Ideal Ego
The ideal ego is a concept that has been particularly exploited in French psychoanalysis. Whereas Freud 'seemed to use the terms indiscriminately...ideal ego or ego ideal', in the thirties 'Hermann Nunberg, following Freud, had introduced a split into this concept, making the Ideal-Ich genetically prior to the surmoi (superego). Thereafter Daniel Lagache developed the distinction, asserting with particular reference to adolescence that 'the adolescent identifies him- or herself anew with the ideal ego and strives by this means to separate from the superego and the ego ideal'.
Lacan for his part explored the concept in terms of the subject's 'narcissistic identification...his ideal ego, that point at which he desires to gratify himself in himself'. For Lacan, 'the subject has to regulate the completion of what comes as...ideal ego - which is not the ego ideal - that is to say, to constitute himself in his imaginary reality'.
'Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel (1985) identified various possible outcomes for the ego ideal, perverse as well as creative'.
Read more about this topic: Ego Ideal
Famous quotes containing the words ideal and/or ego:
“In one sense it is evident that the art of kingship does include the art of lawmaking. But the political ideal is not full authority for laws but rather full authority for a man who understands the art of kingship and has kingly ability.”
—Plato (428–348 B.C.)
“Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to decide one way or another.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)