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.

Freudian Hills of Africa

1970

On "Henderson and the Rain King" by Saul Bellows (Left)

Eugene Henderson obviously related in many ways to the Ernest Hemingway code-hero,₁ goes to Africa, Hemingway’s own Valhalla of truths, in quest of the essential truth about himself.  He is driven by an inner-voice saying, “I want, I want.”₂  He travels deep into the interior of Africa, literally into his own “heart of darkness”.₃   Here he encounters two primitive tribes, isolated by nature and time from the outer world.  Conveniently for Henderson, chiefs of both tribes were educated in civilized countries.

Desmond Morris stated anthropologists have traditionally rushed off to study primitive tribes seeking insights into modern man’s habits.₄  Similarly, Henderson seeks insight into himself, but the tribes he meets are very special.  Not just primitives, they are basic projections of his own self.

The first tribe, the Arnewi, is his own passive, loving quality, the deep compassions beneath his roughness that allow him to spare the life of the abandoned cat.₅  But the Arnewi’s passivity is leading directly to their doom; for their cattle, which they treat as equals, are dying of thirst and the water supply is polluted with frogs.

Upon meeting the Arnewi Prince, Henderson reluctantly joins in tribal tradition by wrestling the Prince.  At first, he lets the prince win, being compassionate, but then in a rematch he wins.  The Prince declares that now he knows Henderson.₆   Actually, Henderson’s mind has transformed its own wrestling match in to actual fact, and the real Henderson defeats the Henderson who wishes to exist.  

Primitive nature made the Arnewi stoic and accepting.  Henderson meets the queen, Willatale₇, who says he has “grun-tu-molani”₈, the will to live.  Henderson feels he is on the brink of ending his quest, but there still is ambiguity to content with.  True to the Hemingway Hero-Code, Henderson seeks action to escape from thought.  He decides he must save the Arnewi’s water.  He tries using modern technology to aid these primitive people, overruling their taboos and doubts.₉  His self-destructive nature overcomes his passive acceptance, so in blasting the frogs he blasts his hopes with the Arnewi.₁₀

He leaves and comes to the Wariri.  There is no passive acceptance in this tribe, no joy in the suffering of life.  They attack life and force confrontation with death.  Death is the reality of life.  It is reality that Henderson has never faced.  For all his talk of death, he has always believed the illusion of Lily’s statement that he could never die.₁₁

The king, Dahfu, knows death is inevitable.  Henderson’s strength will not hold off death, for his strength will fail and he will die.  The lion, not the cow, is life.  The Arnewi are Henderson’s illusions of life; the Wariri are the realities he has never faced.  And the truth of life may be the incorporation of Arnewi virtues with the realities of the Wariri.

Bellows uses anthropology not to study mankind, but to study one man, who may be many men, but not all.  Using the usual trappings of primitive behavior and culture, Bellow reduces them to the mental state of the main character, and in this battleground of his basic nature personified, Henderson is turned to the foam which is the cream of life.₁₂  He gives up accepting his illusions enough to grasp at life and make an attempt at the medical career he always longed for.

(To read more about Saul Bellows, click on the title of this post.)

NOTES:  FREUDIAN HILLS OF AFRICA 

1 Keith Opdahl, The Novels of Saul Bellow: An Introduction (University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1967), pp. 124-125.

2 Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King (New York: Fawcett World Library, 1958-59), p. 40; hereafter referred to as Bellow.

3 J. C. Levenson, “Bellow’s Dangling Men” Saul Bellow and the Critics, ed. Irving Malin (New York: New York University Press, 1967), p. 50.

4 Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape (New York: Dell, 1967), p. 9.

5 Bellow, p. 80.

6 Bellow, p. 62.

7 The names Bellow uses are interesting.  Will-a-tale-tell?  Dahfu and Death.  Ar-new-i (Are new I?)  War-ir-i (Where are I). --LEM

8 Bellow, p. 74.

9 Henderson seems to try being a Connecticut Yankee with Don Quixote results. -LEM

10 Bellow, pp. 94-95.

11 Bellow, p. 9.

12 Bellow, p. 151.