Super-Ego, Superego [Über-Ich]

Literary/ Cultural Context Note

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error
  • The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

Resources

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

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 28 March 2024.]

1074 Super-Ego, Superego [Über-Ich] 2 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.