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The superego is considered to be at first a part of the mechanism of ego dissociation. This mechanism is essential in handling sadistic impulses. Whether the child will progress unharmed through various stage depends on the opportunities offered by reality and on the child's capacity for ego synthesis. He has to learn by experience that the pleasure principle must be relinquished in favor of the reality principle. If reality experiences are not sufficiently satisfactory, the child will regress at the Oedipal stage to earlier, archaic representations favoring fantasy and magical thinking. The structure of the idealized nucleus in the ego will be affected as will the capacity of the ego to handle reality. The original perceptive ego, working through energies derived from the id, should constitute the psychic representation of the ego ideals. In the process of maturation, these ego ideals will eventually function according to the demands of the superego and reality. Ego ideals, therefore, liberate all types of representations, fantasies, and thoughts which appear in the ego as it perceives the id, the superego, and reality. Furthermore, these ideals embody the characteristic way in which the ego synthesizes its own autogenous elements, such as memory and knowledge.