The part of the personality that absorbs and then enforces parental expectations, and the morality of our larger society. The source of all moral anxiety, guilt, and shame, and can be highly critical of our desires (the id) and our decision-making (the ego).

Discussion

Another word for the superego is the conscience. It is the part of ourselves that compares our current behaviour to our “perfect” self and then corrects and/or punishes us for not living up to that perfection. We build our perfect image based on things we are told by our parents and other adults, the things we are praised and punished for by same, as well as our observations of the kinds of things “good” people do and don’t do.

Basically, however, the role of the superego/conscience is to check our behaviour and make sure that none of our animal impulses sneak through our defenses and escape into the world.

Necessity

A functioning superego is necessary for social life, because without it, we end up hurting other people and making community and team-work impossible. However, not all superegos are created equal, and some people are crippled by anxiety and shame, and other people seem to feel no guilt at all for being selfish and hurting other people.

Freudians often talk about mental health and “superego integration.” For the shame-riddled person, this means turning down the volume of our self-judgement and self-criticism, so that we are less afraid of making mistakes and not living up to unreasonable expectations. For the selfish, antisocial, and/or “sociopathic” person, this means turning up the volume of their self-judgement and shame, so they understand and care about the negative impact they have on others.

Squabbling

People of the Freudian persuasion often speak of the superego as if it were some kind of supernatural entity or being that lives inside of our heads and loves to punish us for being “bad.” Unfortunately, this has created a lot of theoretical tension (aka. petty squabbling) in the study of psychology about whether or not the superego really “exists.” This squabbling is very similar to the way people fight about whether or not God “exists,” and it is equally useless and unproductive.

My view is more or less the same as the immortal Tom Waits:

There ain’t no devil, there’s only God when he’s drunk.

Whatever “parts” might or might not exist, it’s still just you torturing yourself for breaking imaginary rules that someone else put into your head.

Gremlins of the Mind

Psychologists also get a lot of pleasure squabbling about whether human beings really have expectations and if the guilt and shame they feel are “real” things. Thankfully, everyone who’s not a psychologist is happy to agree that they are real and they really do exist, and so we can leave the psychologists to their strange idea of fun.

Squabbling aside, all the term superego was ever supposed to refer to is the cognitive structure that tracks our behaviour and uses shame/guilt to signal when you’ve made a mistake, or when you’re about to make one. So that’s how I’m using it here.

The reason some people feel that the superego is a gremlin inside their head is that the brain is not a single unit of mental processing. The brain has many parts, each of which focuses on processing different kinds of information or regulating the hundreds of different things going on in the body all the time.

What we think of as “me” is actually the sum-total of the signals coming from these different parts. These signals are often contradictory, which creates psychological conflict as our “me” tries to decide which information to act on and which to ignore. The “superego” is one of these parts, and specifically the one that assesses the outcome of our actions and determines whether or not it worked.

For many people, the superego/conscience often produces signals of shame and guilt so loud that they drown out all the rest. And because our self-criticism is based on the opinions and rules of people outside of us (eg. parents, teachers, friends, heroes/idols), it can feel like it actually is coming from outside of our heads; because in a certain sense it is.

Superego expectations are usually socially constructed, meaning that they often contradict our basic human and animal intuitions. For a gay/queer person, their sexual preferences feel good and natural and right; it’s societal attitudes towards “sexual deviance” that make them “unnatural” and “wrong.” These social attitudes get internalised into the superego, which then blocks the “immoral” desire for sex/intimacy with the “wrong” kind of person by dumping a big old pile of shame on them.

Quotes

It is the mischief maker which prevents the ego’s coming to a friendly understanding with the instincts. (Freud 1993, 55)

The ego is completely deprived of its independence and reduced to the status of an instrument of the superego’s wishes; the result is that it becomes hostile to instinct and incapable of enjoyment. (Freud 1993, 55)

That part of the psyche most readily soluble in alcohol. (English and English 1974)

References

English, Horace B., and Ava Champney English. 1974. A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms: A Guide to Usage. 11. print. McKay.

Freud, Anna. 1993. The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. Rev. ed. Edited by Institute of Psycho-analysis (Great Britain). Karnac Books.