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Et votre châtiment naîtra de vos plaisirs.
—Baudelaire, Femmes damnées.
Freud describes the relationship between the id and superego functions as a very intimate one. The severity and harshness of the superego originate in the id drives, and one of the functions of the superego, self-punishment, regresses frequently to its instinctual origin, thus often bringing about the sexualization of the punitive function.
A particular type of relationship between these two psychic structures has been defined by Alexander as the venality of the superego; that is, in reference to its characteristic of sometimes relaxing its severity. This relaxation occurs when the superego has, immediately before, exercised its rigorousness to the fullest extent. As Alexander puts it, the superego has been bribed by this punitive act and can now permit the gratification of another instinctual drive.
It is my intention to describe a third type of interplay between id drives and superego forces.
During the course of analytic treatment, a young man recounted to me the following dream which he had had at the age of twenty, the night after the death of his father in a railroad accident: 'I see my own face, as in a mirror, but I am aware that it is my father's face. I have his mustache, and like him I am slightly bald.'
At the time of the dream, the patient was living far away from his family, in a foreign country. He learned of his father's death by cablegram. He had left his family in consequence of a serious disagreement with his father, in which the latter had reproached him for leading a dissipated life and, in particular, for carrying on an affair with an older woman. Prior to this quarrel the patient had always been strongly attached to his