Notes on the Superego

Abstract

The idea of the superego emerged late in Freud's conception of countercathexis or counterwill. It was preceded by censorship and the ego ideal, the latter of which later became associated with the newfound superego. Freud believed that the superego emerged as the resolution of the Oedipus complex. Klein, though agreeing with Freud, also uncovered the origin of the archaic superego in the early oral stage owing to projective identification of aspects of the infant into its image of the mother, which is then introjected and installed within the infant's internal world. The epigenesis of the superego, from the Kleinian point of view, enters into a transformation from a harsh, punitive, and retaliatory superego in the paranoid-schizoid position to a more forgiving and helpful one in the depressive position. The author suggests that there is such a thing as a “triune superego,” much like the Christian trinity, in which there are representations of the infant, the mother, and the father. Pathologic retreats constitute a default superego that vies with a normal superego.