ABSTRACT
Mr. Joseph Sandler's paper gives a very thorough statement of the subject of the superego. The development of the superego in the child who lives without parental authorities and who lives in a community cannot be entirely dealt with on the basis that children find superego figures wherever they are. In psychology, however, and in health, it is given location by the individual, and the wars between the benign and the persecutory elements in the inner psychic reality are played out in the body as well as projected outside the body. Professor Sandler's paper was read at a Scientific Meeting of the British Psycho-Analytical Society on 7 December 1960, and was published in The Psycho-Analytic Study of the Child. Sandler believes that developments in psycho-analysis have resulted in a weakening of the superego concept through a "conceptual dissolution," as what had previously been seen as superego conflict now tended to be seen more in terms of object-relationships within the transference.
