Current Status of the Theory of the Superego

Martin Stein introduced the panel by stating the urgent reasons for a reevaluation of the concept of the "superego" at this time. He said that we are not yet entirely clear about considering the superego a specialized part of the ego, or a group of functions so modified as to be, conceptually at least, on a level with id and ego. The dimensions of the superego shrink in both clinical and theoretical discussions as its individual functions are subsumed under other structures—usually the ego. However, we would be most reluctant to conceive of the healthy adult as being able to dispense with superego, much less id and ego functions, although in time we might dispense with, or greatly modify, these concepts. We are faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, we possess concepts of the superego derived by logical analysis from the postulates and hypotheses of metapsychology; on the other, we encounter concepts of superego function derived from clinical observation. The theoretical formulations are relatively precise but reveal their inadequacies when we attempt to apply them broadly to clinical data. The clinical formulations are working hypotheses that do cover a wide range of human behavior but still retain a number of internal inconsistencies. We must realize, therefore, that we do not always deal with data on the same level of abstraction, and that we may use different theoretical and clinical formulations, which nevertheless employ the same terms, to our everlasting confusion—unless we know what level we are on.

Manuel Furer presented a brief survey of the concept of the superego in psychoanalytic literature. The first full discussion of the genesis and contents of what Freud later called the superego was in the monograph Totem and Taboo (1913). The argument there was that the source of conscience, a manifestation of consciousness but internalized and independent, is emotional ambivalence, the conflict between the hatred and the love for the father. The hatred