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Madame Chasseguet-Smirgel has written an important book. In reviewing it I will try to reveal its essence rather than elaborating further its rich detail. Chasseguet-Smirgel presents in this work the clearest conceptualisation of the ego ideal and the newest theory as to its functions that this reviewer has found in the psychoanalytic literature.
Her theoretical perspective is of interest to Jungians because she does not see the ego as present at birth, as did Melanie Klein, but sees the initial fusion to mother as-self as the seat of that time when the baby was his own ideal. The nostalgia for this time, when delusion to mother has not yet occurred, prompts narcissism to function on the subject's own behalf. In this memory of what Freudians name ‘primary narcissism’ and what Jungians consider as an ‘initial wholeself affirmation’, the ego-ideal can be maturative in its attempt to integrate its own levels of development and to reconquer (theoretically) the lost perfection of fusion.
Identification with objects that carry the subject's narcissism is not, then, Chasseguet-Smirgel's definition of the ego-ideal as it has been among many neoFreudians. Instead she postulates a theory of the ego-ideal in which the ego tries to reduce the margins between its identifications with different models during maturation (including the infantile sexual stages) and thereby comes closer to its ‘ideal’ goal. The author discusses the ego's narcissistic satisfaction when it comes nearer to its ideal through discovering its real capacities and object relations in an ongoing process.
Although the incestuous and grandiose aims of the ego-ideal are recognised by the author, she stresses that the aims toward instant gratification, on her theory, are learned over time as the all-or-nothing quality of ego-omnipotence is given a freer, looser play and eventually abandoned during the formation of the superego. With the superego's development, narcissism transfers away from self-incestuous fantasies