BOOK REVIEW

‘You ought to!’. A psychoanalytic study of the superego and conscience

by Bernard Barnett, London, Karnac, 2007, 180 pp., £14.95 (paperback)

Bernard Barnett's book containing six chapters with its pithy title ‘You ought to!’, might create the impression that you could read it on a 2-hour train journey. The compact clarity of discussion would make this enjoyable and achievable but at the end of the journey I think the reader would be hungry to re-read certain passages and chapters. This relatively slim book has considerable depth and scholarship with an effective use of fascinating literary examples.

In the Introduction Dr Barnett defines concepts, with the aid of examples taken from the press, such as the ego ideal, conscience, the ego and the self, remorse, the need for punishment and morality. He distinguishes a narrow definition of Superego, that part of the mind, mainly unconscious, which watches over the ego, with the System Superego which could embrace all of the above. He acknowledges the overlap between these various concepts and ends with a brief synopsis of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. I found that it was helpful to return to these definitions as I progressed through the book.

The second chapter is dedicated to a very close exposition of Freud's development of the concept of superego, demonstrating Barnett's enormous talents as a teacher of psychoanalysis. I found his description of the later papers, Civilization and its discontents, and Femininity and an outline of psychoanalysis, particularly interesting, especially Freud's references to the cultural influences on the superego and the idea that the superego unites the present with the past.

Barnett's account and development of the superego through childhood and adulthood, attests to his extensive experience as a child analyst and teacher of psychoanalysis. Like the previous chapters, he uses literary examples from Daniel Deronda and James Joyce's Portrait of the artist as a young man. For instance, in Dani