CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO 413 



nomenon contrary to the best interests of the patient and 

 seemingly imposed by some hostile and alien, and yet internal 

 agency, seemed to Freud to demand a special mental structure 

 to account for it.® 



To these main arguments, Freud added others, not always 

 as plausible. He seemed to think, for instance, that the presence 

 of the superego was betrayed by ordinary phraseology in every- 

 day speech. Thus the exprssion: " I feel inclined to do this 

 but my conscience says ' no '," led him to infer the existence 

 of a power in man separate and contrary to the primary 

 personality, the " I." As has been pointed out, however, the 

 same situation can be expressed: " I will not do this, although 

 I am tempted to." Now this would indicate that the primary 

 personality is separate from and contrary to the inclination. 

 All, in fact, that can be deduced from such expressions is the 

 presence of a duality; nothing can be concluded about the 

 primacy of the factors involved.' 



But leaving aside the debatable proofs, what can be deduced 

 from the admissible evidence.'* Certainly many of Freud's 

 observations as cited above are psychologically meaningful. 

 Before we deduce any final conclusions, however, about the 

 superego, we must go into a more thorough account of its 

 actual formation, and this brings up the question of the Oedipus 

 complex. For Freud, the superego — this inner sense of com- 

 pulsion to do or not do — is formed out of the resolution of the 

 Oedipus complex, and cannot be understood on any other basis.® 



(3) The origin of the superego. 



The Oedipus complex may be described briefly as follows. 

 In infancy a male child develops first of all a strong instinctual 

 atti action towards his mother, based on the warmth and affec- 



* Freud, "On Narcissism: An Introduction," Coll. Papers, vol. 4, pp. 50-59. Cf. 

 Karen Homey, New Ways in Psychoanalysis, pp. 207-210; Freud, " The Economic 

 Problem in Masochism," Coll. Papers, vol. 2, pp. 265-66. 



'' Cf. Nuttin, Psychoanalysis and Personality, p. 178. 



* Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 40-46. 



