ABSTRACT
The archaic superego is the founding structure of the psyche: the phylogenetic legacy of the survival instinct. It is the founding structure upon which rests—at the higher individual level of psychic functioning—the capacity for the more neutralised energies and abstract values concomitant with mature ego functions. In the initial stages of development, reality is no more or less than the sensory environment, and an archaic morality, or sense of conscience, evolves from these concrete experiences. This chapter describes this new theory of conscience against the criticisms of Freud’s 1923 theory to see how it resolves them at a theoretical level. It reviews patient material to identify implications for treatment suggested by the new theory. The first main criticism of Freud’s 1923 formulation of the superego was that it failed to incorporate the “loving and protective” function that Freud had identified as the ego ideal.
