ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the changes that have taken place in the ego, and discusses how – at the individual level – those changes could be addressed in the therapy room. The price of civilization is that selves are dominated less by a superego than by an ego that diminishes internal capabilities through deeply compromised forms of thinking. The oppressed self must find compromised forms of expression, so that oppression emerges as a new form of being. The drive to return the repressed to consciousness can lead to intriguing symptoms, dreams, linguistic formulations and even artistic creations, but a self who is suffering from profound oppression will reveal impoverishments of thinking and affect. This can be understood as a form of mental suicide, or subjecticide, which offers the self an ego position in the new social order through the elimination of sophisticated forms of perception and thoughtfulness.
