The Ethical Dimension of Psychoanalysis: A Dialogue

CHAPTER TWELVE Superego Functions and Conscience

CHAPTER TWELVE Superego Functions and Conscience FRACTIONATION For the most part, ethical functions of superego involve integration with ego capacities in various forms (Muslin 1972). Joseph Sandler (1960) referred to the gradual absorption of superego functions into the ego as “conceptual dissolution of the superego” (p. 130). These concepts point toward a more nuanced understanding of superego integration with egoand other self-related capacities in the construction of ethical identity. As long as we regard such instances of integrative functioning as taking place among separate, differentiated, and oppositional structures, the problem of adequately explaining such integrated functions will continue to plague and perplex us. The language of partition and attributing agency related with specific functions to specific structures—superego, ego, or id—draws our thinking into misguided metaphors of reification and afflicts our theory with the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (Meissner 2000e,h,i,j). I have argued that there is only one real agency, that of the self, the human person; if we speak anthropomorphically and metaphorically, for example, of superego judging the ego, as we shall, that is only a less complicated way of saying that the self, acting in its superego modality, judges another aspect of itself, acting in its ego modality. References in the following discussion to “superego” are meant to connote the self-as-superego, a functional constituent of the self-as-agent, and not a separate agency within the self. ROLE OF THE SUPEREGO A good place to start is Freud’s (1940) summary statement of superego functions in his last work: 241 The torments caused by the reproaches of conscience correspond precisely to a child’s fear of loss of love, a fear the place of which has been taken by the moral agency. On the other hand, if the ego has successfully resisted a temptation to do something which would be objectionable to the super-ego, it feels raised in its selfesteem and strengthened in its pride, as though it had made some precious acquisition. In this way the super-ego continues to play the part of an external world for the ego, although it has become a portion of the internal world. Throughout later life it represents the influence of a person’s childhood, of the care and education given him by his parents and of his dependence on them—a childhood which is prolonged so greatly in human beings by a family life in common. And in all this it is not only the personal qualities of these parents that is making itself felt, but also everything that had a determining effect on them themselves, the tastes and standards of the social class in which they lived and the innate dispositions and traditions of the race from which they sprang. (p. 206) Internalization of qualities derived from parental objects forms the core of the superego, the parents who threaten, prohibit, accuse, approve, praise, and protect. These same parents also demand obedience, conformity, set standards and ideals to be lived up to, and so on. Jacob Arlow (1982) observed on this score, The superego is a conglomeration of many identifications derived from experiences with objects, from fantasies and imagination, and stemming from almost all levels of development, not necessarily exclusively those of the oedipal or the postoedipal period. . . . The superego is by no means a uniform, coherent, integrated , harmonious structure. It is a mass of contradictions, fraught with internal inconsistencies, or, as we say in our technical language, intrasystemic conflicts. Its functioning is neither uniform nor reliable, and it is in this respect that the idea of a superego representing the policeman of the psyche holds up best. Like the policeman in real life, the superego is hardly around when needed most. (p. 234) This uncertainty reflects the developmental failure to achieve a capacity to tolerate and resolve ambivalence—the child must be able to accept hateful feelings and destructive wishes toward those he also loves. The task of parents is to help the child tolerate and resolve his hostile and destructive 242 Superego Functions and Conscience Superego Functions and Conscience 243 wishes and help him realize that his destructive impulses and wishes are not intolerable or evil. When this is not the case, the child tends to cling to simple and simplistic ways of thinking and feeling about his relations with others. If he loves, he can find no room for negative feelings; if he is angered, he...