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 …