ABSTRACT
In Sigmund Freud’s later theory, the adult’s moral life consists in large part of a struggle between the id, the ego, and the superego. Freud thought the development of the ego ideal took a rather different course in males and females. In most men and some women the course is from the primary narcissism of the infant to the object choices involved in the later stages of childhood, which are the love objects chosen by the child, especially the mother and later the father for the girl. Freud saw sexual attraction to the same-sex parent, to the opposite-sex parent, and to siblings of both sexes, as playing a key role in infancy and childhood. Erik Erikson assumes the substantial truth of Freud’s account of the formation of the superego, through the Oedipal conflict and identification with the parents. Erikson’s emphasis is on Freud’s famous formula for adult normality; the normal adult should be able “to love and to work”.
