Unity and Synthesis in the Ego Ideal: Reading Freud's Concept through Kant's Philosophy

Although men are not normally aware of it, they must believe that they are something more than they are, in order to be capable of being what they are; they need to feel this something more above and around them …

Throughout the transformations of his theories of mind, Freud consistently regarded the ego as the seat of mental organization and synthesis. In contrast to the chaotic id, the ego is a “coherent organization of mental processes” (Freud, 1923, p. 17), working reactively, on the one hand, by excluding unconscious impulses, and actively, on the other, by structuring and binding mental content and libidinal energy. Additionally, the ego's organizational activity is directed not only towards the psyche itself, but also towards the environment or external world, facilitating judgments about and representations of that world.

In “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (1914), Freud suggests for the first time that the ego qua synthetic and synthesizing structure “cannot exist in the individual from the start; the ego has to be developed” (p. 77, emphasis added). That is, while Freud continues to regard the ego as the source of order and unity of mental contents, in 1914 he suggests that such order is not present at the beginning of life but must subsequently be developed. Thus, Freud attempts to provide a genetic account