If the ego were merely the part of the id that is modified by the
influence of the perceptual system, the representative in the mind of
the real external world, we should have a simple state of things to deal
with. But there is a further complication.
The considerations that led us to assume the existence of a
differentiating grade within the ego, which may be called the ego-ideal
or super-ego, have been set forth elsewhere.[10] They still hold
good.[11] The new proposition which must now be gone into is that this
part of the ego is less closely connected with consciousness than the
rest.
At this point we must widen our range a little. We succeeded in
explaining the painful disorder of melancholia by supposing that, in
those suffering from it, an object which was lost has been reinstated
within the ego; that is, that an object-cathexis has been replaced by an
identification.[12] When this explanation was first proposed, however,
we did not appreciate the full significance of the process and did not
know how common and how typical it is. Since then we have come to
understand that this kind of substitution has a great share in
determining the form taken on by the ego and that it contributes
materially towards building up what is called its ‘character’.
At the very beginning, in the primitive oral phase of the individual’s
existence, object-cathexis and identification are hardly to be
distinguished from each other. We can only suppose that later on
object-cathexes proceed from the id, in which erotic trends are felt as
needs. The ego, which at its inception is still far from robust, becomes
aware of the object-cathexes, and either acquiesces in them or tries to
defend itself against them by the process of repression.[13]
When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there
quite often ensues a modification in his ego which can only be described
as a reinstatement of the object within the ego, as it occurs in
melancholia; the exact nature of this substitution is as yet unknown to
us. It may be that, by undertaking this introjection, which is a kind of
regression to the mechanism of the oral phase, the ego makes it easier
for an object to be given up or renders that process possible. It may
even be that this identification is the sole condition under which the
id can give up its objects. At any rate the process, especially in the
early phases of development, is a very frequent one, and it points to
the conclusion that the character of the ego is a precipitate of
abandoned object-cathexes and that it contains a record of past
object-choices. It must, of course, be admitted from the outset that
there are varying degrees of capacity for resistance, as shown by the
extent to which the character of any particular person accepts or
resists the influences of the erotic object-choices through which he has
lived. In women who have had many love-affairs there seems to be no
difficulty in finding vestiges of their object-cathexes in the traits of
their character. We must also take into consideration the case of
simultaneous object-cathexis and identification, i.e. in which the
alteration in character occurs before the object has been given up. In
such a case the alteration in character would be able to survive the
object-relation and in a certain sense to conserve it.
From another point of view it may be said that this transformation of an
erotic object-choice into a modification of the ego is also a method by
which the ego can obtain control over the id and deepen its relations
with it—at the cost, it is true, of acquiescing to a large extent in the
id’s experiences. When the ego assumes the features of the object, it
forces itself, so to speak, upon the id as a love-object and tries to
make good the loss of that object by saying, ‘Look, I am so like the
object, you can as well love me’.
The transformation of object-libido into narcissistic libido which thus
takes place obviously implies an abandonment of sexual aims, a process
of desexualization; it is consequently a kind of sublimation. Indeed,
the question arises, and deserves careful consideration, whether this is
not always the path taken in sublimation, whether all sublimation does
not take place through the agency of the ego, which begins by changing
sexual object-libido into narcissistic libido and then, perhaps, goes on
to give it another aim.[14] We shall later on have to consider whether
other instinctual vicissitudes may not also result from this
transformation, whether, for instance, it may not bring about a defusion
of the instincts that are fused together.
Although it is a digression from our theme, we cannot avoid giving our
attention for a moment longer to the ego’s object-identifications. If
they obtain the upper hand and become too numerous, unduly intense and
incompatible with one another, a pathological outcome will not be far
off. It may come to a disruption of the ego in consequence of the
individual identifications becoming cut off from one another by
resistances; perhaps the secret of the cases of so-called multiple
personality is that the various identifications seize possession of
consciousness in turn. Even when things do not go so far as this, there
remains the question of conflicts between the different identifications
into which the ego is split up, conflicts which cannot after all be
described as purely pathological.
But, whatever the character’s capacity for resisting the influences of
abandoned object-cathexes may turn out to be in after years, the effects
of the first identifications in earliest childhood will be profound and
lasting. This leads us back to the origin of the ego-ideal; for behind
the latter there lies hidden the first and most important identification
of all, the identification with the father,[15] which takes place in the
prehistory of every person. This is apparently not in the first instance
the consequence or outcome of an object-cathexis; it is a direct and
immediate identification and takes place earlier than any
object-cathexis. But the object-choices belonging to the earliest sexual
period and relating to the father and mother seem normally to find their
outcome in an identification of the kind discussed, which would thus
reinforce the primary one.
The whole subject, however, is so complicated that it will be necessary
to go into it more minutely. The intricacy of the problem is due to two
factors: the triangular character of the Oedipus situation and the
constitutional bisexuality of each individual.
In its simplified form the case of the male child may be described as
follows. At a very early age the little boy develops an object-cathexis
of his _mother_, which originally related to the mother’s breast and is
the earliest instance of an object-choice on the anaclitic model; his
_father_ the boy deals with by identifying himself with him. For a time
these two relationships exist side by side, until the sexual wishes in
regard to the mother become more intense and the father is perceived as
an obstacle to them; this gives rise to the Oedipus complex.[16] The
identification with the father then takes on a hostile colouring and
changes into a wish to get rid of the father in order to take his place
with the mother. Henceforward the relation to the father is ambivalent;
it seems as if the ambivalence inherent in the identification from the
beginning had become manifest. An ambivalent attitude to the father and
an object-relation of a purely affectionate kind to the mother make up
the content of the simple positive Oedipus complex in the boy.
Along with the dissolution of the Oedipus complex the object-cathexis of
the mother must be given up. Its place may be filled by one of two
things: either an identification with the mother or an intensified
identification with the father. We are accustomed to regard the latter
outcome as the more normal; it permits the affectionate relation to the
mother to be in a measure retained. In this way the passing of the
Oedipus complex would consolidate the masculinity in the boy’s
character. In a precisely analogous way, the outcome of the Oedipus
attitude in the little girl may be an intensification of the
identification with her mother (or such an identification may thus be
set up for the first time)—a result which will stamp the child’s
character in the feminine mould.
These identifications are not what our previous statements would have
led us to expect, since they do not involve the absorption of the
abandoned object into the ego: but this alternative outcome may also
occur; it is more readily observed in girls than in boys. Analysis very
often shows that a little girl, after she has had to relinquish her
father as a love-object, will bring her masculinity into prominence and
identify herself with her father, that is, with the object which has
been lost, instead of with her mother. This will clearly depend on
whether the masculinity in her disposition—whatever that may consist
of—is strong enough.
It would appear, therefore, that in both sexes the relative strength of
the masculine and feminine sexual dispositions is what determines
whether the outcome of the Oedipus situation shall be an identification
with the father or with the mother. This is one of the ways in which
bisexuality takes a hand in the subsequent vicissitudes of the Oedipus
complex. The other way is even more important. For one gets the
impression that the simple Oedipus complex is by no means its commonest
form, but rather represents a simplification or schematization which, to
be sure, is often enough adequate for practical purposes. Closer study
usually discloses the more complete Oedipus complex, which is twofold,
positive and negative, and is due to the bisexuality originally present
in children: that is to say, a boy has not merely an ambivalent attitude
towards his father and an affectionate object-relation towards his
mother, but at the same time he also behaves like a girl and displays an
affectionate feminine attitude to his father and a corresponding
hostility and jealousy towards his mother. It is this complicating
element introduced by bisexuality that makes it so difficult to obtain a
clear view of the facts in connection with the earliest object-choices
and identifications, and still more difficult to describe them
intelligibly. It may even be that the ambivalence displayed in the
relations to the parents should be attributed entirely to bisexuality
and that it is not, as I stated just now, developed out of an
identification in consequence of rivalry.
In my opinion it is advisable in general, and quite especially where
neurotics are concerned, to assume the existence of the complete Oedipus
complex. Analytic experience then shows that in a number of cases one or
the other of its constituents disappears, except for barely
distinguishable traces, so that a series can be formed with the normal
positive Oedipus complex at one end and the inverted negative one at the
other, while its intermediate members will exhibit the complete type
with one or other of its two constituents preponderating. As the Oedipus
complex dissolves, the four trends of which it consists will group
themselves in such a way as to produce a father-identification and a
mother-identification. The father-identification will preserve the
object-relation to the mother which belonged to the positive complex and
will at the same time take the place of the object-relation to the
father which belonged to the inverted complex: and the same will be
true, _mutatis mutandis_, of the mother-identification. The relative
intensity of the two identifications in any individual will reflect the
preponderance in him of one or other of the two sexual dispositions.
The broad general outcome of the sexual phase governed by the
Oedipus complex may, therefore, be taken to be the forming of
a precipitate in the ego, consisting of these two identifications
in some way combined together. This modification of the ego
retains its special position; it stands in contrast to the other
constituents of the ego in the form of an ego-ideal or super-ego.
The super-ego is, however, not merely a deposit left by the earliest
object-choices of the id; it also represents an energetic
reaction-formation against those choices. Its relation to the ego is not
exhausted by the precept: ‘You _ought to be_ such and such (like your
father)’; it also comprises the prohibition: ‘You must not be such and
such (like your father); that is, you may not do all that he does; many
things are his prerogative’. This double aspect of the ego-ideal derives
from the fact that the ego-ideal had the task of effecting the
repression of the Oedipus complex, indeed, it is to that revolutionary
event that it owes its existence. Clearly the repression of the Oedipus
complex was no easy task. The parents, and especially the father, were
perceived as the obstacle to realization of the Oedipus wishes; so the
child’s ego brought in a reinforcement to help in carrying out the
repression by erecting this same obstacle within itself. The strength to
do this was, so to speak, borrowed from the father, and this loan was an
extraordinarily momentous act. 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 on is
the domination of the super-ego over the ego—in the form of conscience
or perhaps of an unconscious sense of guilt. I shall later on bring
forward a suggestion about the source of the power it employs to
dominate in this way, the source, that is, of its compulsive character
which manifests itself in the form of a categorical imperative.
If we consider once more the origin of the super-ego as we have
described it, we shall perceive it to be the outcome of two highly
important factors, one of them biological and the other historical:
namely, the lengthy duration in man of the helplessness and dependence
belonging to childhood, and the fact of his Oedipus complex, the
repression of which we have shown to be connected with the interruption
of libidinal development by the latency period and so with the twofold
onset of activity characteristic of man’s sexual life.[17] According to
the view of one psycho-analyst, the last-mentioned phenomenon, which
seems to be peculiar to man, is a heritage of the cultural development
necessitated by the glacial epoch. We see, then, that the
differentiation of the super-ego from the ego is no matter of chance; it
stands as the representative of the most important events in the
development both of the individual and of the race; indeed, by giving
permanent expression to the influence of the parents it perpetuates the
existence of the factors to which it owes its origin.
Psycho-analysis has been reproached time after time with ignoring the
higher, moral, spiritual side of human nature. The reproach is doubly
unjust, both historically and methodologically. For, in the first place,
we have from the very beginning attributed the function of instigating
repression to the moral and aesthetic tendencies in the ego, and
secondly, there has been a general refusal to recognize that
psycho-analytic research could not produce a complete and finished body
of doctrine, like a philosophical system, ready-made, but had to find
its way step by step along the path towards understanding the
intricacies of the mind by making an analytic dissection of both normal
and abnormal phenomena. So long as the study of the repressed part of
the mind was our task, there was no need for us to feel any agitated
apprehensions about the existence of the higher side of mental life. But
now that we have embarked upon the analysis of the ego we can give an
answer to all those whose moral sense has been shocked and who have
complained that there must surely be a higher nature in man: ‘Very
true,’ we can say, ‘and here we have that higher nature, in this
ego-ideal or super-ego, the representative of our relation to our
parents. When we were little children we knew these higher natures, we
admired them and feared them; and later we took them into ourselves.’
The ego-ideal, therefore, is the heir of the Oedipus complex and thus it
is also the expression of the most powerful impulses and most important
vicissitudes experienced by the libido in the id. By setting up this
ego-ideal the ego masters its Oedipus complex and at the same time
places itself in subjection to the id. Whereas the ego is essentially
the representative of the external world, of reality, the super-ego
stands in contrast to it as the representative of the internal world, of
the id. Conflicts between the ego and the ideal will, as we are now
prepared to find, ultimately reflect the contrast between what is real
and what is mental, between the external world and the internal world.
Through the forming of the ideal, all the traces left behind in the id
by biological developments and by the vicissitudes gone through by the
human race are taken over by the ego and lived through again by it in
each individual. Owing to the way in which it is formed, the ego-ideal
has a great many points of contact with the phylogenetic endowment of
each individual—his archaic heritage. And thus it is that what belongs
to the lowest depths in the minds of each one of us is changed, through
this formation of the ideal, into what we value as the highest in the
human soul. It would be vain, however, to attempt to localize the
ego-ideal, even in the sense in which we have localized the ego, or to
work it into any of those analogies with the help of which we have tried
to picture the relation between the ego and the id.
It is easy to show that the ego-ideal answers in every way to what is
expected of the higher nature of man. In so far as it is a substitute
for the longing for a father, it contains the germ from which all
religions have evolved. The self-judgement which declares that the ego
falls short of its ideal produces the sense of worthlessness with which
the religious believer attests his longing. As a child grows up, the
office of father is carried on by masters and by others in authority;
the power of their injunctions and prohibitions remains vested in the
ego-ideal and continues, in the form of conscience, to exercise the
censorship of morals. The tension between the demands of conscience and
the actual attainments of the ego is experienced as a sense of guilt.
Social feelings rest on the foundation of identifications with others,
on the basis of an ego-ideal in common with them.
Religion, morality, and a social sense—the chief elements of what is
highest in man[18]—were originally one and the same thing. According to
the hypothesis which I have put forward in _Totem und Tabu_ they were
acquired phylogenetically out of the father-complex: religion and moral
restraint by the actual process of mastering the Oedipus complex itself,
and social feeling from the necessity for overcoming the rivalry that
then remained between the members of the younger generation. It seems
that the male sex has taken the lead in developing all of these moral
acquisitions; and that they have then been transmitted to women by
cross-inheritance. Even today the social feelings arise in the
individual as a superstructure founded upon impulses of jealousy and
rivalry against his brothers and sisters. Since the enmity cannot be
gratified there develops an identification with the former rival. The
study of mild cases of homosexuality confirms the suspicion that in this
instance, too, the identification is a substitute for an affectionate
object-choice which has succeeded the hostile, aggressive attitude.[19]
With the mention of phylogenesis, however, fresh problems arise, from
which one is tempted to shrink back dismayed. But there is no help for
it, the attempt must be made; in spite of a fear that it will lay bare
the inadequacy of the whole structure that we have so arduously built
up. The question is: which was it, the ego of primitive man or his id,
that acquired religion and morality in those early days out of the
father-complex? If it was his ego, why do we not speak simply of these
things being inherited by the ego? If it was the id, how does that agree
with the character of the id? Or are we wrong in carrying the
differentiation between ego, super-ego, and id back into such early
times? Or should we not honestly confess that our whole conception of
the processes within the ego is of no help in understanding phylogenesis
and cannot be applied to it?
Let us answer first what is easiest to answer. The differentiation
between ego and id must be attributed not only to primitive man but even
to much simpler forms of life, for it is the inevitable expression of
the influence of the external world. The super-ego, according to our
hypothesis, actually originated from the experiences that led to
totemism. The question whether it was the ego or the id that experienced
and acquired these things soon ceases to have any meaning. Reflection at
once shows us that no external vicissitudes can be experienced or
undergone by the id, except by way of the ego, which is the
representative of the outer world to the id. Nevertheless it is not
possible to speak of direct inheritance by the ego. It is here that the
gulf between the actual individual and the conception of the species
becomes evident. Moreover, one must not take the difference between ego
and id in too hard-and-fast a sense, nor forget that the ego is a part
of the id which has been specially modified. The experiences undergone
by the ego seem at first to be lost to posterity; but, when they have
been repeated often enough and with sufficient intensity in the
successive individuals of many generations, they transform themselves,
so to say, into experiences of the id, the impress of which is preserved
by inheritance. Thus in the id, which is capable of being inherited, are
stored up vestiges of the existences led by countless former egos; and,
when the ego forms its super-ego out of the id, it may perhaps only be
reviving images of egos that have passed away and be securing them a
resurrection.
The way in which the super-ego came into being explains how it is that
the earlier conflicts of the ego with the object-cathexes of the id can
be carried on and continued in conflicts with their successor, the
super-ego. If the ego has not succeeded in mastering the Oedipus complex
satisfactorily, the energic cathexis of the latter, springing from the
id, will find an outlet in the reaction-formations of the ego-ideal. The
very free communication possible between the ideal and these Ucs
instinctual trends explains how it is that the ideal itself can be to a
great extent unconscious and inaccessible to the ego. The struggle which
once raged in the deepest strata of the mind, and was not brought to an
end by rapid sublimation and identification, is now carried on in a
higher region, like the Battle of the Huns which in Kaulbach’s painting
is being fought out in the sky.
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