Although my primary focus is on the ego
ideal I believe it’s important to examine the superego both to contrast it to
the ideal and get a sense for the cognitive development at a given stage. I’d
like to begin my evaluation of Milrod’s interpretation by first looking at one
of his clinical examples of superego guilt. Milrod gives the case of a married
man who had an affair. He reported feelings of envy and lust regarding the
actors he worked with as well as inferiority about his own appearance. He found
a mature mistress who would understand that it was just a fling and his wife
wouldn’t know, so it wouldn’t hurt anyone in his estimation. He felt elated by
the experience but when he got home his wife wasn’t there and he was “thrust
into morbid self-condemnation, and certain his wife had learned of his
adventure” (ibid. 144). He called his wife’s friends and family in desperation
and he went to the bedroom in tears to escape in sleep. However, he found his
wife and child asleep in the bed “like angels”. Milrod writes that not finding
his wife and imagining that she knew and had left him was a “punitive function
of his superego indicating that he felt he deserved to be abandoned for his
sin” and that his elation on the way home was “caused by denial of guilt
feelings” (ibid., 144).
Turning to Freud, I believe Milrod’s
example highlights one of many misinterpretations of the superego in his work.
Freud is explicit about how the post-oedipal superego functions and Milrod
seems to ignore his most sustained investigation of the superego in Civilization and Its Discontents. Freud
writes:
To begin with, if we ask how a person comes
to have a sense of guilt, we arrive at an answer which cannot be disputed:
a person feels guilty (devout people would say ‘sinful’) when he has done something
which he knows to be ‘bad’… we shall add that even when a person has not
actually done the bad thing but has only recognized in himself
an intention to do it, he may regard himself as guilty; and the
question then arises of why the intention is regarded as equal to the deed.
Both cases, however, presuppose that one had already recognized that what is
bad is reprehensible, is something that must not be carried out (Civilization,
p.124)
It seems strange that Milrod regards his
patient as possessing guilt when he never brought up reservations about his
affair before he had it- when it was just an intention. Furthermore, there is
no discussion about coming clean to his wife afterwards. We all know people who
do something wrong, and aren’t found out, but yet have to confess to their
spouses or whoever they wrong in order to come clean. A full superego
conscience means that someone will seeks to make amends for what they’ve done
or face potential punishment or the bad consequences of his actions. What Milrod
has described has much more in common with what Freud calls social anxiety:
This state of mind is called a
‘bad conscience’; but actually it does not deserve this name, for at
this stage the sense of guilt is clearly only a fear
of loss of love, ‘social’ anxiety. In small children it can
never be anything else, but in many adults, too, it has only changed to the
extent that the place of the father or the two parents is taken by
the larger human community. Consequently, such people habitually allow themselves
to do any bad thing which promises them enjoyment, so long as they are sure
that the authority will not know anything about it or cannot blame
them for it; they are afraid only of being found out (ibid., p.124-5)
For Milrod’s patient to not have had any
reservations before the deed, to not seek to come clean after, and for him to
impute knowledge of the event to his wife though he was no doubt very careful
to conceal things from her shows that he childlike overestimation or
transference to her that would be expected in social anxiety. It is clear that
he feared loss of love from her and, in contrast, Milrod has to claim several
defenses before and after the fact to explain it as guilt. Moreover, it is
ridiculous to think that the patient felt like he had to tell his wife and come
clean with his conscience but that Milrod just left that part out.
Now that we have a concept of what guilt
is, how the guilty person acts, and Milrod’s lack of sensitivity to these
distinctions, I’d like to approach his general theoretical claim that the
superego is suddenly formed after the Oedipus complex. It is true that Freud
has several statements in which it appears that he claims that the superego
doesn’t exist until after the Oedipus complex however, he has statements to the
opposite effect and these suggest the former statements are hyperbolic and that
they are made to stress the fact that many people lack guilt in the way just
described. In Civilization Freud
formulates this explicitly:
A great change takes place only when
the authority is internalized through the establishment of
a super-ego. The phenomena of conscience then reach a
higher stage. Actually, it is not until now that we should speak
of conscience or a sense of guilt… [However, in the footnote to
this Freud writes:] [e]veryone of discernment will understand and take into
account the fact that in this summary description we have sharply
delimited events which in reality occur by gradual transitions, and
that it is not merely a question of the existence of
a super-ego but of its relative strength and sphere of
influence (Civilization, p. 125)
....
I will have more to say about this in the
next section, but for now I want to finish off my examination of Milrod’s
interpretation. It is clear that he wants to grant the ego self-observation in
order to claim that when the superego is formed after the Oedipus complex that
a new relation of autonomy exists that is fundamentally different from the
ego’s self-observation. In other words, Milrod wants to keep alive a sense of
agency and freedom in what he calls the moral and ethical content of the
post-oedipal ego ideal. However, in contrast to Milrod’s view that the
post-oedipal ego ideal is both beyond identification and not dependent on
external objects is an important passage in ‘The Ego and the Id’ that he
neglects to mention in any of his work. Freud writes:
It is easy to show that the ego ideal answers to everything that is expected
of the higher nature of man. As a substitute for a longing for the 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 religious sense of humility to which the believer appeals in his longing. As a child grows
up, the role of father is
carried on by teachers and others in authority; their injunctions and prohibitions remain
powerful in the ego ideal and
continue, in the form of conscience, to exercise the moral censorship.
The tension between the demands of conscience and
the actual performances of the ego is experienced as a sense of guilt.
Social feelings rest on identifications with other people,
on the basis of having the same ego ideal.
Religion, morality, and a social
sense—the chief elements in the higher side of man—were originally one and the
same thing. According to the hypothesis which I put forward in Totem and Taboo they
were acquired phylogenetically out of the father-complex: religion and
moral restraint through the process of mastering the Oedipus complex itself, and social feeling through the
necessity for overcoming the rivalry that
then remained between the members of the younger generation. (The Ego and
The Id, p.37, emphasis mine).
Although Milrod in ‘The Ego Ideal’ notes Freud’s claim that
homosexual impulses play a role in the formation of the ego ideal in ‘On
Narcissism’ he doesn’t mention the father complex. He also doesn’t address the
direct statement “ the role of father is carried on by teachers and
others in authority; their injunctions and prohibitions remain powerful in
the ego ideal and continue, in the form of conscience, to
exercise the moral censorship”. This, of course, contradicts his claim
that the post-oedipal ego ideal is beyond identification and not dependent on
external objects. Furthermore, the extra step of the father complex that
removes the formation of the ego ideal and puts it on an instinctual basis (the
renunciation of homosexual impulses towards the father) distances the ego ideal
from the Oedipal event in which Milrod can imagine that the soul suddenly flies
into the body and with it a sense of freedom[1]. To be fair, even though Milrod neglects
to provide his readers with Freud’s whole picture he does acknowledge that
admired love objects other than
parents may be the source of elements that are internalized into
the superego. Society's standards, to the degree that they are known,
will also participate (Freud, 1914). The steady detachment of superego functions and
substructures from the original objects leads to
the autonomy of superego functions, both from objects and
from the drives (The Superego, p.140).
The problem with this view is that Milrod
seems to imply that identification can only occur with someone in relation to
their job or hobby (his wished for self image) but that when it comes to
following the injunctions and prohibitions of father-substitutes the
identifications are only the source of elements. The implication is that the
child will choose what is moral wholly on his own, and parental views and
society’s standards can participate but also, if they are not known, won’t participate
in his ‘superego identifications’. When I try to understand Milrod’s view here
the picture that comes to mind is that of a contemporary bourgeois consumer who
is deciding if he will buy a yoga membership and get into eastern religion, or
if he feels closer to something more pagan, or if he’d prefer a traditional
Christian church. However, clearly Chrisitianity was the only game in town for
long stretches of time in Western society and it would have been the only
tradition, and it seems absurd to imagine a child who wouldn’t have heard of
it. But, Milrod is right in one sense. Freud’s post-oedipal superego guilt
conscience is independent of both societal and parental standards, although he
is wrong to think that child chooses it in any way. The discrepancy is that
Milrod has mixed up post oedipal superego with the superego of later latency.
The superego conscience that is formed in
the father complex Freud compares to the categorical imperative[2].
This conscience isn’t determined by traditions or what the child decides
himself, but by the ‘golden rule’ of considering how what one does to others
would feel like if done to oneself[3].
Also, the ego ideal injunctions and prohibitions in the father complex isn’t
about specific religious values, but the general attitude towards religion and
social feelings developed with others and can more accurately be seen as an
ideal to be a ‘grownup’. This should become clearer when I explore it in the
next section in post-Freudian thought, but for now I will point to what we see today as secular
values in being a good voting, tax-paying, parent to one’s children that are
treated as normative. The group identities of nation, race, and class won’t
become known to the child until later on in latency, and the father complex ego
ideal of wanting to be a ‘grownup’ just provides the foundation for which
latency development can continue from.
The superego in its form of providing
topographical anxiety related to the superego, as opposed to the categorical
imperative that derives its strength from castration signal anxiety, finds its
content in tradition. “But the same figures who continue to operate in
the super-ego as the agency we know as conscience”
Freud writes [i]t is from there… their power, behind which lie hidden all the influences
of the past and of tradition” (Economic Problem, p. 167). He goes on to call
the influences of tradition “a representative of the real external
world as well and thus also becomes a model for the endeavours
of the ego” (ibid., p.167).
Even after tradition supplies content for the superego’s topographical anxiety,
by identification that may now go beyond the parents and come from a societal
father (a teacher or someone invested with authority in society), the
individual, if he actually develops this far, isn’t free to pick and choose his
ethics and morality. In Group Psychology Freud points out the wisdom of
religion for having festivals:
It
is quite conceivable that the separation of the ego
ideal from the ego cannot be borne for long either, and has to be
temporarily undone. In all renunciations and limitations imposed upon the ego a
periodical infringement of the prohibition is the rule; this indeed is shown by
the institution of festivals, which in origin are nothing less nor more than
excesses provided by law and which owe their cheerful character to the release
which they bring. The Saturnalia of the Romans and our modern
carnival agree in this essential feature with the festivals of primitive
people, which usually end in debaucheries of every kind and the transgression
of what are at other times the most sacred commandments (Group
Psychology, p.131).
Freud’s suggestion is that the religion
itself (embodied in its institutions and leaders) must undo the prohibition and
that it is “temporarily undone” and thus comparable to group psychology in
which a lynch mob takes over one’s conscience prohibitions on destructive acts
temporarily. If the individual is not preoedipal, perverse, or a
psycho-neurotic who hasn’t developed past the father complex, and therefore
develops to the point of identifying with an ethical tradition prohibitions
against sex, for example, can hold fast in the superego. Again, I don’t think
that the child is evaluating the different ethical systems and thinks “I’ll
choose the one that tells me I’ll go blind for masturbating because the other
religion doesn’t allow me to drink soda”. Clearly, parents or teachers pass on
the prohibitions of a tradition to the children and Milrod’s post-oedipal
autonomy would need some good concrete examples to save it.
With the difference between conscience as
categorical imperative and conscience based upon specific traditions in mind,
I’d like to stress that Freud indicates this separation himself in some places
“[T]he sense of guilt,” Freud writes, “is at bottom nothing else but
a topographical variety of anxiety; in its later phases it coincides completely with fear of the
super-ego.” (Civilization, p.135, emphasis mine). He attaches signal anxiety to
birth, oral, anal, and phallic stages and clearly says that fear of the
superego is in latency (Inhibitions, p. 142). It seems utterly strange to me
that the castration signal anxiety that was just encountered at the Oedipal
phase is instantly followed by superego anxiety. Again, instead I understand
that the castration anxiety is transferred over to the categorical imperative
in the father complex and is part of the phallic phase although it sets the
foundation for latency. Then “in its later phases,” in latency, the superego
becomes heir to the content of religious traditions. This is a crucial
distinction and leads to important ideas like Marcuse’s basic vs. surplus
repression in which different historical moral systems may instill a
sex-positive or sex-negative latency superego conscience.
There is no doubt that the conscience in
which intentions can be the cause of guilt shows a tremendous growth of
self-consciousness. However, just because this operation is ‘for consciousness’
doesn’t mean that there is a fundamental change in how our motivational/self-esteem
system functions. This idea, taken along with the ego ideal beginning in early
childhood with a primary identification with the father shows that Freud is
looking at the superego as an organizing principle of development and a motivational/self-esteem
system all the way along. If one looks closely at his texts, Freud uses the
Oedipus complex as an example because it is the most clear to him but he
mentions that there are identifications the precede it that follow the same
form[4].
While Freud is attacked today for the
centrality of the phallus and the father in his account of development,
analysts would do better not to apologize for it or defend it as curious but
true hallmark of the Oedipus complex. Rather they should see that primary identification
and the formation of the ego ideal based upon the father in the individual’s
personal prehistory is to see the father as an organizing principle. There are
single mothers who raise children, who aren’t psychotic or neurotic and
therefore the actual father, or a being with a penis, isn’t necessary. The
father is necessary as a negative quality or as the not-mother. For example, in the fort-da game Freud
claims that it is ‘instinctual renunciation’ of the relationship with the
mother that grants the ‘great cultural achievement’ of setting up the binary
relation of ‘here’ and ‘gone’ in relation to objects and things[5].
Similarly, the claims that perfection, another cultural trait identified with
the father and with the ego ideal, is first created by instinctual renunciation
as a negative quality[6]. This
suggests all developmental phases consist of an instinctual renunciations of id
object selection of the mother, the creation of not-mother images of
perfection, and that perfection being taken over by the father imago which is
then internalized after triangular conflict with him and signal anxiety. Again,
post-oedipal internalization, because of development of cognition, just happens
to have more content that can become conscious. However, this doesn’t mean that
prohibition of certain impulses towards others can’t exist before the Oedipal
internalization and result in a bad conscience if they are acted upon. Freud
refers to this form of conscience as giving rise to remorse[7][8].
[1] The ego psychologist Hans Loewald gives a better sense for what
Milrod tries to hide behind words like autonomy, and no dependence on external
objects. He writes “the submission to the castration threat [is] the decisive
step in the establishment of the ego as based on the reality principle” (Ego
and Reality, p. 12). However, it is clear that moving from individual
self-absorption in concern about one’s own success or love, the move is to that
of having an interest in being seen as mature and responsible and being
concerned with traditions and institutions (church, political parties, (etc.).
It isn’t that the individual suddenly becomes a rational being, it’s that the individual
is born into social reality. I’ll discuss this in more detail when I examine
the phallic stage in its entirety.
[2] Only in this way was it possible for the Oedipus
complex to be surmounted. The super-ego retained essential
features of the introjected persons—their strength, their severity, their
inclination to supervise and to punish. As I have said elsewhere, it is
easily conceivable that, thanks to the defusion of instinct which
occurs along with this introduction into the ego, the severity was increased.
The super-ego—the conscience at work in the ego—may then become
harsh, cruel and inexorable against the ego which is in its charge. Kant’s Categorical Imperative is thus the
direct heir of the Oedipus complex (Economic Problem, p.167, emphasis
mine).
[3] Freud gives an example of how the punishment meted out by the
categorical imperative follows the same procedure of judging the self
representation by how the object representation is treated (and now vice
versa).
Let us disentangle identification as it occurs in the structure of a
neurotic symptom from its rather complicated connections. Supposing
that a little girl (and we will keep to her for the present) develops the
same painful symptom as her mother—for instance, the same tormenting cough. This may
come about in various ways. The identificationmay come from the Oedipus complex; in that
case it signifies a hostile desire on the girl's part to take her mother's place, and the symptom expresses her object-love towards
her father, and brings about a realization,
under the influence of a sense of guilt, of her desire to take her mother's place: ‘You wanted to
be your mother, and now you are—anyhow so far as your
sufferings are concerned.’ This is the complete mechanism of the structure of a hysterical symptom (group
psychology, p. 106)
[4] The super-ego arises,
as we know, from an identification with
the father taken
as a model.
Every such identification is in the nature of a desexualization or even of a sublimation.
(The Ego and the Id, p. 54, emphasis mine).
[5] The interpretation of the game then became obvious. It was related
to the child's great cultural achievement—the instinctual renunciation (that
is, the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction) which he had made in allowing
his mother to go away without protesting. He compensated himself for this, as
it were, by himself staging the disappearance and return of the objects within
his reach (Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p.15).
[6] It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that
there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has
brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and
ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development
into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal
instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The
present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different
explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human
individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be
understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all
that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never
ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the
repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive
formations and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct's
persisting tension; and it is the difference in amount between the pleasure of
satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that
provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position
attained, but, in the poet's words, [‘Presses ever forward unsubdued.’]. The
backward path that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by
the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but
to advance in the direction in which growth is still free—though with no prospect
of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal
(Freud, BPP, p. 42).
[7] Remorse is a general term for the ego's reaction in a case of
sense of guilt. It contains, in little altered form, the
sensory material of the anxiety which is operating behind
the sense of guilt; it is itself a punishment and can include
the need for punishment. Thus remorse,
too, can be older than conscience [qua guilt regarding intentions]
(Civilization, p. 136, emphasis mine).
[8] Alex Holder in ‘Preoedipal Contributions to the Formation of the
Superego’ holds a similar view that “to restrict the [superego’s] contents to
the aftermath of the killing of the primal father is to take too narrow a view”
of the superego (p. 255).
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