T The good ego psychologists, usually the women, such as Annie Reich, at least try to give examples of how they see the superego vs. the pre-phallic-oedipal ego ideal at work.
The obvious issue here is that she clearly working with a passive-altruistic man. Instead of seeing this altruism as part of his psychic bisexuality and a relation to the imago with repetitions in current parental-substitutes, she simply indicates that his "high moral standards" evidence a superego. However, his altruistic helping, and inhibition of being in the spotlight, aren't given any intellectual framework and are combined with anxiety and repetition issues that show the relation to imagos.
A. Reich does point to a "complicated" superego, but as one of the few examples of a superego in contrast to the ego ideal, this example only shows how under conceptualized the masochistic/echoistic/altruistic or passive side of the personality was in ego psychology. Passive was often just lazy, dependent, etc. and the energetic or goal oriented aspect of the passive side was seen as the ethical dimension of the rational chooser....
Reich, A. (1954). Early Identifications as Archaic Elements in the Superego.
The first case is that of a bright and talented young man who came for treatment because of phobic and conversion-hysteric symptoms....
At this point features of a strong paternal superego developed, which will be described later. These enabled him to enter a rather normal latency period, characterized by good functioning in school and the development of rich intellectual sublimations.
With the resumption of masturbation in adolescence, the hypochondria, the guilt feeling, the sexual and by this time also social inhibition grew and interfered more and more with his life; until finally, confronted with the demands of adult sexuality and adult masculine mastery of life, he broke down. He was a brilliant student; but after graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, he became overwhelmed by a feeling of hopeless inferiority and worthlessness. For a period of several years, instead of entering a profession or otherwise preparing a life for himself, he "loaded" on the living-room couch in the parental home, reading voraciously and masturbating abundantly. When he finally began to work, in a field connected with creative artistic production, he could do it only under a very special condition: he had to work anonymously, hardly making a living, acting as a ghost writer for various well-known and recognized friends who gathered laurels and money via his secret production. It was only after a number of years of analysis that he could come into his own.
The meaning of this behavior became clear in analysis. As a boy he had been intensely interested in his father's profession, full of curiosity, reading the father's medical journals at an incredibly early age, obviously eager to step into his shoes and to outdo him. That in his early childhood the father's medical activities were understood as completely sexualized, has already been indicated. But when urged by his family to study medicine, he could not do it, choosing, instead, the sideline of the father who as a hobby interested himself in the arts and acted as a patron to a group of struggling artists. Reduced to following this sidetrack, the patient developed considerable talents and made extremely high demands on himself in regard to the level and perfection of his production. However, even this substitute had to be pursued furtively; he had to leave the rewards to a father figure. It was as if he could identify with the father in his brilliance, but success was reserved for the father. He was able to identify with him in relation to effort but not in relation to gratification.
After he began to work, his sex life, which thus far had been restricted to masturbation, also underwent an extension, although not without disturbances. He now could approach girls, but only under special conditions. That is to say, when they were in need of comfort, help, love, he was able to please them—even with his penis. He would then be their rescuer and support; he made love purely "altruistically." His erective potency was good. It was very important to give the woman an orgasm, but he himself had no sensations whatsoever. To quote his own description of the situation, he had to be "a knight on a white horse, who used his lance only to protect helpless women." Here again, as we can see, he is identified with his father, but in a negative way. The father, in the child's view, had lacerated women with his penis-scalpel.
This by no means complete description of the patient's symptomatology and behavior permits us some insight into his personality and superego structure.
The superego of the patient was a complex structure. Predominant was an identification with a strict and punishing father who did not tolerate the son's sexual or aggressive transgressions. From the fifth year on and until the analysis, there existed an intense guilt feeling which came to a peak during the period of "loafing." He felt that he was "a monster, " "a goilem, " "had a rotten core, " "was in constant danger of a breakdown of moral values." This last phrase, of course, was an adult way of expressing his concern that warded-off (incestuous) sexual impulses might break through. The "rotten core" came from having eaten something bad, which expressed a sexual wish and the guilt reaction against it, clad in pregenital language. The "goilem" and the "monster" represented the danger of breaking out with uncontrolled, sadistic, sexual impulses. At the same time they indicated a feeling of already having been punished for incestuous crime by castration, and of being found out.
This identification with the strict father expressed itself in his high moral standards.
The negative side of his father identification has been mentioned already: where real gratifications are involved, he was forced to resign. Sexuality, success and money are reserved for the father. While the father was sadistic, the patient was good. There-by he not only warded off the forbidden identification with the sexual father, but he also outdid him. He expected to be preferred by the mother—by women—for his goodness, in competition with the father. But at the same time the knight on the white horse, who used his lance only for healing purposes, is by no means a completely masculine figure: he also wanted to act as a protective, loving mother equipped with magic powers, who, when the child has hurt himself, kisses and blows the pain away. The second meaning of this feature of the ideal had become richer in content and detail in the course of time. Already in adolescence there were fantasies about having a house of his own, furnished in the most exquisite taste, in which he as a bachelor received guests for elaborate meals cooked by himself. He wished to surpass the mother's more simple tastes in her own field. To be the one who gives and feeds in the most refined way became most desirable. From the direct oral field, this fantasy expanded to many others. He wanted to be the one who guided and advised everybody else. He succeeded in creating a large circle of friends. His efforts in their behalf grew into a twenty-four-hour job. He tried to become their "therapist, " to give them money, to advise them in love affairs, to provide jobs, find apartments, arrange trips, procure unobtainable theater tickets, to offer the most important ideas for their creative work, and so on. Here again, as in his work as a ghost writer unknown to the world, he was the creator of other people's fame and happiness. With this behavior he lived up to an idealof an omniscient, all-powerful, all-giving mother. Thus the negative father identification coincided with this very special form of mother identification. He was identifying here with the loving, protecting mother whose main interest in life was the family's food, health and happiness. Although the father was the physician, it was she who doctored the children when they were sick, who was the helper, while the father was seen as the sadist. This image of the mother contrasted sharply with the one underlying the patient's hysterical symptoms in which he identified with the sexual mother, i.e., with a suffering, mistreated, sick and pregnant one.
The image of the protecting and giving mother originated before he became involved in his oedipal, sadomasochistic fantasies. Oral and anal patterns, feeding and giving, seemed to predominate. In the foreground was the relationship to the child, for whom she could do anything. In view of the long history of oral strivings toward the mother this pregenital colorization of the early image was not surprising.
Most striking in this ideal were the megalomanic traits. The patient felt himself to be omniscient and omnipotent—in the interest of others. Whatever anxieties and feelings of inferiority plagued him, via this identification, they were undone. His behavior and character pattern had been formed after this ideal. Though to a large degree able to live up to the inner demand, he obviously was not really in a position to accomplish all of these fine tasks. Very gratified for a time to be a member of a large organization that placed all kinds of technical and other facilities at his disposal (e.g., a private telephone line with Washington, etc.), he felt the powers of this organization to be his own. However, this feeling of being all-powerful was not confined to such realistic situations. Separated from the support of the organization, he soon developed the same feeling of omnipotence which now surpassed by far his real possibilities of accomplishment.
On the other hand, the conditions for the development of this feeling could be studied during periods of utter helplessness that occurred after separation from his mother. For instance, when after years of clinging to the mother he finally married and moved away from the family home, he felt angry with the mother and the analyst because they did not help to furnish his new home, to find domestic help, to locate a cleaner and a laundry. It was as though without the mother he could neither feed himself nor keep himself clean. Shortly thereafter, he again took over. His home became the center of his circle, and he felt once more as though he were running a private social agency. The process is obvious: after the loss of the object, which was seen in a predominantly pregenital light, he identified with it, and with this identification the helplessness changed into grandiosity.
In this grandiosity—and this is really my point in presenting this lengthy case history—the otherwise very well-developed faculty of the patient for reality testing and self-evaluation gave way. We are here faced with the narcissistic core of the superego; here his infantile feeling of omnipotence was preserved or, better still, revived. However, and we shall also find this to be true in the second case I intend to describe, a certain fluidity of the megalomanic feeling was present. What at times was an inner conviction of his own greatness, became at other times an inner demand, and the differentiation between ego and ego ideal were re-established. Thus the megalomanic feeling was transitory. It was contradicted here not only by the ego, that is by the reappearing sense of reality, but by other parts of his superego which, for instance, caused him to see himself as a "goilem."
Such conflicts within the superego are by no means unusual. It has been mentioned before that the superego is a composition of various elements of identifications. Normally a fusion takes place between these various elements. The failure completely to achieve such a fusion facilitates the changes between megalomanic and deeply self-critical moods.
One could ask here why this identification is considered an ego ideal. Indeed, to a large degree we are dealing with an ego identification. He actually behaved toward his friends as his mother behaved toward him when he was a young child. To this identification, however, an element was added which was not reality-syntonic; namely, the omnipotence which is ascribed to the mother. This early image of the all-powerful, pregenital and pre-oedipal mother was used to counteract the terrifying later image of the sick, suffering, pregnant mother with whom, as his symptoms proved, he was also identified. When he thus could no longer feel as a man, he could at least identify with the powerful mother of early childhood and thereby counterbalance his identification with the castrated one. To serve this defensive need the mother was idealized, and very early images of her were used for the purpose.
These very early images of the mother appear to belong to periods of ego immaturity in which clear reality testing and an objective awareness of what the mother really was or did were not yet possible. Furthermore, the child cannot yet clearly differentiate between himself and the object. Frustrations may easily be undone by giving up the awareness of separation from an object and becoming again one with the object. The patient in his longing to identify with the idealized mother, could not realistically become like her; i.e., become identified with her in his ego and become as grandiose as he sees her. This must remain a narcissistic desire, an ego ideal. The faculty to evaluate himself realistically and to know that he wanted to be like this ideal, but that he could not be like it, could easily be abandoned. Magically he could become one with this ideal. He was prone to regress temporarily into those phases where the mere wish already stood for fulfillment. Such periods became noticeable in his behaviorwhen he indulged in bragging and exaggeration about his power and accomplishments. On the other hand, this regressive, megalomanic pattern appeared only as an admixture to his otherwise reality-syntonic mother identification. It appears that the traces of megalomania in the normal superego are based on the regressive revival of the mechanism of flowing together with an idealized object. It is likely that the clinging to such an ego ideal is mostly motivated by defensive needs.
The fluidity of the differentiation between ego and ideal, the easy revival of the mechanism of undoing the separation between self and powerful object, the loss of ability to distinguish wish from fulfillment, the temporary disintegration of reality testing, are the decisive characteristics of these primitive structures which I would prefer to call narcissistic "ego ideals" in contrast to the normal superego. When in pathologic states, as for instance in manic triumph, a dissolution of the superego occurs, we may speak of a regression of the superego into more primitive ego ideals. (pps. 224-232)
