Presented by Janine Chasseguet as the heritage of primary narcissism, the ego ideal and its relations with perversion serves to throw light on contemporary narcissistic suffering. The illness of ideality has taken on central importance in contemporary clinical work, and is visible as much in the recrudescence of extremist ideologies, the affirmation of ignorance and the rejection of science as in disorders of subjectivity associated with addictions, questions of sexual identity, and depressive illness, named the illness of the century by WHO.