You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I.Herbert Rosenfeld. Pp. 258-263.
II.Superego and Time. Hans W. Loewald. Pp. 264-268.
III.Edith Weigert. Pp. 269-271.
Rosenfeld discusses the relation between the early and the later superego. In latency, because of the persistence of inner persecutory anxieties deriving from the early superego, complete and uncritical identifications with the external objects are made, thereby splitting off the persecutory and highly idealized aspects of the early superego.
In adolescence, these split-off parts normally come to the surface and are projected onto external objects, denying the real aspect of the external object. In order to achieve change in the early superego, which is concentrated around and related to reactions to early reality experiences, the relations to the mother and the breast in the transference situation must be worked through. During analysis, fixation and the original paranoid-schizoid position lessens, and the patient can move toward the depressive position which is shown in a greater capacity to experience ambivalence and, therefore, concern for the object.
Changes in the ego and object relations and in the superego can then occur. Only when the early superego has overcome most of its persecutory qualities can selective identification with real objects and their qualities take place.
Loewald suggests that structural relations be thought of in temporal terms. Psychic time implies an active relation among the temporal modes, past, present, and future. The ego represents the psychic present, which acts on the psychic past. The superego functions from the standpoint of the ego's future—which is to be reached, or is being reached, or is being failed or abandoned by the ego. The superego, as the structure looking back toward the ego, commands, threatens, rewards, loves, and hates it. Conscience speaks to us from the viewpoint of an inner future.
Loewald describes the successive stages of development beginning with the ideal ego which represents the