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Freud's early view of the superego emphasized its preoedipal origins in the ego ideal—in the child's wish to regain the lost primary narcissism of infancy through identification with idealized parental images. The persistence of this view is reflected in his use of the terms ego ideal and superego more or less interchangeably throughout his writings, even after his introduction of the latter term in 1923.
The shift to the term superego in The Ego and the Id (1923) marked a major turning point in Freud's conceptualization of the internal psychological system that deals with matters of conscience and morality. Beginning at that point and continuing more or less consistently thereafter (Freud, 1923, 1924a, 1924b, 1925, 1926a, 1926b, 1933, 1940), he emphasized the centrality of the Oedipus complex, of oedipal identifications, and of the aggressive, punitive function of the system “superego” in his approach to it as a metapsychological organization within the mind. He now described the superego as “the heir of the oedipus complex” (1923, p. 36).
His reasons for the shift in his emphasis were most probably twofold. On the one hand, it appears to reflect his realization that the events of the oedipal period, during which major emotional, affective, and cognitive shifts take place, lead to crucial psychological reintegrations in which the basic structural and functional organization of the mind crystallizes into a more or less stable form that will persist thereafter. On the other, as Jones (1955), Loewald (1979),