420 MICHAEL E. STOCK 



In a similar fashion, the drives of other basic instinctual 

 impulses are found expressing themselves through the superego. 

 The masochistic element, which finds pleasure in being hurt, 

 turns up in the superego as ' obedience * and submission, or as 

 self-deprecatory or self-accusing impulses.^* The exhibitionist 

 urge is displaced into the desire for approval. Sadistic impulses, 

 which find pleasure in hurting, turn up as moral domineering, 

 as contempt for others because of their * moral * inferiority. In 

 general, the fundamental libidinal impulses are deflected from 

 their sexual orientation to the parents (infantile objects) to 

 de-sexualized social relationships, to institutions of law, religion, 

 politics and all forms of public and community activity, for 

 which one now has respect, love, devotion, etc., as the super- 

 ego pattern dictates .^^ 



In Freud's formulation these evolutions of instinctual move- 

 ments to new aims and objects must be understood as simple 

 mechanical transfers of psychic energy from one mode of dis- 

 charge to an alternative mode more acceptable to the ego. New 

 objects were demanded by the ego when infantile objects were 

 found to bring punishment; the id is satisfied as long as they 

 can substitute for the primitive objects. Essentially, however, 

 the id always retains its primal orientation; hence a person who 

 is later loved because he resembles the parent, is loved by the 

 same instinctual urge that originally found satisfaction in the 

 parent. The psychic energy has been canalized to another but 

 basically (psychologically) identical object.^" 



The result of this acceptation is that, for Freud, there is no 

 real development of the superego after infancy, only a kind 

 of re-structuralization of the primitive elements. The norms 



^® Freud, op. cit., pp. 52-55; see Dalbiez, Psychoanalytic Method and the Doctrine 

 of Freud, vol. I, p. 408-409. (Longmans Green & Co., New York, 1948) . 



^* Cf. Nuttin, Psychoanalysis and Personality, pp. 44-45. 



^° Cf. Nuttin, loc. cit., quoting Ernest Jones on this point. " The shift from the 

 original sexual object to a secondary social object is not only a substitution of the 

 one for the other, but rather a canalization of the primitive sexual energy in a new 

 direction. To state it exactly, one should speak about displacement and not about 

 substitution or replacement." 



