Daughter – Baby – Mother as a Feminine Preoedipal Ego Ideal

The ego ideals are psychic creations, products of drives and narcissism, fantasies and acquired imaginary sets which have become constructed for a self perception.

This self perception which develops and is experienced by a person as their self ego can have different characteristics, varying from self respect to inferiority complexes, insufficiency and hopelessness. Beneath and enclosed in this self perception lies the subconscious or, more usually, the unconscious ego ideals. They have their origin in the lost primary narcissism which has become re-internalised by the creation of new ideals at each succesive object separation. It is these unconscious ego ideals which guide a woman's (and of course a man's) symbolising, conceptual world, feelings, thoughts and actions. By understanding a person's ego ideals, we have the possibilities, during analysis, of getting an insight into the fate of this person's drives and the values which have been attached to them.

Are there any special features of the female ego ideals which in certain respects distinguish them from the male's? Have they, by being linked to feminine sexuality another genus, specifically feminine? If this is the case, it may be that female ego ideals function in a different way to the male's in certain respects. These are the questions with which I am occupied. As it is the pre-oedipal creation of ideals that I focus my attention on, my account in this article will be restricted to dealing only with the mother –