Super-Ego, Superego [Über-Ich]

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Robert Clark (The Literary Encyclopedia)

The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

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Concept (psychoanalysis)

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Date of occurrence 1923

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When dealing with this term it is useful to realise that the Latinate term was added to the Freudian lexicon during the early translation of his work into English. The original German was “das Über-Ich”, “the Over-I” and in that formulation may be experienced as having a more concrete and less abstract sense.

In Freud’s second topography of the mind – the tripartite division of id [Es, “it”], ego [Ich, “the I”] and super-ego [Über-Ich, the “Over-I”] put forward in Das Ich und das Es [The Ego and the Id, 1923] – the super-ego is defined as the internalisation of our relation to our parents, “the heir to the Oedipus complex” which comes into being when the Oedipus is resolved. The “super-ego” is part of the ego which judges according to the prohibitions

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402 words

Citation: Clark, Robert. "Super-Ego, Superego [Über-Ich]". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 October 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1074, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Super-Ego, Superego [Über-Ich]

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