The Internal Bully

In my mind's eye, there is a tug o’ war. Id is on one side of the rope and superego on the other. The ego is perhaps that part of the rope which is not (yet) in the territory of those pulling at it. Id is the wild one with no stopper on its pursuit of desire, and ego is the mediator which has to make sense of things. In this essay, I will briefly explore the superego.

The experience of the superego is one of being plagued by a bad feeling that can be located in the body, perhaps in the chest, stomach or throat. A sense of having 'done something wrong', a nagging feeling that somehow something really evil will be done. Or a sense that things will be botched up, that they’re always botched, even though there is evidence that this is not the case. The feeling is insistent, though it is harder to be specific as to what it is all about. Thoughts that are specific, when spoken about, may sound less plausible or even silly.

When explored, this feeling is likely to be linked to feelings of guilt and anxiety, though the cause may be vague and shifting. Explored more deeply, a harsh inner critic or superego may be identified. If this critic were examined, despite a nagging sense that these feelings are true and are to be listened to for one's own good, we would realise that it has never opened a door. Rather than open doors, in fact, it closes things down with one dull slam after another.

The internal policing superego never puts a spring in anyone's step. On the contrary, it weighs down on one and meanly withdraws pleasure as if pleasure itself is a dangerous signal of an unnamed evil. Superego is void of generosity. It robs and collects the devastations of the day in the dark recesses of the mind. Postulating as a caretaker, as if things would have been far worse, save for its vigilance. Just like when one was punished as a child. All for your own good.

The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines superego, a psychoanalytic theory, as 'the moral component of the personality that represents parental and societal standards and determines personal standards of right and wrong, or conscience, as well as aims and aspirations', … 'which stem from parental demands and prohibitions'. Superego anxiety is 'caused by unconscious superego activity that produces feelings of guilt and demands for atonement’ (VandenBos, 2015).

As children, it seems, we filtered and extracted then stored the bitter essence of the admonitions of parental figures and teachers. Rage and rebellion, we learned in a myriad overt and subtle ways, were not easily tolerated. Adam Phillips (2015) refers to our early years, when he explains that there were people we had murderous feelings about. So now we turn on ourselves as punishment for those feelings, gradually acclimatising to the internal violence and eventually not being able to imagine life without it. He adds that ‘we know almost nothing about ourselves because we judge ourselves before we have a chance to see ourselves’.

Anxiety feels very powerful and immediate. It likely has some roots in the past and there may be a trigger in the here and now but as the philosopher Emil Cioran (1973) noted, anxiety does not require provocation, “it tries to find a justification for itself, and in order to do so seizes upon anything, the vilest pretexts, to which it clings once it has invented them. A reality which precedes its particular expressions, its varieties, anxiety provokes itself, engenders itself, it is 'infinite creation' and as such is more likely to suggest the workings of the divinity than those of the psyche.” Phillips (2015) writes that Freud spoke about the superego as something we create and which in turn dominates, making a monster of self. He describes it as a sort of mad, dread creating, omniscient god that convinces one that ‘it can predict the future by claiming to know the consequences of our actions’. In a sense we need to grow a healthy strong ego to stand up to and question the tyrant.

Donald Carveth (2015) felt Freud made an error when he incorporated conscience into the superego. While acknowledging the Freudian structure of mind theory comprising id, superego and ego, he disentangles the conscience from superego and adds conscience as a fourth component. Carveth (2013) distinguishes conscience as loving and caring, from the pathological and persecutory superego. The superego takes on the role of punishing self and guards against the more complex (Kleinian) 'depressive anxiety, concern, or reparative guilt' of the conscience. Though the ego needs to be strengthened to fend against the battering superego, it is the conscience, not the ego which is the personality's moral base (Carveth, 2013). The conscience then, as was Pinocchio’s cricket, is the more discerning moral aspect of the mind, while the undiscerning, judgemental and punitive superego, endlessly reacts to the existence of wild id.

There are many perspectives and angles to be had on things. When we become alert to the superego’s internal banal, simplistic avalanche of attack on self or another, it is perhaps a signal that we need to complicate things. Simply because life is complex. A Kleinian view is that the ability to tolerate the mixed feelings of ambivalence, is a sign of maturity. Humans are messy, complex creatures who may become preoccupied with trying to tidy things up by oversimplifying, generalising and stereotyping until left with some banal husk hardly resembling the original nature of what was and stunting the potential of what could develop. An attitude of ambivalence, as messy as it may seem, is a sign of ordinary naturalness.

Freud questioned persuasive and authoritative interpretations because he believed that we have contradictory feelings about everything that is important to us (Phillips, 2015). Along this line of thinking, Phillips says that one ‘can only understand anything by over-interpretation, that is, ‘not settling for a single interpretation, however apparently compelling’. ‘According to psychoanalysis these contradictory feelings enter into everything we do … indeed, ambivalence is the way we recognise that someone or something has become significant to us (Phillips, 2015)’.

If it is our nature to be contradictory and ambivalent, then we need to find some level of peace and acceptance of this. Lack of acceptance is likely to loop one back to the ever familiar harsh inner critic, fuelling anxiety. Phillips (2015) describes self-criticism as the most unpleasant, sadomasochistic way we have of loving ourselves and goes on to point out that the mere notion of dropping our endless criticism creates tremendous internal discomfort and suspicion. Rather than caring more deeply for ourselves, he points out, we give way to the narrow-minded superego with its restricted, limited vocabulary and relentless repetitive propaganda.

It would seem that one way, to recognise super-ego, is to pay attention to whether our minds are open, generous, richly ambiguous, complex, interesting and creative, or whether we are feeling beaten down by something overfamiliar, stale and tedious, which presents absolutely nothing new under the sun. If this were an external being, we would avoid it like the plague.

References

Carveth, D. 2013. The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience. London: Karnac Book

Carveth, D. 2015. The Immoral Superego: Conscience as the Fourth Element in the Structural Theory of the Mind. Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis: Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse 23, 1: 206-223.

Cioran, E.M. 1973. The trouble with being born. New York: Arcade Publishing.

Phillips, A. 2015. Against Self-Criticism. [https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n05/adam-phillips/against-self-criticism]. Vol. 37 No. 5. London Review of Books.

VandenBos, G. R. 2015. Editor. APA Dictionary of Psychology. Washington: American Psychological Association.