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Superego

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{{Top}}surmoi{{Bottom}}
==Sigmund Freud==
The term '"[[superego]]' (''surmoi'') " does not appear until quite late in [[Freud]]'s [[Sigmund Freud:Bibliography|work]], [[being ]] first introduced in ''[[The Ego and the Id]] '' (1923).
It was in this [[work]] that [[Freud]] developed a 'introduced his so-called "[[structural model' of ]]", in which the [[psyche]], is [[divided ]] into [[three ]] [[agencies]]:the [[ego]], the [[id]] and the [[superego]].
the [[ego]]However, the [[idconcept]] and the of a [[superegomoral agency]]. However, the concept of a moral agency which judges and censures the [[ego ]] can be found in [[Freud]]'s [[Sigmund Freud:Bibliography|work ]] long before he locates these functions in the [[superego]], such as in his concept of [[censorship]].
==Jacques Lacan==
Lacan's first discussion of the [[superego]] comes in his article on the family.<ref>Lacan, 1938</ref> 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 first [[superego]].<ref>Lacan, 1938: 59-60</ref> [[Lacan]] locates the [[superego]] in the [[symbolic]] [[order]]."The [[superego]] is essentially located within the symbolic plane of speech."<ref>{{Sl}} p.102</ref>The [[superego]] has a close relationship with the [[Law]], but this relationship is a [[paradox]]ical one.  The [[law]] as such is a [[symbolic]] [[structure]] which regulates [[subjectivity]] and in this sense prevents [[disintegration]].  On the other hand, the [[lawdiscussion]] of the [[superego]] has a "senseless, blind character, of pure imperativeness and simple tyranny."<ref>{{Sl}} p.102</ref> Thus "the [[superego]] is at one and the same time the law and its destruction."<ref>{{Sl}} p.102</ref> The [[superego]] arises from the misunderstanding of the [[law]], from the [[gap]]s comes in the [[symbolic]] [[chain]], and fills out those [[gap]]s with an [[imaginary]] [[substitute]] that distorts the [[law]]  attempt to avoid the ambiguity and equivocation of [[discourse]], it is precisely this ambiguity which [[psychoanalysis]] thrives on. More specifically, in [[linguistic]] terms, 'the [[superego]] is an imperative."<ref>{{Sl}} p.102</ref> In 1962, [[Lacan]] argues that this is none other than the [[Kant]]ian [[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]] (volontÈ 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-legal morality' on the neurotic subject.<ref>{{Sl}} p.102</ref>  The [[superego]] is related to the [[voice]], and thus to the invoking [[drive]] and to [[sadism]]/[[masochism]]. The [[superego]] is the faculty that seeks to police what it deems unacceptable [[desire]]s; it represents all [[moral]] restrictions and is the "advocate of a striving towards perfection."<ref>"New Introductory Lectures" 22.67</ref> Originally, the [[superego]] had the task of [[repress]]ing the [[Oedipus complex]] and, so, is closely caught up in the [[psychodrama]]s of the [[id]]; it is, in fact, a [[reaction-formation]] against the [[primitive]] [[object-choice]]s of the [[id]], specifically those connected with the [[Oedipus complex]].  The young [[heterosexual]] [[male]] deals with the [[Oedipus complex]] by [[identifying]] with and [[internalizing]] the [[father]] and his [[prohibition]]s:  "The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more intense the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of discipline, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the more exacting later articule on is the domination of the super-ego over the ego—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt."<ref>"Ego and the Id" 706</ref>  Given its intimate connection with the [[Oedipus complex]], the [[super-egofamily]] is associated with the dread of [[castration]].  As we grow into [[adulthood]], various other individuals or organizations will take over the place of the [[father]] and his [[prohibition]]s (the [[church]], the [[law]], the [[police]], the [[government]]).  Because of its connection to the [[id]], the [[superego]] has the ability to become excessively moral and thus lead to destructive effects.  The [[super-ego]] is closely connected to the "[[ego ideal]]." ==More==The superego is one of the three agencies making up the psychic apparatus in Freud's second topography, the structural theory (1923b). It results essentially from the internalization of parental authority.  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.  In contrast with hypnosis, which put the censor to sleep, psychoanalysis is essentially aimed at acknowledging and working out of the ego's resistances.  As early as "On Narcissism: An Introduction" (1914c), Freud already deemed the ego ideal to be autonomous.  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 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.  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.  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 term "superego" itself indicates that the superego dominates the ego; the tension between the two agencies take the form of moral anxiety.   Freud did not detach the superego from the ideal (one of its functions).  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.  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 main dynamic remains the conflict-laden work of differentiation between the ego and the superego.
How In this work he distinguishes clearly between the [[superego is transmitted (it is formed in ]] and the image of the parents' own superegos), establishes itself''[[ego-ideal]]''', [[terms]] which [[Freud]] seems to use interchangeably in ''[[The Ego and develops entails in the final reckoning that the Freudian superego is an intersubjective and even intergenerational agencyId]]''.
He argues that the primary function of the [[superego]] is to [[repress]] [[desire|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 [[Kleinian psychoanalysis|Melanie Klein]]'s [[thesis]] on the [[maternal]] origins of an archaic [[form]] of the [[superego]].<ref>{{1938}} p. 59-60</ref>
===Symbolic Law===When, Lacan returns to the subject of the superego in his 1953-4 [[seminar]]; he locates it in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a)the [[symbolic|symbolic order]], Freud raised as opposed to the issue [[imaginary|imaginary order]] of a (collective) cultural the [[ego]]: the [[superego, he was revisiting his earlier reflections on ]] is essentially located within the origins [[symbolic|symbolic plane]] of civilization in Totem and Taboo (1912-1913a)[[speech]].<ref>{{S1}} p. 102</ref>
There, evoking the myth of The [[superego]] has a close [[relationship]] with the primal horde[[Law]], he had associated the killing of the primal father with the prohibition on incestbut this relationship is a paradoxical one.
After investigating On the genesis of guilt in Civilization one hand, the [[Law]] as such is a [[symbolic]] [[structure]] which regualtes [[subjectivity]] and Its Discontents, he attempted, in Moses and Monotheism (1939a), to account for the strength of traditionthis [[sense]] prevents disintegration.
With On the concept other hand, the [[law]] of the superegohas a "[[senseless]], blind [[character]], Freud tackled the thorny subject of what human-kind elevates pure imperativeness and makes sublimesimple tyranny.<ref>{{S1}} p. 102</ref>
Strictly opposed to any kind of spiritual approach, which <blockquote>Thus "the theme of superego is at one and the conscience readily encouraged, he focused on same [[time]] the concrete development law and instinctual aspects of agencyits [[destruction]]."<ref>{{S1}} p.102</ref></blockquote>
In seeking to expose The superego arises from the structural dimension misunderstanding of the split between [[law]], from the ego and [[gap]]s in the superego[[symbolic]] [[chain]], Freud based his findings on two pathological phenomena: delusions of observation and manic-depressive psychosisfills out those [[gap]]s with an [[imaginary]] [[substitute]] that distorts the [[law]].<ref>{{E}} p. 143</ref>
In delusions of observation===Philosophy===More specifically, the monitoring and judging internal agency (in [[linguistic]] terms, "the superego) is reprojected outwardan imperative."<ref>{{S1}} p. 102</ref>
Manic-depressive psychosis illustrates the cyclic operation of the moral conscience and the changes In 1962, [[Lacan]] argues that occur in the relationship between the ego and the superego: in melancholic self-reproach, the superego persecutes the ego, and in manic euphoria, the ego and its ideal coincide (as in this is none other than the ritual festivity of a carnival)[[Kant]]ian [[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 [[superego|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>
From the ontogenetic viewpoint, the The [[superego ]] is an "heir to [[obscene]], ferocious [[Figure]]"<ref>{{E}} p. 256</ref> which imposes "a senseless, destructive, purely oppressive, almost always anti-legel [[morality]]" on the Oedipus complex[[neurotic]] [[subject]]." <ref>{{S1}} p. 102</ref>
This means that the advent of the superego prolongs the core affective relationships of childhood by rendering permanent the conditions that brought about its establishment.  The identifications that constitute the [[superego are the bearers at once of parental prohibitions and of instinctual cathexes relating to the parents as objects, cathexes that these identifications replace according to a regressive logic in which the wish to be like dislodges the wish to have (Freud, 1933a, p. 63).  Broadly speaking, the identifications of the superego owe their autonomy, their constraining role vis-à-vis the ego, to the child's crucial dependence on its objects.  "At the beginning . . . what ]] is bad is whatever causes one to be threatened with loss of love" (Freud, 1930a, p. 124).  If establishing the superego through identifications has far-reaching consequences, this is because the relationship of the ego to the superego reproduces the relationship of the child to the all-powerful parents.  Real anxiety related to the parents is transformed into moral anxiety arising from the tension between the ego and a superego that draws no distinction between the wish and the act.  The superego first appears, therefore, as the upshot of a regressive defensive process that tends to lend permanence in mental reality to a world determined above all by parental desire and parental protection.  Freud conceived of religious belief as underpinned by a projection outward of the child's superego, motivated by a nostalgia for the father.  This helps explain why the task of the ego during adolescence is to escape from the authority of the superego. In Freud's detailed metapsychological description of the genesis and development of the superego, the superego begins to form very early on, and this formation involves permanent rearrangements of identifications and changes in their very nature as they become less narcissistic and more symbolic.   There is thus a clear dividing line between a primitive realm of the superego (as described by Melanie Klein) and a distinctly postoedipal realm.  The primitive realm is founded on archaic mechanisms (identification with the aggressor and the law of talion [an eye for an eye[voice]).  In the postoedipal realm of the superego, a bisexual superego "consisting of these two [paternal and maternal] identifications in some way united with each other" (1923b, p. 34) bears the mark of the subtle mental developments that for Freud are specific to the phallic phase and the "complete" Oedipus complex (love and hate for each parent, identification with both).  Under this later configuration, the structuring effects of the castration complex and the integration of the fantasy of the primal scene make it possible for the superego to resolve and protect the ego from what are now incestuous wishes.  Successful development of the superego is indicated by the individual's acquisitions of culture during the latency phase and by an ability of the individual to traverse the reactivation of instinctive desires that occurs in adolescence and to achieve autonomy.  Progression along these lines correlates with a reduction of the superego's demands to essential social rules alone, with its gradual detachment.  Such progression tends to turn the superego into a more purely symbolic agency.  The profoundly paternal character of Freud's superego has been further developed by Jacques Lacan's concept of the Name of the Father.  A consequence is the possibility of a more personal ego ideal.  All these modifications of the superego depend on the desexualization inherent to the identification process, for desexualization allows a secondary narcissism in which the ability to idealize and sublimate buttress the cathexis of new objects and social bonds. At the clinical level, making the superego into a mental agency was one of Freud's theoretical responses to the difficult practical problems posed by certain kinds of resistance—needs for punishment, negative therapeutic reactions, moral masochism—that represent diverse expressions of unconscious guilt.  Freud observed how the superego had a general propensity for cruelty, for a severity out of all proportion to that of the child's actual upbringing.  This was a crucial insight, for it led him to recognize the endogenous, instinctual origin of cruelty and hence to form the hypothesis of the destructive death instincts. Unconscious guilt was thus seen in essence as turning such destructiveness back against oneself.  This explains the paradoxical fact that the superego is made stronger by the renunciations it imposes, and that anxiety is increased even by misdeeds never performed (as witness crimes committed out of a sense of guilt).  The narcissistic desexualization involved in the process of identification, upon which the superego is founded, permits a diffusion of instincts whereby the superego tends to become the focus of a liberated death instinct (the "pure culture of the death instinct" seen in melancholia). By contrast, the proper functioning of the postoedipal superego, which results in a dynamic of conflict between the ego and the superego, presupposes that the environment allows a balanced apportionment of love invoking [[drive]] and discipline that result in a fusion of instinct.  The coherent superego that results makes for a tempered guilt capable of underpinning a sense of responsibility in the subject. ==Quotes=="Nothing forces anyone to enjoy (''jouir'') except the superego. The superego is the imperative of jouissance - Enjoy!"<ref>{{S20}} p[[sadism/masochism]].3</ref>
==See Also==
* [[Activity]]* [[Agency]]* [[Anxiety]]* [[Castration complex]]* [[Censorship]]* [[Civilization]]{{See}}* [[CrueltyEgo]]* [[Defense]]* [[Depression]]* [[Ethics]]* [[Graph of Desire]]* [[Guilt]]||* [[HumorDrive]]
* [[Id]]
* [[Ideal Ego]]||
* [[Identification]]
* ''[[ImagoJouissance]]''* [[Latency period]]||
* [[Law]]
* [[Libidinal development]]
* [[Melancholy]]
* [[Oedipus complex]]
||* [[ProhibitionPhilosophy]]* [[Psychic apparatusRepression]]* [[Psychic causality]]||* [[Self-hatredStructure]]* [[Self-punishmentSymbolic]]* [[Unconscious]]{{Also}}
== References ==<div style="font-size:11px" class="references-small">
<references/>
* Freud, Sigmund. (1912-1913a). Totem and taboo. SE, 13: 1-161.</div>* ——. (1914c). On narcissism: an introduction. SE, 14: 67-102.* ——. (1921c). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. SE, 18: 65-143.* ——. (1923b). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 1-66.* ——. (1930a). Civilization and its discontents. SE, 21: 57-145.* ——. (1933a). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 22: 1-182.* ——. (1939a). Moses and monotheism: Three essays. SE, 23: 1-137.{{OK}}
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