Editing Id, ego and superego (section)

== Superego ==
The superego reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly as absorbed from parents, but also other authority figures, and the general cultural ethos. Freud developed his concept of the superego from an earlier combination of the [[ego ideal]] and the "special psychical agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured...what we call our 'conscience'."<ref>Freud, ''On Metapsychology'' pp. 89–90.</ref> For him the superego can be described as "a successful instance of identification with the parental agency", and as development proceeds it also absorbs the influence of those who have "stepped into the place of parents&nbsp;— educators, teachers, people chosen as ideal models".
{{blockquote|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.<ref>Sigmund Freud (1933). pp. 95–6.</ref>}}

The superego aims for perfection.<ref name="Meyers"/> It is the part of the personality structure (mainly but not entirely unconscious) that includes the individual's ego ideals, spiritual goals, and the psychic agency, commonly called "[[conscience]]", that criticizes and prohibits the expression of drives, fantasies, feelings, and actions. Thus the superego works in contradiction to the id. It is an internalized mechanism that operates to confine the ego to socially acceptable behaviour, whereas the id merely seeks instant self-gratification.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Calian|first=Florian|title=Plato's Psychology of Action and the Origin of Agency|publisher=L'Harmattan|year=2012|isbn=978-963-236-587-9|pages=17–19}}</ref>

The superego and the ego are the product of two key factors: the state of helplessness of the child and the [[Oedipus complex]].<ref name="Sédat">{{cite journal
  | last = Sédat | first = Jacques
  | title = Freud
  | journal = Collection Synthèse
  | volume = 109
  | isbn = 978-2-200-21997-0<!--, 1590510062-->
  | publisher = [[Armand Colin]]
  | year = 2000 }}</ref> In the case of the little boy, it forms during the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, through a process of identification with the father figure, following the failure to retain possession of the mother as a love-object out of [[Castration anxiety|fear of castration]]. Freud described the superego and its relationship to the father figure and Oedipus complex thus:
{{blockquote|The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on—in the form of conscience or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt.<ref>Freud, ''[[The Ego and the Id]]''.</ref>}}

In ''[[The Ego and the Id]]'', Freud presents "the general character of harshness and cruelty exhibited by the [ego] ideal — its dictatorial ''Thou shalt''". The earlier in the child's development, the greater the estimate of parental power. 
{{blockquote|. . . nor must it be forgotten that a child has a different estimate of his parents at different periods of his 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 images.|''New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis'', p. 64.}}

Thus when the child is in rivalry with the parental imago<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://dictionary.apa.org/imago|title = APA Dictionary of Psychology}}</ref> it feels the dictatorial ''Thou shalt''—the manifest power that the imago represents—on four levels: (i) the auto-erotic, (ii) the narcissistic, (iii) the anal, and (iv) the phallic.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Pederson|first1=Trevor|title=The Economics of Libido: Psychic Bisexuality, the Superego, and the Centrality of the Oedipus Complex|date=2015|publisher=Karnac}}</ref> Those different levels of mental development, and their relations to parental imagos, correspond to specific id forms of aggression and affection.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hommel|first=Bernhard|date=2019-10-01|title=Affect and control: A conceptual clarification|url=https://zenodo.org/record/3634804|journal=International Journal of Psychophysiology|language=en|volume=144|pages=1–6|doi=10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2019.07.006|pmid=31362029|s2cid=198998249|issn=0167-8760|hdl=1887/81987|hdl-access=free}}</ref>

The concept of the Oedipus complex internalised in the superego - anchored by Freud in the hypothetical murder of the forefather of the Darwinian horde by his sons - has been criticised for its supposed sexism. Women, who cannot develop a fear of castration due to their different genital make-up, do not identify with the father. Therefore, ‘their superego is never as implacable, as impersonal, as independent of its emotional origins as we demand of men...they are often more influenced in their judgements by feelings of affection or hostility.’ - not by fear of castration, as was the case with ‘Little Hans’ in his conflict with his father over his wife and mother.<ref>Sigmund Freud, ''On Sexuality'' (Penguin Freud Library 7) p. 342.</ref> However, Freud went on to modify his position to the effect "that the majority of men are also far behind the masculine ideal and that all human individuals, as a result of their human identity, combine in themselves both masculine and feminine characteristics, otherwise known as human characteristics."<ref>Freud, ''On Sexuality'' p. 342.</ref>