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THE STRUGGLE OF MODERN WOMAN to disclaim cultural stereotypy and to claim her just and proper place in the social mainstream has only gained the intellectual stature it warrants in the past decade. Its entry into collective consciousness in our era, blatant with the exposé of social injustice and reckless suppression, while helping to identify personal and ideological enemies, has tended to obfuscate certain internal, psychological impediments to success.
In some women the realization of career objectives is elusive or mixed with anxiety and distress even in what appears to be a favorably inclined environment.1 Such women do and will occupy our clinical calendars and it is the purpose of this paper to discuss, first by examination of theory and then by case example, the pain, lameness, and too frequent failure that characterizes their efforts.
In 1914, in his paper On Narcissism, Freud (1957) began to create the necessary heir to the narcissism of infancy and an agency that would provide a theoretical construct to arm and energize the ego in its immense repressive responsibilities.
Freud noted that this ideal ego enjoys the self-love common to childhood; that conscience is its familiar aspect; that persecutory experiences are the pathology of its hypertrophy; and that the "ego-ideal is of great importance for the understanding of group psychology." (p. 101)
This concept gestated in his thought and writings and achieved maturation some nine years later in The Ego and the Id. (Freud, 1961)