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In a paper entitled "On Discovering One's Identity" (3) I have tried to show in some detail how in consequence of early preoedipal traumata the discovery of one's self as an entity separate from the mother resulted in a fateful split within the ego, with the isolation of a separate segment from the rest of the ego proper. This segment led an autonomous, in a sense parasitic, existence within the ego organization and played a far-reaching role in the structure of the patient's severe neurosis.
I intend to report today, briefly, and in a preliminary form, some considerations about the faulty development of the superego in the same patient. Before proceeding to the clinical material, and anticipating some of the conclusions from it, I should like to restate in a rough and schematic manner a few theoretical assumptions.
It is agreed that the superego possesses a most complex structure of which no definitive description has yet been given. The literature on the subject is abundant, and an attempt to summarize it is outside of the scope of this note. For the purpose of this presentation only, and in the interest of its simplification, let me assume that the superego is composed of three main parts, and name them, for the sake of convenience, the ego ideal, the prohibiting superego, and the benign superego. The first and the last named are partially overlapping.
The ego ideal represents what the person wants to be, the goals he strives for, and derives from the childhood picture of the omnipotent parents, or more correctly, of what the child wanted