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The author attempts to reconcile two statements made by Freud regarding the origins of the superego: (a) that the superego is the heir of the oedipus complex; and (b) that the superego of the child is structured according to the parents' superego. Mayer suggests that the answer lies in investigation of the genesis of the superego. The superego has a preoedipal root, the ego ideal. This structure,
formed by primary narcissistic identification, is the most primitive nucleus of the superego. This root will depend on primary narcissistic identification before object cathexis; in other words the ideal of the child is an echo of the narcissistic ideal of the parents without intervening object cathexis. Besides this preoedipal root, the superego has an oedipal root made up of reaction-formations and secondary identifications. Mayer suggests that the cruelty of the superego derives primarily from parental narcissism. The ego ideal is the sediment of the narcissistic tie that the parents establish with the child. It will be compelled to organize its aspirations and instinctual representations to be or to have what the parents wish they had had in order to be happy. When the ego does not fulfill its function or betrays in any way the demands of the ego ideal, it is invaded by intense feelings of guilt, persecution, and the necessity of self-destruction. This is clearly seen in melancholias, masochism, paranoia, and such paradoxical reactions as the negative therapeutic reaction. These phenomena were considered by Freud as powerful resistances, the result of a cruel superego full of the death instinct. This cruelty of the superego toward the ego is not due to a mysterious liberation of the death instinct but is the result of the internalization of filicidal urges of narcissistic parents who were experienced as potential annihilators. Self-destructive behavior is not only a powerful resistance but also a direct expression of a narcissistic structure which in thi