We all have a superego although some of us call it differently: conscience, morality or something to do with a guilty voice inside of us. Understanding it can become one of the most powerful tools to unlock mental well-being.
According to Freud’s personality theory (1923) our psyche is structured into three parts that develop at different stages in our lives: id, ego and superego. The id is the more primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual and aggressive drives as well as hidden memories, the super-ego operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.
The goal of the superego, which strives for moral perfections without taking into account the actual reality, is to try to civilize and perfect our behaviour by suppressing all unacceptable primeval urges of the id and while struggling to make the ego act upon idealistic standards rather that upon realistic principles. What’s more fascinating is that the superego is present at a conscious, preconscious, and unconscious level making the latter the more difficult to figure out and manage.
I believe that knowing how our mind works can help us to unravel why we do and feel the way we do and feel and aid us to better understand why people do what they do and why they affect us in such ways. In other words, if we are able to extract the essence of how or psyche works, we can lead a better life. Although psychoanalysis may seem to some a bit too intense and perhaps a little over analysed, I think there’s a few concepts out there than can truly help us preserve our well-being and that’s why I want to introduce you to the superego at the unconscious level. Ta-taaaaa!
Here’s why: the existence of the super-ego is observable in how people can view themselves as bad, shameful, guilty, weak, and feel compelled to do certain things. This is because, according to Freud, the super-ego reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly taught by parents applying their guidance and influence which starts at a very early age. When the superego acts in the conscious mind, we are aware of our resulting feelings. However, when the superego acts unconsciously to punish or suppress the id, we might end up with feelings of guilt and no real understanding of why we feel that way.
Freud did not believe that the superego is the same as our conscience, but there are similarities as sometimes it speaks directly to us in a parent like voice “don’t do this….do that…”. Think of it this way, if you swap the noun “superego” with the noun “conscience”, you can start to see how important is to ensure that our superego/kinda conscience does not end up suffocating us with over perfectionisms.
Superego
According to Freud the superego is like the voice of authority that once belonged to the parents and that with time has become part of ourselves. Sometimes it praises us for “good” behaviour, sometimes it manifests itself in the form of a punitive voice for what the it perceives is bad behaviour.
Freud also explains that the establishment of this critical inner voice is what makes civilization possible as, by repressing our most powerful instinctual urges, it allows us to live together in a complex social unit such as towns, cities etc… However, it also comes at a cost: “the loss of happiness through the heightening of this sense of guilt” (Freud , S. “Civilization and its Discontents”, 1930)
Why is it relevant to you? Our need to obey, honour and maintain the social order in which we live is rooted in infancy and early childhood and it continues to develop in our lives as a form of respect for law and social order as imposed (and ingrained) on us by the society we live in. The superego, acting as some form of conscience, keeps us in check with what it perceives as “good” or “bad” but as conscience is deeply related to a sense of guilt and, when the inner voice becomes punitive and unrealistic about its expectations, it can become a problem.
Let’s concentrate on the feeling of guilt for a moment. Sometimes when we feel guilty, we hear a relentless voice criticizing and castigating us until it becomes our priority worry and until we become consumed by that sense of guilt. How do we deal with it? We try to make things better and repair the damage, or we begin to blame someone else. When the guilt is at its most extreme and intolerable it can lead a person to seek, not just some punishment, but some terrible punishment as well as it can turn with astonishing ferocity on others who are held to blame. At its worst, it can lead to suicide. Interestingly, sometimes it’s just too painful to hear the voice inside, so we somehow manage to perceive it as being located in other people, for example when we hear that inner voice (that deep down we perceive as true) as if coming from someone else (i.e. “my friend hates me for always wearing old clothes, she thinks I don’t care and she makes me feel bad and ugly!”).
Is the superego conscious or unconscious?
Although it may seem that the superego voice is experienced in our thoughts, it resides mostly in the unconscious…. making it a real bugger because it means we are motivated by feelings we are not aware of.
A typical example is when we know someone is unwell or unhappy or unable to go and do something (perhaps due to illness or disability) and we end up feeling so sorry and sad for that person, maybe even burdened for something that we are not responsible for, that we are unable to be happy and enjoy life ourselves. Sometimes it’s out of respect for someone that is dear to us, but in other cases the feeling of guilt is so strong that it stops us from living our life.
In these cases, the superego can attack us by making us feel guilty, it can suck the pleasure out from life and leave us feeling meaningless. And although we don’t consciously feel guilty about something, we are being punished for something we unconsciously feel guilty about.
The damaging effects of owning a very harsh superego
As Priscilla Roth explains in “Ideas in Psychoanalysis: the superego”, a healthy person has a superego that mostly helps him to feel good about himself and punishes him by making him feel guilty for something bad he did. In other words, a healthy superego is no different from a kind but firm parent: it has rules but it is also forgiving of transgressions. It can be mitigated.
However, when the superego is a harsh one, things can go pear shaped.
The hiding-under-the-sand dance
Priscilla Roth explains the gravity of a hard superego when she describes how “someone persecuted by an excessively hard superego could be seen as unconsciously cowering under an unstable mountain of guilt. To recognize its scale or to attempt the slightest reduction of its terrible weight is to risk an annihilating avalanche of shame. Such unfortunate people, unable to make any move that would allow the process of reparation to begin, are doomed to endless reproach and attack within. People whose superego is this cruel usually have to get rid of it one way or another, otherwise they are in great danger of hurting themselves or others. In extreme cases, relationships are damaged and acute depression causes difficulties at work. At its worst, suicide or even murder can seem to be the only way to silence the remorseless internal assault.” (Priscilla, R. “Ideas in Psychoanalysis: the superego”, 2001)
The projection-blame dance
Sometimes when the superego is too harsh and when the guilt feels to awful to bear, people unconsciously project their superego outside themselves into someone else. In other words, they locate the criticising voices in somebody else and experience the criticism as coming from other people. This can be seen as the only way for a person that suffers from harsh superego to keep guilt free. The downside is that by so doing they are unable to correctly locate the problems and solve it.
The turn-it-to-others dance
Another common way of dealing with harsh superego is to turn it towards other people. For example, people that have experience bullying at school, or have been denigrated and belittled by their parents, may find that that voice that had initially come from the outside (a bully or parent for example), is now residing within, always threatening with harsh criticism. A way of dealing with it? Turning it on someone else. i.e. their own child!
It is thus important, when we meet people like this, to stop for a moment to try and understand their strange or inappropriate behaviour. For example, people who come across as bossy or people who make us feel small and worthless, may be behaving as such in order to rid of their own bad feelings and inadequacies by putting them on us! The next time you are subject to hard criticism from someone, try to take a moment to reflect on it: there may be some truth in what they are saying, but did it need to come out so harshly? And does it tell you more about them than you?
Introjection and identification
Before closing the curtains over this topic about the superego and the unconscious, I’d like to touch two more concepts that, once again, go to show how the superego in the unconscious level can really screw us up.
Mourning & depression
Here’s anther interesting piece of knowledge: Freud and another early psychoanalyst named Karl Abraham, carried out several studies to understand and treat patients who were suffering from melancholia (what we now call depression). They noticed that patients with melancholia would criticize themselves constantly for being worthless, unlovable, unkind, uncaring or stupid – for example. This self-criticism with time turned into self-hatred. It’s important to underline that this is the first distinguishing characteristic of depression.
Abraham noticed that very depressed people seemed very muck like people in mourning, although without a clear understanding of what was lost or died. This theory that depression is some form of mourning gone haywire is still the basic psychoanalytic theory behind depression.
Freud believed that while mourning is always in relation to a consciously perceived lost object or being; melancholia (depression), is more frequently experienced in relation to a loss that can only be located in the unconscious.
However, for someone to fall ill with depression due to the loss of a loved one, the relationship with that loved one must have been basically narcissistic. This means that the loved object was felt as belonging to and even being a part of or an extension of the person’s own self. This is why the feeling of impoverishment is experienced by that person in the very self. Common headlines? “I am lost and I am nothing without that person”.
In depression, on top of the withdrawal of interest in the outside world and an inhibition towards getting involved, the one’s self turns to be experienced as unable to be loving or loved: the very self becomes the object of much hatred, criticism and denigration. This is how people end up feeling utterly worthless. “Paradoxically”, as Priscilla Roth explains (Priscilla, R. “Ideas in Psychoanalysis: the superego”, 2001) “there is also a peculiar aura of self-importance, of self-aggrandisement in their complaints about themselves: Who would ever love me I am so revolting!”
Can you now see the link between a hard-internal superego voice and depression?
Identification, incorporation and internalization
In psychoanalysis, introjection is the process that takes place when a person replicates behaviours, ideas and voices of the surrounding world by internalizing them as a self-stabilizing defence mechanism. In a way it provides the illusion of maintaining relationship but at the expense of a loss of self.
Similar concepts are identification, incorporation and internalization which happen when a person picks up traits from his or her friends, for example a mannerism or an accent or the use of a particular expression, as a result of that said friend repeatedly doing it.
Let’s look at some scenarios:
An example of introjection is when a person internalizes the ideas or voices of other people, often perceived as external authorities, into his/her way of thinking. This could be a son whose father believed that “women do the housework”. Although the son isn’t necessarily identifying with the father, this idea and voice may well become part of how he sees the world and, hence, how he believes he should behave.
Over time it may lead to identification with the individual who said it. This may look like the son is following in the father’s footsteps but it’s more than that. The son is identifying with his father. He may follow a similar career path, start to dress similarly, and take on other similar beliefs. The son is no longer introjecting just one belief but identifying himself with his father. In this case, the son may go on to see himself as the head of his own household, just like his father was, and expect to be treated like his father, with his wife respecting and treating him as his mom treated his dad.
But the process is much more complicated than that because the child’s picture of his parents and of their commands, prohibitions and beliefs, is deeply affected by the child’s own feelings. For example, a child that feels good about himself and loving towards his parents, will imagine them as loving towards him. However, the other way around is also true! An angry child often views his parents as being similarly angry. Similarly, a child who feels horrible inside himself, sees the whole world, and especially his parents, also as being horrible. A child that feels full of hate, jealousy and resentment, will imagine his parents as hating him. What can happen is that the child will project his bad feelings onto his parents and imagine them feeling as horrible about him as he does about them. In other words, the parent is introjected by the child as he imagines them to be – and often this is angrier, harsher, stricter than they actually are.
Obviously, it being at an unconscious level, makes it difficult for us to be able to locate it and understand it. However, your knowledge on this matter may help you better understand your internal voice and his requests upon you and your life.
Conclusion
We all have an unconscious side and we all do things without really knowing or understanding the greater moving force behind it. The superego aka our internal judge, can be a cruel, harsh and persecuting force but it can also be a forgiving and benign one. Dealing with something we have no idea how it looks like, how it moves and speaks and where it likes to live, makes it difficult for us to even face it. We can experience it within ourselves, we can project it onto other people and turn it to others so we can judge them harshly instead of having to face judging ourselves. We develop the superego (conscience, guilty internal voice or morality) through our life, but it starts with our parents and other significant figures in our life and it is in some ways and to some extent, a reflection of these people. What’s important to remember is that it can shape your life, your choices, affect relationships with other people as well as the relationship (feelings and image) you have of yourself.
But there are tracings techniques that can help you locate it and understand it. If any of the above raised questions within you in regards to some of your life choices, then you are already a step closer to understanding your superego in the unconscious level and closer to redeem yourself. If you need a little help to move in the right direction, perhaps checking your core beliefs and challenging them to see if they are still valid, is a good starting point!
