The Superego: How Freud Included the Other in Psychoanalysis

Trevor Pederson

In this article I argue that Freud includes the Other in

psychoanalysis in a way that is based upon a primary

relatedness to others through the ego and object drives.

This is in contrast to both Lacanian and ego psychological

approaches that posit a primarily atomistic individual who

overcomes his or her separation from others through

linguistically mediated values. In order to show these two

opposing views I investigate the concept of the superego

with special attention to the phallic-oedipal complex. The

key difference has to do with Lacanians and Ego

Psychologists eliminating reference to the imago, or

internalized images of the parents, in their discussion of

the superego. I show that for Freud’s account the superego

is only a modification of the drives and that he suggests

that the imagos it is based on are illustrated in political

behavior.

1

While Freud does hold that values passed through

tradition are transmitted from the superego of the parents

to the superego of the child, this occurs in the latency

development of the superegoi. However, before the

development of latency whatever we would identify as

striving for personal happiness, in the many different forms

it takes, is the expression of our drive-based, or

‘psychical constitution’ for Freudii. Active and passive

forms of the ego and object drives can broadly be conceived

of as different types of egoism and altruism that provide

what we call ‘motivations’ in common languageiii. An

individual, for example, doesn’t choose to be ambitious but

is active-egoistically motivated or driven to have a

reputation of being successful or powerful. And the ego

ideal causes him to suffer inferiority or jealousy of others

if his name isn’t mentioned with admiration. Additionally,

someone can be a ‘people person’ and passive-altruistically

want approval from, or to be well-liked by, others, and

suffer feelings of aloneness or self-pity if this doesn’t

occur. Moreover, in early development, a scientist, artist,

2

or a generally introverted person may prefer dealing with

art-objects, mathematics, or things in the environment

instead of people. Different fixations and adaptations

during psycho-sexual development create a certain

characterological economy of libido. I argue that Freud’s

writings on the Oedipus complex and the subsequent father

i “Thus a child's super-ego is in fact constructed on the model not of its parents but of its parents' super-ego; the contents which fill it are the same and it becomes the vehicle of tradition and of all the time-resisting judgments of value which have propagated themselves in this manner from generation to generation” (Freud 1933, p. 67). “Thus the danger of psychical helplessness is appropriate to the period of life when his ego is immature; the danger of loss of object, to early childhood when he is still dependent on others; the danger of castration, to the phallic phase; and the fear of his super-ego, to the latency period” (Freud, 1926, p.142, emphasis mine).ii “Happiness, in the reduced sense in which we recognize it as possible, is a problem of the economics of the individual's libido. There is no golden rule which applies to everyone: every man must find out for himself in what particular fashion he can be saved. All kinds of different factors will operate to direct his choice. It is a question ofhow much real satisfaction he can expect to get from the external world,how far he is led to make himself independent of it, and, finally, how much strength he feels he has for altering the world to suit his wishes.In this, his psychical constitution will play a decisive part, irrespectively of the external circumstances. The man who is predominantly erotic will give first preference to his emotional relationships to other people; the narcissistic man, who inclines to be self-sufficient, will seek his mainsatisfactions in his internal mental processes; the man of action will never give up the external world on which he can try out his strength.… success is never certain, for that depends on the convergence of many factors, perhaps on none more than on the capacity of the psychical constitution to adapt its function to the environment and then to exploit that environment for a yield of pleasure. A person who is born with a specially unfavourable instinctual constitution, and who has not properly undergone the transformation and rearrangement of his libidinal components which is indispensable for later achievements, will find it hard to obtain happiness from his external situation, especially if he is faced with tasks of some difficulty” (Freud, 1930, p.83-4, emphasis mine).

3

complex suggest that the pre-latency superego only modifies

an individual’s drive-based character. This means that, all

things being equal, an individual’s ethical attitudes and

political beliefs, that concern his or his community’s

happiness, don’t issue from symbolic values or a rationally

chosen position but from a dynamic between character and

group psychology.

iii I’d prefer to use egoism and altruism, as Freud has done in a few of his writings, to designate the active vs. passive poles instead of active-masculine vs. feminine-passive. This is, in part, because of sexist connotations that all men must be active and all women passive when there are, for example, clearly male hysterics and altruistic males. Additionally, I have also found this binary can be expanded upon with masculine and feminine forms of egoism and altruism (Pederson, Forthcoming). For my purposes here the binary of egoism and altruism represent a power, perfection, or competitive based attitude vs. a relational, affectionate, or harmony based attitude. For Freud, egoism concerns: “preservation, assertion, and magnification of the individual”(Freud, 1933, p. 96). Freud clearly equates the ego drives not with justhunger but power: “[w]e call the mental aspect of the sexual instinct libido (sexual hunger), this being analogous to hunger, desire for power, etc., in the sphere of the Ego-tendencies” (Freud, 1920, p. 17). Altruism is ultimately based upon “love for parents and children, friendship and love for humanity in general, and also devotion to concrete objects and to abstract ideas” (Freud, 1921, p. 90). Melanie Klein goes very far in spelling out the passive-feminineposition in the attributes of reparation, creativity, and a “helpful attitude” to the life instincts (Klein 1975, p. 201, 207). Although Freud holds the active position possesses true anaclitic love from the aim-inhibited impulses for the mother at the Oedipus complex, the earlier active object drives are distinguished by infatuation that is over after sexual satisfaction (‘sensuality’) or jealously controlling or possessing the object (Freud, 1921, p. 111; 1917, p.417). In the passive object drives one merges with the love object who manifests egoism or the active-egoistic ego ideal and sacrifices his own active drives by becoming like, or seeking to assist, the beloved (Freud 1917, p.418; 1921, p. 112-5; 1923, p. 29, Sachs, 1929).

4

It may seem provocative, if not foolish, to link ego

psychologists with Lacanians in order to argue for a

different interpretation of Freud’s superego. However, one

of Freud’s most enduring observations has been ‘the

narcissism of minor differences’ in which people or groups

that are very similar despise one another (Freud, 1930,

p.114). Noting the unending polemics that Lacanians make

against the ego psychologists and the ego psychologists’

cries of Lacan’s unintelligibility, it is clear that they

offend each other’s vanity. I believe the similarity is

showcased in their conceptualization of the ego ideal or

superego.

Lacanians have the preoedipal ‘ideal ego’ that they

differentiate from the Oedipal ego ideal while ego

psychologists have the wished for self-image and imitative

identifications that they conceive of as a ‘superego

forerunner’. Before the Oedipus complex Lacanians theorize

the ‘desire of the mother’ and the child’s attempt to fill

5

the mother’s lack or be or possess her missing phallus

(Fink, 1995 p. 54-5). This all consuming project is replaced

by the paternal phallus, the father as the law, the paternal

metaphor, the name of the father, the unary trace, or master

signifier (depending on what phase of Lacan one adheres to

or which Lacanian one reads). But, for our purposes the

ideal ego becomes the ego ideal and some kind of personal

meaning or array of values is passed on from the symbolic

orderiv. The symbolic order or “Other’ with a capital ‘O’”,

Bruce Fink writes, “generally refers to a person or

institution serving a symbolic function (legislating,

prohibiting, putting forward ideals, and so on)” (Fink,

1997, p. 232). Compared to the jouissance or narcissistic

triumph of being the mother’s desire, in the symbolic order

one desires through the ideals of the capital O Other in a

way that is never satisfied.

Ego Psychologists theorize a wished for self-image prior

to the Oedipus complex.

6

“Selected admired qualities, abilities, or skills of

idolized figures, which make up [a person’s] aspirations and

ambitions” David Milrod writes, “become part of the...

wished-for image” (Milrod, 2002, p.134). He notes that the

child will work to attain this skill or quality with

“surprising persistence” and the struggle to live up to the

wished-for image resembles the struggle to live up to the

standards of the ego ideal. However, they are different

because the former comes from identifying with an external

iv “According to Lacan (1960) the internalization of the father's will takes the form of an inscription of what he calls a unary trace that symbolically represents both the name and gaze of the father… The love, gaze and name of the father are established as central features of the ego-ideal that will regulate the subject's relation to itself via the mediation of language…Finally, the identification with  symbolic laws enables the subject to become free of the captivity of the imaginary andthe narcissism of the ideal ego and of having to seek for the object in the imaginary field” (Moncayo, 2006, p.587, emphasis mine).

- “In accordance with Lacan's later usage, the Name-of-the-Father thus seems to be correlated with S,, the master signifier” (Fink, 1995, p. 75).

“Lacan introduces a precise distinction between these three terms: the ‘ideal ego’ stands for the idealized self-image of the subject (the way I would like to be, I would like others to see me); the Ego-Ideal is theagency whose gaze I try to impress with my ego image, the big Other who watches over me and propels me to give my best, the ideal I try to follow and actualize… The gap between this ‘law of desire’ and Ego-Ideal(the network of social-symbolic norms and ideal that the subject internalizes in the course of his or her education) is crucial here. ForLacan, the seemingly benevolent agency of the Ego-Ideal which leads us to moral growth and maturity, forces us to betray the ‘law of desire’ byway of adopting the ‘reasonable’ demands of the existing socio-symbolic order” (Zizek, 2006- 6)

7

parental authority while the internalization of parental

authority at the Oedipus complex means that the individual

“autonomously” chooses his own ethical values. Milrod

stresses that the individual- at best- merely approximates

the values and never fully satisfies them although the ego

ideal will demand he strive for them (ibid., p.135).

It seems to me that Lacanians and ego psychologists are

saying the same thing but with a different emphasis, or with

the Lacanians providing a more clever formulation. For

example, the wished for self-image that begins with the

child aspiring to take on certain abilities or skills is not

related to identification with a person directly for

Lacanians but rather it is an identification with a

signifier, given to the child by the mother. I believe they

would say that the child doesn’t form a cathexis to what it

understands to be the meaning of being a painter or doing a

painting, being a doctor, or whatever the mother’s desire

is. Instead the signifier, or acoustic-image of the word, is

what is important. The signifier will take on different

8

content or meaning later in life as the child’s intelligence

develops. Secondly, after the Oedipus complex the ego

psychologists hold that the child “autonomously” chooses

values, but the Lacanians place emphasis on the de-centered

subject. They wouldn’t see the child as choosing values but,

as a modified form of structuralism, would see the

individual inscribed with values through the symbolic order.

However, whether values are rationally chosen by the

individual or inscribed by the big Other, ideas or

signifiers of ethical values govern the individual.

In contrast, Freud’s version of the Oedipal ego ideal and

Oedipal conscience- as the two aspects of the superego-

isn’t based upon linguistically mediated values but upon

imagos (Freud, 1933, p. 64-5). The imagos, which relate to

the child’s internalization of the incest taboo, are tied to

three important things. Before I investigate them I need to

make one disclaimer. For the sake of simplicity and length I

will only examine this in relation to the active position of

the active-passive binary. I understand being ‘active’ to

9

amount to what can be called a competitive, egoistic, or

power based stance in dealing with the world and wanting

others to respect you for your skills or, your judgments or

beauty. In contrast, being passive amounts to an

affectionate, altruistic, or a harmony-based stance in

helping or devoting oneself to others or seeking their

approval or seeking to lift their spirits or ‘charm’ themv.

Now, at the Oedipus complex, the object or loving drives

of the egoistic child are aim inhibited by the incest taboo.

This results in an idealization of, and affectionate

feelings towards, the love object where before sensuality

and aggression was dominant over affection (Freud, 1921 p.

111). Pre-oedipally the egoist wants to posses or control

the sexual object, or, his infatuation is over after he has

sexual relations with the object. Freud also captures the

Oedipal love idealization, which is longer-lasting than

infatuation, in his formulation that the egoist puts the

beloved within his ego ideal (ibid., p 113). Additionally,

v See footnote iii

10

the ego ideal also modifies the competitive ego drives.

They become directed to certain goals by taking a ‘father-

substitute’ who is similarly placed in the ego ideal (ibid.,

p. 116, 127). In ‘The Economic Problem of Masochism’ Freud

describes this same process as being underpinned by the

imagos of the parents. He writes that in “the Oedipus

complex… [the parent’s] personal significance for the

superego recedes into the background” and “the imagos they

leave behind… link [to] the influences of teachers and

authorities… (Economic Problem, p. 167-8)vi.

By linking the ego ideal to authorities and teachers I

understand the Oedipus complex, as Chasseguet-Smirgel does,

vi Freud refers to this outcome of the Oedipus complex in other places: “the father persists in the shape of a teacher or some other person in authority…. The person who does the beating is from the first her father, replaced later on by a substitute taken from the class of fathers (Freud 1919, p. 196, 190; 1910b, p. 133). “[W]e can now understand our relation to our schoolmasters. These men, not all of whom were in fact fathers themselves, became our substitute fathers. That was why, even though they were still quite young, they struck us as so mature and so unattainably adult. We transferred on to them the respect and expectations. We transferred on to them the respectand expectations attaching to the omniscient father of our childhood, and we then began to treat them as we treated our fathers at home. We confronted them with the ambivalence that we had acquired in our own families and with its help we struggled with them as we had been in the habit of struggling with our fathers…” (Freud 1914b, p. 244).

11

to represent the acknowledgement of the ‘difference between

the generations’vii. In the realm of the ego drives this

means that someone whose self-esteem or narcissistic libido

comes from egoism related to knowledge, for example, takes

father-substitutes by recognizing people with higher

accreditation than him. The egoist wants to gain respect or

admiration from others for his knowledge in a certain field

and he encounters father-substitutes in grade school, then

high school, college, and then university. The difference

between the generations is inscribed in the difference

between a highschool diploma, BA, MA, doctorate, the company

or university one works for after (etc.). Someone who isn’t

competitive in relation to a field of knowledge will, by

vii The Oedipus complex famously establishes the difference between the sexes but Chasseguet-Smirgel work on the ego ideal and Oedipus complex suggests the difference between the generations is just as important. The incest taboo of the Oedipus complex is a recognition of the parents’exclusive sexual relationship as adults or people of another generation.The little boy has the painful recognition that his child-sized penis isinadequate to satisfy his mother and that his father is more potent thanhim as someone belonging to the older generation (Chasseguet Smirgel 1976a, p.282). The boy accepts the incest taboo and enshrines this perception and stops trying to compete with the father. Chasseguet Smirgel also emphasizes that the difference between the generations has a “maturational character” in relation to the ego drives which made me sensitive to the role of father-substitutes in Freud and inspired the formulation above (Chasseguet-Smirgel 1976b, p. 354, 358; 1976a, p. 282).

12

contrast, also encounter father-substitutes in school and

may also do some college, but then he or she may have

mentors in the business world, for example. He will take his

measure from the person’s financial success or from a

father-substitute’s membership in a certain “country club”

or some other group that confers status. Acquiring knowledge

and skills is certainly important here but also there is

learning how to know the right people, how to ‘dress for

success’, and acquiring certain manners.

What Freud calls the “double kind of tie” that allows an

individual to take a father-substitute means that his egoism

is triangulated between the substitute and a real interest

in the work he is doing (Freud, 1921, p. 130). Freud posits

that this allows an egoist to form friendly work relations

with others who also share the father substitute. However,

in the castration complex, which Freud identifies with

Adler’s masculine protest, the ego ideal loses its ‘double

tie’, which can also be understood as a defusion of eros

(Freud 1914b, 1937a). The egoist becomes aggressive and

13

competitive and unable to be friendly or put the work first.

The egoist no longer place a father substitute in his ego

ideal and has only an individual ego ideal that is suffused with

inferiority and his self-esteem loses regulation. He is

driven to make himself deceptively appear as successful to

others, or compulsively seek social achievements, or give

others the impression that he has the potential for

greatness (Reich, 1933, p. 23, 81, 180; McDougall, 1974).

Just as the relation to the Oedipal father becomes

depersonalized into recognizing the authority of people in

the community with more status or prestige, Freud holds that

in regards to conscience the Oedipal father becomes

depersonalized into social anxiety. He writes:

…in many adults… the place of the father or the two parents is

taken by the larger human community… such people habitually allow

themselves to do any bad thing which promises them enjoyment, so

long as they are sure that the authority will not know anything

about it or cannot blame them for it; they are afraid only

of being found out (ibid., p.124-5).

14

This social anxiety and the guilt conscience, which is

formed in the following stage that Freud refers to as the

father complex, isn’t based upon value or tradition but

rather Freud holds that the “introjected persons” or imagos

function as “Kant’s Categorical Imperative” (Freud, 1924b,

p.167; 1913, p. 22)viii. In Freud’s primal horde hypothesis,

the sons kill the father in the Oedipus complex, and the

following step is overcoming the rivalry between the sons to

take the father’s place and “mastering the Oedipus complex

itself” which erects religion, morality, and social feeling

in the ‘father complex’ (Freud, 1924a, p.37; 1930, p. 101).

In contrast to Kant’s formulation of the categorical

viii Castration anxiety tied to the father’s possession of the mother in the incest taboo is connected with moral fear of the father-substitutes in social anxiety. Then, after the incest taboo and castration anxiety are established, the guilt conscience arises in the father complex. Freud makes this explicit in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety where he writes:“[w]e have already traced the change of that content from loss of the mother as an object to castration. The next change is caused by the power of the super-ego. With the depersonalization of the parental agency from which castration was feared, the danger becomes less defined. Castration anxiety develops into moral anxiety—social anxiety—and it is not so easy now to know what the anxiety is about. The formula, ‘separation and expulsion from the horde’ [in the father complex], only applies to that later portion of the super-ego which has been formed on the basis of social prototypes, not to the nucleus of the super-ego, which corresponds to the introjected parental agency” (Freud, 1926, p. 139, emphasis mine).

15

imperative that is based upon a metaphysical presumption of

‘Pure Reason’ and sees an action prohibited because of

logical contradiction, Freud seems to suggest that morality

is based upon our nature as social beings and the

internalization of the parents as imagos. The child’s

narcissism or self-absorption is reduced and there is a

‘self-observation’ that one is equal to others, or, as Freud

writes, the imagos of “the parents are replaced by an

indefinite number of fellow-men”(Freud, 1914b p. 101-2). Any

person recognized as a fellow citizen that one intends to

harm, or cause anxiety or pain in, is attached to an imago

that the impulse is projected on and this causes one’s self

anxiety or pain that is manifested as guiltix. This erects a

tension between one’s Oedipal ego ideal for success vs.

feeling guilt about lying, cheating, or unfairly achieving

the success (Freud, 1930, p. 126-7). Additionally, this both

allows for the conservative relations towards class and raceix The idea of the guilt conscience relating to the social input of being fair, honest, and just with those who are considered ‘persons’ is very important. Freud doesn’t mention this explicitly but does write that the father complex superego “has been formed on the basis of socialprototypes” (Freud, 1926, p.139). If values come from the imago a la the categorical imperative then the social prototypes must relate to who thevalues apply.

16

that are always present in civilization once women and

minorities are granted peer status, as well as the

explanation of how they could have been treated with such

unfairness throughout history without manifest guilt. Once

again, this is in regard to the active-egoistic pole and, no

doubt, many passive-altruists had bad conscience over the

ill treatment of others and protested and worked to have

them recognized.

Along with the individual tension between the Oedipal ego

ideal of success and the father complex guilt conscience is

the dynamic possible in group psychology. A contemporary

example of fairness might go: “if I was working in a job and

the company closed down and I couldn’t find a job

immediately I would like social assistance until I was on my

feet and therefore I can’t refuse this to others”. For Freud

group psychology functions by an internalized conscience

being regressively placed upon an external father figure who

becomes the arbiter of right and wrong. For example, he

writes about externalizing one’s conscience against

17

physically destructive acts upon a mob leader that leads to

lynching, looting, or harming others (Freud, 1921, p. 74-5).

If we consider that aggression first appears as physically

destructive drives and later in development is refined into

sadistic drives to shame or ruin the reputation of others

then the same mechanism is suggested herex. The conscience

of the father complex would be externalized onto an

ideologue, ‘opinion leader’, or party spokesman who

represents the Oedipal father substitute that the individual

fears in social anxiety. By identifying with the father

substitutes who have prestige and externalizing one’s

superego onto them then, as Freud writes, “we deny ourselves

many things so that others may have to do without them as

well” (Freud, 1921, p. 121). In other words, the active-

egoist gets to sadistically enjoy the thought of those who

don’t get social assistance suffering or experiencing shame

x Freud writes of the “social humiliations and slights” that are “the strikingly prominent features in the causation of paranoia” and the “regression” of libido owing to “disappointment over a woman” (object drives) and “a mishap in social relations with other men” (ego drives) (Freud, 1911, p. 60-2). This view of the Oedipus complex is echoed by Kohut who writes that “competition with superior rivals which are followed by experiences of retribution fears” writes Kohut, leave “not doubt about the fact that the activated conflicts belong to the Oedipal phase” (Kohut 1971, p. 154).

18

even though it might be in his own interest to have such a

measure in place. Of course, this isn’t to say that

dismantling social safety-nets is only an expression of

sadism, but its presence is unmistakable in many cases.

In appreciating the imago-based relationship of these

operations and the lack of intellectual values playing a

role here, it is possible to understand how the pre-oedipal

superego can play a major role in character despite the

unsophisticated intelligence of the child. For Freud holds

the superego is determined by imagos from the earliest

infancy:

“nor must it be forgotten that a child has a different estimate of its

parents at different periods of its life. At the time at which

the Oedipus complex gives place to the super-ego they are something

quite magnificent; but later they lose much of this. Identifications

then come about with these later parents as well, and indeed they

regularly make important contributions to the formation of character;

but in that case they only affect the ego, they no longer influence the super-ego, which has been

determined by the earliest parental imagos. (Freud, 1933, p. 64, emphasis mine)xi.

19

Thus, the child can have what Ferenczi and others have

noted as an anal-urethral superego not from understanding

linguistically mediated values but from a relation to the

father imago internalized at the anal stage that is

substituted for a relation for one’s fellow human beingsxii.

xi When Freud isn’t stressing the importance of the father complex guiltconscience as a phenomenological coordinate and is speaking generally ofdevelopment he clearly sees the superego as existing throughout development. He writes: “[e]veryone of discernment will understand and take into account the fact that in this summary description [of the guilt conscience] we have sharply delimited events which in reality occur by gradual transitions, and that it is not merely a question of the existence of a super-ego but of its relative strength and sphere of influence” (Freud, 1930, p. 125).“[T]he effects of the first identifications made in earliest childhood will be general and lasting. This leads us back to the origin of the ego ideal [superego]; for behind it there lies hidden an individual's first and most importantidentification, his identification with the father in his own personal prehistory” (Freud, 1923, p. 31).“The super-ego is, however, not simply a residue of the earliest object-choices of the id; it also represents…”(ibid., p. 34). “The super-ego arises, as we know, from an identification with the father taken as a model. Every such identification is in the nature of a desexualization or even of a sublimation” (ibid., p. 54, emphasis mine). “The libidinal trends belonging to the Oedipus complex are in part desexualized and sublimated(a thing which probably happens with every transformation into an identification) and in part inhibited in their aim and changed into impulses of affection” (Freud, 1924a, p. 176-7, emphasis mine).

While many analysts recognize that the cognition of the child advances as the ego is derived from id, Freud is clear that the superegois around very early in the child’s development and is derived from the ego. Freud’s explicit position in The Ego and the Id is that “the ego is formed to a great extent out of identifications which take the place of abandoned cathexes by the id; [and] that the first of these identifications always behave as a special agency in the ego and stand apart from the ego in the form of a super-ego” (ibid., p.48).

20

This conscience can be built upon the qualitative subjective

feelings of different physically destructive acts and, as I

mentioned above, can be externalized onto a mob leader. I

don’t have the space to investigate the many possible pre-

oedipal superego relations but I would like to make one more

point here in order to further differentiate the imago based

model from the linguistic based value model.

There is a general consensus that schizoid personality

disorder is related to the earliest object relations in

which a primitive imago represents the base or foundational

connection to others. A schizoid personality may work with

others and live next to them but have no personal

relationships and virtually live in isolation. He or she

can potentially give you many value-based rationalizations

xii “The anal and urethral identification with the parents, already referred to, appears to build up in the child's mind a sort of physiological forerunner of the ego-ideal orsuper-ego. Not only in the sense that the child constantly compares his achievements in these directions with the capacities of his parents, but in that a severe sphincter-morality is set up which can only be contravened at thecost of bitter self-reproaches and punishment by conscience. It is by nomeans improbable that this, as yet semi-physiological, morality forms the essential groundwork of later purely mental morality… “(Ferenczi, 1925, p.379).

21

for living in isolation or being misanthropic. However, the

isolated schizoid doesn’t rationally deduce that all people

are bad and deserve hatred or that it is rationally better

to lead a detached sage like existence and stay out of human

drama. Instead, in Freud’s model we can say that a primitive

ego ideal has become defused and this makes him feel thin xiii “The schizoid defensive organization is the result of a person’s (pre)conscious awareness not only of his narcissistic vulnerability, butalso, and specifically, of the danger that a narcissistic injury could initiate an uncontrollable regression which would pull him irreversibly beyond the stage of the nuclear, cohesive, narcissistic configurations. Such persons have thus learned to distance themselves from others in order to avoid the specific dangers of exposing themselves to a narcissistic injury” (Kohut, 1971, p.12).This over-valuation of mental contents shows itself, for example, in thedifficulty experienced by the individual with a schizoid tendency over expressing emotion in a social context. For such an individual, that element of giving which is involved in expressing emotion towards othershas the significance of losing contents; and it is for this reason that he so often finds social contacts exhausting. Thus, if he is long in company, he is liable to feel that ‘virtue has gone out of him’, and that he requires a period of quiet and solitude afterwards in order thatthe inner storehouse of emotion may have an opportunity to be replenished…. Such individuals are commonly described as ‘shut in personalities’; and, in view of the extent to which they keep their emotional contents shut in, the description is singularly apt (Fairbairn, 1952, p.15) “[T]he position underlying schizoid developmentswould appear to be one arising in the pre-ambivalent early oral phase—the position in which the individual feels that his love is bad because it appears destructive towards his libidinal objects; and this may be appropriately described as the schizoid position. It represents an essentially tragic situation; and it provides the theme of many of the great tragedies of literature, as well as providing a favourite theme for poetry (as in the case of the ‘Lucy’ poems of Wordsworth). It is small wonder then that individuals with any considerable schizoid tendency experience such difficulty in showing love; for they always entertain the deep anxiety expressed by Oscar Wilde in The Ballad of Reading Gaol when he wrote, ‘Each man kills the thing he loves’ (ibid., p.25). “When, accordingly, an individual with a schizoid tendency makes a renunciation of social contacts, it is above all because he feels thathe must neither love nor be loved (ibid., p. 26).

22

pathology he can once again pursue his ethical values

unhindered. In contrast, Freud’s position, all things being

equal, is that the early drives and superego become fused

once again and are working harmoniously and whatever ethical

values or political beliefs the individual would claim to

govern his action at that point continue to arise from his

‘psychical constitution’.

23

Some analysts believe Freud’s ego and object drives to be

antiquated and prefer to think of the pre-oedipal as being

mere wish and phantasy that doesn’t play a part in normal

xiv Although there have been historical debates about the universality ofthe Oedipus complex these debates have centered around the pathological manifestation of the castration complex and its absence in some cultures(i.e Reich, Horney, etc.). By considering the Oedipus complex in its non-pathological form its existence can be seen in any culture that recognizes the ‘difference between the generations’. In other words, in any culture that recognizes a neophyte and an elder with more knowledge,skill, or “magic” the Oedipal exists in fused form.

Bibliography:

Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1976). Freud and Female Sexuality—The Consideration of Some Blind Spots in the Exploration of the 'Dark Continent'. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 57:275-286Chasseguet-Smirgel, J. (1976). Some Thoughts on the Ego Ideal a Contribution to the Study of the 'Illness of Ideality'. Psychoanal. Q., 45:345-373

Fairbairn, W.D. (1952). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. , 1-297. London: Tavistock Publications Limited.

Ferenczi, S. (1925). Psycho-Analysis of Sexual Habits. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 6:372-404

Fink, B. (1995). The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, USA, Princeton University Press, 1997Fink, B. (1997). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique, Cambridge, USA, Harvard University Press

Freud, S. (1910a). A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men (Contributionsto the Psychology of Love I). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XI (1910): Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works, 163-176Freud, S. (1910b). Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XI (1910): Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo da Vinci and Other Works, 57-138Freud, S. (1911). Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Caseof Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works ofSigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreber, Papers on Technique and Other Works, 1-82

24

motivation and self-esteem regulation- except to interfere

with it (as with the schizoid case). The key to this debate

is found in Freud’s primal horde hypothesisxiv. Although

there are good reasons to doubt the form Freud gave it in,

Freud, S. (1913). Totem and Taboo. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works ofSigmund Freud, Volume XIII (1913-1914): Totem and Taboo and Other Works, vii-162Freud, S. (1914a). On Narcissism. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 67-102Freud, S. (1914b). Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIII (1913-1914): Totem and Taboo and Other Works, 239-244Freud, S. (1917). Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVI (1916-1917): Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (Part III), 241-463Freud, S. (1919). ‘A Child is Being Beaten’ A Contribution to the Study of the Origin of Sexual Perversions. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, 175-204Freud, S. (1920). One of the Difficulties of Psycho-Analysis. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 1:17-23Freud, S. (1921). Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVIII (1920-1922): Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works, 65-144Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works, 1-66Freud, S. (1924a). The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works, 171-180Freud, S. (1924b). The Economic Problem of Masochism. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works, 155-170Freud, S. (1926). Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XX (1925-1926): An Autobiographical Study, Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, The Question of Lay Analysis and Other Works, 75-176Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and its Discontents. The Standard Edition of the CompletePsychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXI (1927-1931): The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Other Works, 57-146Freud, S. (1933). New Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXII (1932-1936): New Introductory Lectureson Psycho-Analysis and Other Works, 1-182Freud, S. (1937a). Analysis Terminable and Interminable. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXIII (1937-1939): Moses and Monotheism, An Outline of Psycho-Analysis and Other Works, 209-254Freud, S. (1937b). Letter from Sigmund Freud to Marie Bonaparte, August 13, 1937. Letters of Sigmund Freud 1873-1939, 436-437

25

one can’t doubt the necessity of a psychological (or imago-

based) genesis of the guilt conscience. Even in Alfred

Kroeber’s famous essay in which Freud’s primal horde

hypothesis is ridiculed as a ‘just so’ story, Kroeber

writes:

[h]owever much cultural anthropology may come to lean more

on the historical instead of the psychological method, it

can never ultimately free itself, nor should it wish to,

from the psychology that underlies it. To this psychology

the psychoanalytic movement initiated by Freud has made an

indubitably significant contribution, which every

Kohut, H (1971) The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders, Madison, USA: International Universities Press, 1989

Kroeber, A. (1920). Totem and Taboo: an Ethnologic Psycho-analysis. American Anthropologist. 22:1

Milrod, D. (2002). The Superego. Psychoanal. St. Child, 57:131-148

Moncayo, R. (2006). The Partial Object, the Ideal Ego, the Ego-Ideal, and the Empty Subject. Psychoanal. Rev., 93:565-602

McDougall, J. (1974). The Anonymous Spectator—A Clinical Study of Sexual Perversion. Contemp. Psychoanal., 10:289-310

Milrod, D. (2002). The Superego. Psychoanal. St. Child, 57:131-148

Reich, W. (1933) Character Analysis, tr: Vincent R. Carfagno, New York, USA: Farrar,Straus and Giroux, 1990

Zizek, S. (2006) How to Read Lacan, New York, USA, W W Norton & Company Inc.

26

ethnologist must sooner or later take into consideration

(Kroeber, 1920, p.54).

The need for psychological underpinnings to understand

ethics in primitive political-economies issues from the lack

of elaborate value systems that exist there. Freud turned

to anthropology to see that three things were ubiquitous,

even in the earliest forms of culture: religion, morality,

and the incest taboo/marriage. For him and his earlier

anthropological critics, the ethnographies of these early

cultures showed that there were no ‘reasons’ that their

members would adopt the incest taboo, believe in religion or

not, or behave in a moral way. These things didn’t emerge

from democratic discussions within the tribe, nor do

ethnographies paint individuals in these cultures as

philosophers who are studying ontological arguments for

God’s existence and having discussions about whether it is

better to have a stoic, hedonistic, duty-based, etc. ethical

stance.

27

Unless ego psychologists and Lacanians can provide new

anthropological evidence that there is a pluralism of values

in primitive political economies and discussions about them

that illustrate the linguistic transmission of ethical

values, then their views can’t provide a trans-historical

model of mind. In contrast, Freud’s claim is that different

character types exist in early cultures as they do in later

ones. Some people are ambitious, some are shy, some are

charismatic, some strive to be helpful and nice, some are

impulsive, and some draw self-esteem from their beauty

(etc.). The drive and superego based motivations comprise

their character and issues from the primary social

relatedness of humans. An individual in these cultures

doesn’t have access to the writings and elaborated value

systems of the stoics, or epicureans, or Kant’s ideas of

morality as duty, etc. in order to rationalize their

motivations but might characterologically act like a stoic,

a hedonist, or a conscientious pendant. Varying forms of

egoism and altruism in which the individual is driven to

find success, love, approval, admiration, to make others

28

happy, etc. are enough to account for many different types

of political and ethical behavior. Additionally, fairness

and equality are not ideas the individual chooses or that

are inscribed in his identity but instead are anchored in

his ‘self-observation’ by the internalization of the father

complex imago. Lacanians and ego psychologists, on the other

hand, theorize the Oedipal as introducing an individual that

is atomistic and wholly separate from previous development.

They place the political on the side of the individual

choosing, or being inscribed by, certain values that are

part of broader ethical values that give the individual a

sense of meaning that satisfies even though these values

will never be fully attained.

Because Freud considers that the drives and superego of

the individual already relates him to others he sees an

individual’s search for meaning as pathological. We’ve seen

that Freud included the Other in the superego in three major

ways. Firstly, instead of a rational agent model in which an

individual chooses, he sees that the individual as ‘driven’.

29

To be ambitious, for example, and will suffer inferiority if

he doesn’t receive admiration from others. Additionally, the

inclusion of a father-substitute in the active-egoist’s ego

ideal allows for ‘triangulation’ that reduces tensions with

others and produces self-esteem regulation as compared to

the individual ego ideal that Freud compares to an

individual’s “single wish to be his own father” in the

castration complex (Freud, 1910a, p. 173). Secondly, the

Other is included in morality. The parental imago is linked

to fellow citizens or people in the father complex and to

father-substitutes in the Oedipus complex. Thirdly, the

Other also stands for the social inputs of institutions and

family tradition that limit who is regarded as a ‘person’

and who is able to access the accumulated knowledge or

skills of one’s historical civilization or who is to be

treated with fairness and dignity. In Freud’s account, the

individual who develops to latency will take on specific

traditions and social ideals from her culture that will be

anchored into her drive-based character structure. However,

for Freud the various ways of striving for happiness are

30

primary and it’s only when the individual starts to defend

against finding success, love, approval, etc. that either

neurosis or the search for meaning in life arises. In a

letter to Marie Bonaparte he writes:

“the moment a [person] questions the meaning and value of life,

he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence; by

asking this question one is merely admitting to a store of

unsatisfied libido to which something else must have happened, a

kind of fermentation leading to sadness and depression” (Freud,

1937b, p. 436).

31