Right at the very beginning, in the primitive oral phase of an individual, object-cathexis and identification probably cannot be distinguished from one another. At a later stage, one can only suppose that object-cathexes emanate from the id, which registers erotic urges as needs. The ego – initially still in a somewhat puny state – becomes aware of the object-cathexes, and either puts up with them, or seeks to fight them off through the process of repression.42
Where an individual is required or compelled to give up a sexual object, there is not uncommonly a compensatory process in the form of that particular ego-alteration43 that we can only describe as ‘erecting the object within the ego’, just as occurs in melancholia. We do not yet know the precise circumstances in which this surrogation process takes place. Perhaps the ego uses this introjection, which is a form of regression to the mechanism of the oral phase, in order to make it easier to give up the object, or even to make it possible in the first place. Perhaps this identification is the one and only condition under which the id will give up its objects. Be that as it may, the process is a very frequent one, especially in the early phases of development, and gives grounds for the view that the character of the ego is a residual imprint of the object-cathexes that have been given up, and contains the entire history of those object-choices. Needless to say, it must be granted from the outset that there is a considerable range in the capacity for resistance that determines whether a person's character rejects or accepts these influences deriving from his or her cumulative history of erotic object-choices. In the case of women who have had numerous amorous experiences it would appear to be quite easy to demonstrate that vestiges of their various object-cathexes are present in their character traits. We must also consider the possibility that object-cathexis and identification can occur simultaneously, in other words, that there can be a character-alteration44 before the object has been given up. In this event the character-alteration may well last beyond the subject's relationship to the object, and in some sense preserve it.
Looked at from another point of view, this process of converting an erotic object-choice into an ego-alteration can also be seen as a device enabling the ego to gain control of the id and strengthen its links to it, albeit at the cost of showing considerable complaisance with regard to its experiences. When the ego adopts the features of the object, it so to speak presses itself on the id as a love-object; it seeks to make good the id's loss by saying ‘There, you see, you can love me too – I look just like the object.’
The conversion of object-libido into narcissistic libido that takes place here clearly entails an abandonment of sexual goals, a desexualization – in other words a kind of sublimation. Indeed the question arises – and would merit detailed analysis – whether this is not perhaps the standard path to sublimation; whether all sublimation doesn't perhaps take place via the medium of the ego, which first transforms sexual object-libido into narcissistic object-libido, in order perhaps then to set it a different goal.45 At a later stage we shall consider whether this transformation cannot perhaps affect the destiny of the drives in other ways too, for instance by bringing about a de-mergence46 of the various drives that are interfused with one another.
Even though it diverts us from our main objective, we really cannot avoid focusing our attention for a moment on the ego's object-identifications. If these get out of hand, if they become excessive in number and intensity and prove incompatible with one another, then a pathological outcome is altogether likely. Fragmenting of the ego may occur as a result of the separate identifications shutting themselves off from one another by means of resistances, and in cases of so-called multiple personality the secret may well be that the separate identifications take turns seizing hold of consciousness. Even if things do not reach such a pass, there is certain to be an issue with regard to conflicts between the various identifications that the ego separates out into – conflict that in the end cannot all be described as pathological.
But whatever may be the subsequent capacity of a person's character to resist the influence of object-cathexes that have been given up, the effects of that person's initial identifications, those that occur at a very young age, will be pervasive and long-lasting. This leads us back to the origins of the ego-ideal, for behind it lurks the individual's first and most important identification: that with the father during his personal pre-history.47 This first identification does not itself seem to be the fruit or end-product of an object-cathexis: it occurs on its own, without any mediation, and at an earlier stage than any object-cathexis. But it seems that the object-choices that belong to the first sexual period, and involve the father and mother, culminate in normal circumstances in precisely the same identification, and thereby reinforce the primary one.
However, these relationships are so complicated that we are going to have to analyse them in rather more detail. Two factors are to blame for this complexity: the triangular nature of the Oedipus situation, and the constitutional bisexuality of the individual.
Reduced to its essentials, the picture that presents itself in the case of a male child is as follows: at a very early age he develops an object-cathexis in respect of his mother, the starting-point for which is the mother's breast, and which constitutes a paradigmatic example of the imitative type of object-choice;48 the boy takes possession of the father through identification. The two relationships continue in tandem for a while, until the intensification of the boy's sexual desire for the mother and his recognition that the father constitutes an obstacle to this desire bring the Oedipus complex into being.49 The father-identification now takes on a hostile air; it turns into a desire to get rid of the father and take his place vis-à-vis the mother. From this point onwards, the relationship to the father is ambivalent; it seems as if the ambivalence inherent in the identification from the beginning has now become manifest. In the case of boys, the ambivalent attitude to the father and the purely affectionate impulse towards the mother as object are the defining features of the simple and positive form of the Oedipus complex.
Once the Oedipus complex is demolished, the object-cathexis in respect of the mother has to be given up. Its place can be taken by one of two things: either an identification with the mother, or an intensification of the already existing identification with the father. We generally regard the latter outcome as the more normal one; it allows the affectionate relationship to the mother to be retained to some degree. The masculine element in the boy may thus be said to have gained in strength as a result of the dissolution of the Oedipus complex. In an altogether analogous way, the outcome of the Oedipus attitude in a little girl may be an intensification of her identification with the mother (or the creation of such an identification), which firmly establishes the feminine character of the child.
These identifications do not accord with our expectations,50 in that they do not convey the surrendered object into the ego – but this outcome does also occur, and is more readily observed in girls than in boys. We very often find in psychoanalysis that a little girl who has had to relinquish the father as love-object proceeds to emphasize her maleness, and instead of identifying with the mother identifies with the father, i.e. with the object that she has lost. What decides the issue here is evidently whether the male elements in her make-up – whatever these may be – are sufficiently strong.
Whether the final outcome of the Oedipus situation is a father-identification or a mother-identification thus seems to depend in both sexes on the relative strength of the male and female elements in the individual's make-up. This is one of the two ways in which bisexuality interferes in the fate of the Oedipus complex. The other is even more significant. For we get the impression that the simple form of the Oedipus complex is by no means the one that actually occurs most commonly, but amounts to a simplification or schematization – though one that quite often proves justifiable in practical terms.51 As a rule a more detailed investigation reveals the more complete form of the Oedipus complex, which is twofold in nature, comprisin
g both a positive complex and a negative one, due to the child's original bisexuality; i.e. the boy not only exhibits an ambivalent attitude towards the father and an affectionate object-choice in respect of the mother, but at the same time also behaves like a girl, displaying an affectionate feminine attitude towards the father and a correspondingly jealous and hostile one towards the mother. This extra complication brought about by bisexuality makes it very difficult to discern the circumstances that obtain in primal object-choices and identifications, and even more difficult to describe these in an intelligible way. It may even be the case that the ambivalence that we noted in the child's relationship to its parents is wholly ascribable to bisexuality, and does not – as I argued earlier - derive from the relevant identification as a result of an attitude of rivalry.
It seems to me to be a sensible policy to assume that the complete Oedipus complex will prove to exist in the generality of cases, and most particularly in the case of neurotics. Psychoanalytical experience shows us, however, that in a number of instances one or other element disappears almost without trace, and as a result we find a whole spectrum, having the normal, positive Oedipus complex at one end and the inverted, negative one at the other, while the middle sections reveal variants of the complete form with unequal proportions of the two components. On the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, the four tendencies contained within it will combine in such a way that they give rise to a father-identification and a mother-identification. The father-identification will retain the mother-object of the positive complex, and at the same time replace the father-object of the inverted complex;52 the same – in reverse – will be true of the mother-identification. One of the two identifications will be more marked than the other, and this will reflect the unequal distribution of the two sexual elements in the individual's make-up.
We can thus postulate that the most pervasive result of the sexual phase dominated by the Oedipus complex is that it leaves its imprint on the ego, manifest in the creation of these two identifications that are in some way harmonized with one another. This ego-alteration retains its special status and actively opposes the rest of the ego as the ‘ego-ideal’ or ‘super-ego’.
The super-ego is not purely and simply the residuum of the id's earliest object-choices, however, but also signifies a vigorous reaction-formation directed against those same object-choices. Its relationship to the ego does not reside solely in the injunction ‘You shall behave thus (like your father)’, but also includes the prohibition ‘You must not behave thus (like your father) – that is, you must not do all that he does, for some things remain his sole preserve.’ This dual visage of the ego-ideal derives from the fact that the latter was brought into play in order to repress the Oedipus complex, indeed owes its very existence to this critical turn of events. The repression of the Oedipus complex was clearly no easy task. Since it was the parents, particularly the father, who were identified as the obstacle preventing the child's Oedipus wishes from being realized, his infantile ego gained the strength to accomplish the repression by erecting that same obstacle within itself. It borrowed the requisite strength from the father, so to speak – and to incur this loan is to incur the most momentous consequences: the super-ego retains the character of the father; and the stronger the Oedipus complex was, and the faster it was repressed (by dint of authority, religious doctrine, schooling, reading) – the more strictly the super-ego subsequently rules the ego as its conscience, and perhaps as an unconscious sense of guilt. The question arises as to where it gets the power so to rule – that power of compulsion which manifests itself as a categorical imperative; and I shall propose a possible answer to this question at a later stage.
Looking once again at the genesis of the super-ego as described above, we can see that it is the result of two extremely important biological factors: the long duration of the childhood period of helplessness and dependence in human beings, and the fact of their Oedipus complex, which we have of course attributed to the interruption of libido development caused by the latency period, and hence to the diphasic onset of human sexual life.53 According to one psychoanalytical hypothesis, this latter phenomenon, which appears to be specific to humans, is a heritage of the enforced process of cultural development brought about by the ice age.54 That being so, the super-ego's differentiation from the ego was by no means a chance event: it reflects the most significant developmental features of both the individual and the species; indeed, by giving lasting expression to the influence of the parents, it perpetuates the existence of the factors to which it owes its origins.
Psychoanalysis has been accused on countless occasions of failing to concern itself with man's higher, moral, suprapersonal side. This accusation is doubly unjust: unjust in historical terms because we argued from the very beginning that the ego's moral and aesthetic tendencies are the driving force behind repression; unjust with regard to method because our accusers refused to recognize that – unlike some tidy philosophical system – psychoanalytical research could not come bounding onto the stage with a complete and fully fashioned set of doctrines, but had to forge its way step by step towards an understanding of the complexities of the psyche by means of painstaking analysis of both normal and abnormal phenomena. We had no need to share the tremulous anxiety of others as to the precise location of the ‘higher element’ in human beings so long as we were busily studying the workings of the repressed in their inner souls.55 But now that we are venturing to analyse the ego, we can say to all those who, shaken to the very core of their moral consciousness, have pleaded that there must surely be a higher presence in man: ‘There is indeed, and this higher presence is the ego-ideal or super-ego, the representamen56 of our relationship to our parents. As little children we knew, admired and feared these higher presences, and later assimilated them into our own selves.’
The ego-ideal is thus heir to the Oedipus complex, and as such an expression of the id's most powerful impulses and most important libidinal experiences. By erecting the ego-ideal, the ego asserted control over the Oedipus complex – and simultaneously subordinated itself to the id. Whereas the ego is essentially a representative of the world without, of reality, the super-ego is contraposed to it as advocate of the world within, of the id. As of course we have meanwhile come to expect, conflicts between the ego and the ideal are ultimately going to reflect the antithesis of ‘the objective’ and ‘the psychical’ – the world without, and the world within.
By forming an ideal, the ego takes unto itself everything in the id that has been created by biology or left behind by the travails of the human race, and re-experiences it on an individual level. As a result of the way it is formed, the ego-ideal has the most abundant links to the phylogenetic acquest, the archaic inheritance, that is intrinsic to everyone. Thanks to the forming of an ideal, those elements within the individual psyche that once belonged to the deepest depths become – in terms of our scheme of values – the very loftiest aspects of the human soul. It would be a futile undertaking, however, to seek to localize the ego-ideal in anything like the way that we have done in respect of the ego, or to make it fit any of the metaphors and images that we have used in our efforts to delineate the relationship between the ego and the id.
It is easy to demonstrate that the ego-ideal meets all the expectations that we tend to have of the ‘higher presence’ in man. As a surrogate for the individual's longing for the father, it contains the germ from which all religions have evolved. The sense of inadequacy we feel when comparing our ego with our ideal gives rise to that religious feeling of humility that the yearning believer depends on. As each child grows up, the role of the father is taken over by teachers and other authority figures, whose commandments and prohibitions remain powerfully alive in the ego-ideal – and in due course exercise moral censorship in the guise of conscience. The tension between what our conscience demands and what our ego actually does is experienced as guilt feeling. Our social feelings rest on identifications with other people on the basis of the sa
me ego-ideal.
Religion, morality and a social sense – these chief constituents of man's higher nature57 – were originally one and the same. According to the hypothesis I set forth in Totem and Taboo, they were acquired phylogenetically as a result of the father-complex – religion and moral restraint deriving from the process of overcoming58 the Oedipus complex itself, and social feelings arising from the need to overcome the rivalry still remaining amongst the members of the younger generation. The male sex appears to have led the way in the acquisition of all these moral attributes, cross inheritance then transmitting them to females as well. Even today, social feelings develop within individuals as a construct serving to overbuild their jealous feelings of rivalry vis-à-vis their siblings.59 Since their hostile impulses cannot be gratified, an identification with their erstwhile rival comes into being. Evidence gained from observing mild cases of homosexuality lends support to the supposition that this identification, too, is a surrogate for an affectionate object-choice, and has taken the place of the earlier stance of aggression and hostility.60
The mention of phylogenesis, however, raises new problems so challenging that one is tempted to choose discretion over valour and avoid them altogether. But we don't really have any choice: we must venture to resolve them, even though we fear that in the process the inadequacy of our entire enterprise may stand revealed. The question is this: was it the ego of primitive man that at some point acquired religion and morality as a consequence of the father-complex, or was it his id? If it was the ego, then why not simply describe the hereditary process as operating within the ego itself? If it was the id, how does that accord with the character of the id? Or are we wrong to suppose that the ego, super-ego and id became differentiated at such an early stage? Or shouldn't we admit in all honesty that our whole conception of the ego and its processes contributes nothing to our understanding of phylogenesis, and is altogether irrelevant to it?