Concept
Super-ego
In Freud's structural model, the agency that judges and censors the ego: conscience, self-observation and the holding up of ideals. Freud introduced it in Das Ich und das Es (1923) as heir of the Oedipus complex, formed when the child gives up its parents as objects and identifies with their authority. Much of it is unconscious, and its severity draws on aggression turned back against the self, which the ego feels as a sense of guilt. Melanie Klein traced its origins to the first year of life.
Read more- Broader concept
- Structural model
- Narrower concepts
- Unconscious sense of guilt
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 5
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1923 Das Ich und das Es introduces the super-ego (Über-Ich), at first as another name for the ego ideal, and derives it from the identifications with the parents that bring the Oedipus complex to an end, which makes it the heir of that complex.
derives from
- Oedipus complex 1923 Freud calls the super-ego the heir of the Oedipus complex: when the complex is given up, the parental authority is introjected into the ego and forms its nucleus, taking over the father's severity and perpetuating his prohibition of incest.
- Ego ideal 1923 The super-ego grows out of the ego ideal and the agency of self-observation Freud had described in 1914; in 1923 he uses the two names interchangeably, and only later, in the New Introductory Lectures, treats the ego ideal as one function of the super-ego.
reworked by
- Melanie Klein 1928 Against Freud's view that the super-ego is the heir of the Oedipus complex, Klein finds an early and harsh super-ego in the first years of life. It is built from the introjected objects that the child's own sadism makes frightening. The Psycho-Analysis of Children (1932) sets out this view at length.