Ego Ideal
The ego ideal is the inner image of oneself as one wants to become. Alternatively, 'The Freudian notion of a perfect or ideal self housed in the superego', consisting of 'the individual's conscious and unconscious images of what he would like to be, patterned after certain people whom...he regards as ideal'.
In the French strand of Freudian psychology, the ego ideal (or ideal ego) has been defined as "an image of the perfect self towards which the ego should aspire."
Read more about Ego Ideal: Freud, Ego Ideal, and Superego, Further Developments, In Narcissism, Ideal Ego
Famous quotes related to ego ideal:
“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain’t-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on—our lost narcissism lives on—in our ego ideal.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)