8. Unsatisfied Wishes and Sublimation - Square Circles Publishing

SOURCE 8: THE MIND AT MISCHIEF
and concomitant with the development of
this concept of the reality of the world
there comes gradually to be built up this
ego system of non-sexual complexes. It is
the system of conscious urges which is
coordinated with the enforced recognition
of the reality of existence.
Before the love-attachments of the
Oedipus situation arise, however, an
earlier form of emotional tie between
child and parent is found. A small boy
takes his father as his ideal; he wants to
be like him and to do as he does (M 90).
8:4.4 In its early days the child looks
upon its parents as the ideal. It desires to
be like them when it grows up.
It is largely imitative of them,
Identifications with the parents form
the nucleus of the Ego-ideal, and the
formation of the Ego-ideal is the outcome
of that phase of sexual development
which is dominated by the Oedipus
relationship between child and parent;
indeed its formation is primarily brought
about by the need for mastering and
repressing the Oedipus complex (M 92).
The most important change in the
development of the Ego is the occurrence
of a differentiation within the Ego itself,
whereby a criticising faculty arises,
opposed to the complaisant Ego which
too readily adopts as its own the aims of
the Id (M 88).
It is the development of a differentiated
portion of the Ego which [Freud] calls the
Ego-ideal or super-Ego; the Ego-ideal is
the source of the moral conscience, of
self-observation and self-criticism, of the
forces of repression and the censorship of
dreams (M 88-89).
and further, through this process of
identification of itself with its parents, it
comes gradually to build up the domain
of idealism within the ego system of
complexes;
and this domain of the ideal is the
birthplace of the psychic censor,
that mental power which early dares both
to criticize the ego group of complexes
and to censor the libido, the sexual
system of complexes.
Later on, this censorship of the mind
becomes expanded into conscience in
connection with recognition of the moral
standards of right and wrong,
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