418 MICHAEL E. STOCK 



In actual fact, of course, the identifications mentioned above 

 may not take place so easily. If the Oedipus complex itself is 

 not normal, or if it cannot be completely resolved normally, 

 the stage is set for later psychological difficulties. These con- 

 siderations, however, are irrelevant to our present point. Here 

 we wish only to inquire further into what this mode of forma- 

 tion tells us about the superego itself — what character is 

 imparted to the superego from the resolution of the instinctual 

 forces which comprised the Oedipus complex. 



Obviously, insofar as the superego is formed by the process 

 of identification, it serves as a norm or ideal for the ego, as a 

 pattern to which the child must conform. A boy wants to be 

 like his father, and feels that he does wrong if in any way he 

 fails to live up to this ideal. This is the simple ego-ideal aspect 

 of the superego, the basis for the urge to strive for perfection. 

 But along with this ideal-pattern aspect, there are certain 

 prohibitions set up in the child's mind: he must not do certain 

 things that his father does. This aspect — the taboo-aspect — 

 is understandable when we recollect the original motive for 

 forming the ego-ideal — the child wishing to escape from the 

 tensions aroused by feeling rivalry for the father. He escaped 

 by avoiding any further competition with his father, with 

 regard to his mother's affections; he left the field to his rival 

 and contented himself with emulating him. Inextricably bound 

 up with the image of his father are his father's prerogatives: 

 his special place in the mother's affections. The child then has 

 abandoned his former role of rivalry; he is careful now not to 

 trespass, he formulates a series of prohibitions whose funda- 

 mental enforcement agency is, subjectively, the forbidding 

 image of his father. This is the basis of the prohibitory sense 

 in people. The superego then is twofold: to be like the father, 

 and not to do everything he does.^^ 



To a lesser degree, in the resolution of the normal complete 

 complex, the child also wants to be like his mother, and yet 

 not like her, i.e. not to take her place in his father's affections. 



^^ Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 44-45. 



