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:
“For most Northerners, Texas is the home of real men. The cowboys, the rednecks, the outspoken self-made right-wing millionaires strike us as either the best or worst examples of American manliness.... The ideal is not an illusion nor is it contemptible, no matter what damage it may have done. Many people who scorn it in conversation want to submit to it in bed. Those who believe machismo reeks of violence alone choose to forget it once stood for honor as well.”
—Edmund White (b. 1940)
“The ego is not master in its own house.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)