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.

Experiment

1970

EXPERIMENT

Of the myriad problems of modern American society, racial disharmony is certainly one of the most dominant.  It has been the boing issue of the last decade, with roots going even further into the past.  And it threatens to remain a complex and perplexing issue for the future.  However, despite the maze of unanswerable questions surrounding every approach to understanding our society’s racial facets, one fact can be stated without too much argument.  The attitude concerning what should be the minority’s relationship to the majority has changed.  In the early sixties, assimilations of the minority into the mainstream of society were felt to be the best answer.  As the seventies begin, there is an emphasis on racial pride and the perpetuation of sub-cultures.  It is as if the melting pot had been turned into a great soup tureen serving out different soups.

Where once the rally cry of minorities was brotherhood with all mankind, there are now cries of black power, red power, yellow power and so on.  Language, clothing style, hair style and other particulars of a given minority, that were once disowned by the minority members who wished to blend into the mainstream of American society, are more and more being adopted by the same as their special identity.  Any attempt at changing such styles is regarded as an attempt to force the majority’s values on the minority.

Whether this development of racial pride is good or bad is not our concern.  We are concerned with such things as style, fashion and taste being regarded as the essence of a given group of people.  Our purpose will be to devise a means to prove that such styles are not inherent differences within different racial strains, but are acquired through various experiences.

HYPOTHESIS AND APPROACH

I propose there is no difference between people caused by race, but that differences are imposed upon people by outside pressures.  I do not intend to deal with those pressures.  I am interested in proving only my basic premise in its purest form.  I have devised an experiment to test my hypothesis to some degree.

My approach is simple.  I have compiled a series of musical groups.  Each group contains seven popular songs performed by singers of different race.  A group can then be played for a selected group of subjects who will be asked to list the songs in order of preference.

Why did I choose popular music for my experiment?  I choose a field of art, because only in art does there seem to be any real conventions of racial tones.  There have been inventions by men of all races, but can any single invention be defined in terms of race?  Such terms as “soul music”, “black experience”, "Jewish school of literature” appear often in art criticisms and attest that racial definitions exist in the field of art.  I feel this is especially true in the area of pop music.

A few years ago I was with friends talking about the Righteous Brothers, who were a white duo singing “black music”.  One of my black friends laughed and said, “If you think that’s soul, well I guess I’ll have to take you out to hear some real soul music.”  In that particular statement is the belief that there is some essential difference in the music of different races; a difference caused by race.

I believe the difference is mostly imaginary.  Therefore, I choose pop music as the perfect media for my experiment.

EXPERIMENT

Subjects are selected.  The main requirement for selection is that a racial mix is maintained.  There should be enough subjects to make the results significant.  The experiment deals with music that is a subjective form at best.  Allowances must be made for individual tastes, hearing differences and possible familiarity with the music being played.  There should be enough subjects to allow for these factors and still give definite patters in the charted results.

The subjects are then asked to listen to a series of musical selections and to rank the songs in order of individual preference.  A number will be given each song and they will use the number to list the songs.

SAMPLE GROUP OF SONGS

This performers are racially mixed, but only half of the subjects should be told this.  The half not knowing for certain that there are black and white singers will act as a control group in that no prior prejudice has been given.

1. Try a Little Tenderness   Otis Redding     Black

2. Alabama Song                   Doors                White

3. There She Goes                Bill Medley       White

4. Sudden Stop                     Percy Sledge      Black

5. America 1968                   Animals             White

6. Valentine Song                Tim Buckley      White

7. Always Something There to Remind Me   Dionne Warwick   Black