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The function of an imaginary companion in a thirty-three-month-old boy is discussed. Early history and current observation showed a narcissistic clinging to illusions of omnipotence. The parents were united in their educational endeavours and have shown jealousy when the boy appealed elsewhere. The companion represented a point of appeal against parental omnipotence, without arousing jealousy. By giving magical powers to the illusory figure, the child retained an illusion of freedom, and the personified support without which he was still too young to operate.
The child's mode of operation with the companion sheds light on the process of superego unification. There was a widespread tendency from early days to deal with narcissistic threats by diverse primitive identifications with idealized objects, e.g. a dog and a train. Like the father, the companion reproached the child with these ideals. 'The father's jealousy is taken over into the introjected image and insists on a repression of other ego-ideals. … In the phallic phase or shortly thereafter there occurs that decisive introjection of the father (in other cases of the mother), which takes over the organization and unification of the superego, digesting previous acquisitions and assimilating later acquisitions.'
The child's tormented reaction to the tyranny of the companion, itself the outcome of projection, is comparable with the splitting off either of the pre-stages of the superego, or of id drives in paranoia, and offers further evidence that the anal stage which is significant for the production of the imaginary companion is a significant fixation point in paranoia. In the normal child the imaginary companion operates as a training in controlled illusions.
While the case confirms Freud's findings that the passing of the Oedipus complex is decisive for the formation of the superego, nevertheless identification here was not identification after the loss of an object (which may be less important for the e