Development and Function of the Super-Ego in the Individual

1968

Every individual displays aggression in early infancy.  This is an instinctual drive to satisfy the self or ego.  According to Freud, this aggression is the enemy of civilization.  To structure civilization, it is necessary to restrict this drive.  An external authority controls this drive during the individual’s early life in the form of parents, but as the individual grows older there appears an inner control.  Freud named this the super-ego.  We have come to refer to the super-ego as the conscience.  As a control over our self, the conscience is much stricter than the external authority.  Unlike the external authority, the super-ego does not forgive or forget the crimes of the individual.  Instead, it constantly seeks external punishment of the ego.

How has this strict, unyielding super-ego gained control of the self?  Freud gives two explanations for the acquisition of conscience.  In his first theory, Freud explains that the child has been frustrated in his attempt to satisfy some need of the self by the interference of the external authority and builds considerable aggression against this authority.  But the child cannot actually satisfy his revengeful feelings against the external object, so he turns aggression inward.  The ego divides to form the super-ego.  As the child grows, the super-ego replaces the external object and fulfills the individual’s wish for the continuance of its original relationship with the external authority. 

In Freud’s second theory, the super-ego is explained in primal terms.  Freud sees the primitive custom of the child killing the father to gain a life of his own as the explanation.  Although the primitive father was a terrible figure and the child kills him to satisfy his own aggression, the child still has feelings of love toward the father, and once he performs the murder has feeling of regret.  This regret become internalized and develops into the super-ego.  One easily sees a relationship between these two theories, and Freud admits they are really the same.

But theories aside, what is the direct consequence of developing the super-ego?  The consequence according to Freud is civilization.  But in gaining civilization, individual happiness was loss.  The individual cannot escape his super-ego.  Like Orwell’s Big Brother, it is always watching.

There is one oddity in a super-ego.  It is harder on the good man than on the bad man.  A man with a weak ego may aim his aggression at civilization, the external authority, and he will be punished by this authority for his action, which satisfies his conscience.  At the same time, this oddity prevents the man of strong super-ego from venting his frustration against civilization, and he will turn his anger inward and punish himself because his super-ego demands punishment for his aggression.  In a way, there can be no winning.  Natural aggression within the individual is the enemy of civilization and civilization is the enemy of the individual.  Since man seeks both, he can find no happiness.