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Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's SUPERMAN! Yes, it's Superman. Strange visitor from another planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel with his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
These were the words that opened both the radio and TV shows “Superman.” Probably the most popular superhero of all time, he made his debut in June 1938 in the first issue of Action Comics. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, he was the character who defined the genre and against whom every other superhero would be measured. One of the unique and curious aspects of Superman, however, was that he was a masked superhero, a superhero with an alter-ego. A tremendous amount of time and effort was spent in protecting his secret identity and negotiating the various difficulties that developed in having to lead such a split life. It is this split in character, between man and Superman, that made him different from all the magical or superpowerful heroes that had come before. In the treatment of one particular patient, the image of Superman, the masked superhero, became a central metaphor in examining and understanding his behavior. This paper will examine the nature of this image both in terms of our understanding of this patient and in terms of understanding this unique twentieth-century phenomenon.
S is a 35-year-old white Jewish man who I first saw in 1986 through 1987. At that point he presented for treatment out of concern for the anxiety he was experiencing, as well as a very negative self-image. His