychical life. You will have guessed by now that the Super-Ego is the vehicle for the phenomenon we call "conscience." It is very important for mental health that the Super-Ego should develop normally -that is, that it should become sufficiently depersonalized. It is precisely this that does not happen in the case of a neurotic, because his <Edipus complex does not undergo the right transformation. His Super-Ego deals with his Ego like a strict father with a child, and his idea of morality displays itself in primitive ways by making the Ego submit to punishment by the SuperEgo. Illness is employed as a means for this "self-punishment." The neurotic has to behave as though he were mastered by guilt, which the illness serves to punish, and so to relieve him.<ref>{{QLA}} Ch. 5</ref></blockquote>
<blockquote>The superego may bring fresh needs to the fore, but its chief function remains the ''limitation'' of satisfactions.<ref>{{OoPA}} Ch. 2</ref></blockquote>
===Superego and Its Relation to the Ego===
<blockquote>The details of the relation between the ego and the superego become completely intelligible if they are carried back to the child's attitude toward his parents. The parents' influence naturally includes not merely the personalities of the parents themselves but also the racial, national, and family traditions handed on through them as well as the demands of the immediate social milieu which they represent. In the same way, an individual's superego in the course of his development takes over contributions from later successors and substitutes of his parents, such as teachers, admired figures in public life, or high social ideals.<ref>{{OoPA}} Ch. 1</ref></blockquote>
===Superego as Father-Substitute===
<blockquote>The super-ego arises, as we know, from an identification with the father regarded as a model. Every such identification is in the nature of a desexualization or even of a sublimation.<ref>{{E&I}} Ch. 5</ref></blockquote>
===Superego and Its Relation to the Id===
<blockquote>In spite of their fundamental difference, the id and the superego have one thing in common: they both represent the influences of the past (the id the influence of heredity, the superego essentially the influence of what is taken over from other people), whereas the ego is principally determined by the individual's own experience, that is to say by accidental and current events.<ref>{{OoPA}} Ch. 1</ref></blockquote>
===Superego and the Oedipus Complex===
<blockquote>The superego is in fact the heir to the Oedipus complex and only arises after that complex has been disposed of.<ref>{{OoPA}} Ch. 8</ref></blockquote>
{{Freudian Dictionary}}
=Below=
One of the three agencies described by [[Freud]]'s second [[topography]] of the [[psyche]], the others being the [[ego]] and the [[id]].
[[Freud]] introduces the concept of the [[superego]] in 1923.
The [[superego]] begins to take shape as the [[child]] emerges from the [[Oedipus complex]], renounces its [[incest]]uous [[desire]] for the [[patient]] of the opposite sex and internalizes the paternal prohibitions that make that [[desire]] [[taboo]].
[[Freud]] therefore describes the [[superego]] as the 'heir to the Oedipus complex'<ref>1933</ref> and sees it as an internal conscience.
It gradually becomes more refined and sophisticated as the ideals conveyed by education, morality and religion are internalized and fuse with the internalized parental images.
In keeping with her views on the 'early' [[Oedipus complex]], [[Klein]] holds (1933) that the effects of the [[superego]] are observable in very early stages of childhood.
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The term "[[superego]]" does not appear until quite late in [[Freud]]'s work, being first introduced in ''The Ego and the Id'' (1923).
It was in this work that [[Freud]] introduced his so-called "structural model", in which the psyche is divided into three agencies: the ego, the id and the superego.
However, the concept of a moral agency which judges and censures the ego can be found in Freud's work long before he locates these funcitons in the superego, such as in his concept of censorship.
--
Lacan's first discussion of the superego comes in her articule on the family.
In this work he distinguishes clearly between the superego and the [[ego-ideal]], terms which Freud seems to use interchangeably in ''The Ego and the Id.
He argues that the primary function of the superego is to repress sexual desire for the mother in the resolution of the Oedipus complex.
Following Freud, he argues that the superego results from Oedipal identification with the father, but he also refers to Melanie Klein's thesis on the maternal origins of an archaic form of the superego.<ref>{{L}} o.1938. p.59-60</ref>
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When [[Lacan]] returns to the subject of the superego in his 1953-4 seminar; he locates it in the symbolic order, as opposed to the imaginary order of the ego: the superego is essentially located within the symbolic plane of speech.<ref>{{S1}} p.102</ref>
The superego has a close relationship with the Law, but this relationship is a paradoxical one.
On the one hand, the Law as such is a symbolic structure which regualtes subjectivity and in tis sense prevents disintegration.
On the other hand, the law of the superego has a "senseless, blind character, of pure imperativeness and simple tyranny.<ref>{{S1}} p.102</ref>
Thus "the superego is at one and the same time the law and its destruction."<ref>{{S1}} p.102</ref>
The [[superego]] arises from the misunderstanding of the law, from the gaps in the symbolic chain, and fills out those gaps with an imaginary substitute that distorts the law.<ref>{{E}} p.143</ref>
---
More specifically, in linguistic terms, "the superego is an imperative."<ref>{{S1}} p.102</ref>
In 1962, [[Lacan]] argues that this is none other than the Kantian categorical imperative.
The specific imperative involved is the command "Enjoy!"; the superego is the Other insofar as the Other commands the subject to enjoy.
The superego is thus the expression of the will-to-enjoy (volonte de jouissance''), which is not the subject's own will but the will of the Other, who assumes the form of Sade's 'Supreme Being-in-Evil."<ref>{{Ec}} p.773</ref>
The [[superego]] is an "obscene, ferocious Figure"<ref>{{E}} p.256</ref> which imposes "a senseless, destructive, purely oppressive, almost always anti-legel morality" on the [[neurotic]] [[subject]].<ref>{{S1}} p.102</ref>
The [[superego]] is related to the [[voice]], and thus to the invoking drive and to sadism/masochism.
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==Sigmund Freud==
The term '[[superego]]' ([[Fr]]. ''[[surmoi]]'') does not appear until quite late in [[Freud]]'s [[Works of Sigmund Freud|work]], being first introduced in [[The Ego and the Id]] (1923).
[[Lacan]] locates the [[superego]] in the [[symbolic]] [[order]].
"The [[superego]] is essentially located within the symbolic plane of speech."<ref>{{SlS1}} p.102</ref>
The [[superego]] has a close relationship with the [[Law]], but this relationship is a [[paradox]]ical one.
[[Category:Lacan]]
[[Category:Terms]]
{{Encore}} pp. 3, 7-8
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
