Psychoanalytic insight regarding the conditions and function of superego formation serves as the point of departure for far-reaching reflections upon the theory of culture. In our culture, the oedipal situation is usually resolved by an identification with the aggressor. This serves as the anthropological prototype of the modern European renunciation of a mimetic subject-object relationship in favour of a distancing, technical one. The intensified intellectualization which Anna Freud recognized as a typical defence against pubertal impulses recapitulates this process ontogenetically. The ego, inimical to the drives and orientated towards achievement and intellectual distancing, has created the affluent society and thus deprived itself of its own legitimacy (through a return of the repressed). Moreover, technical intelligence, prospering upon ever-increasing isolation, has meanwhile begun to question its own accomplishments. The author further traces this development in the history of art in modern times.