ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that the experience of one's dignity and the capacity for psychic representation belong together. Early psychic trauma was a powerful source of deep resistance in the analysis. On the other hand, the ego split formed the main obstacle against integrating the traumatic area. The early frame of primary identification plays a central role in anchoring the conscience to the pleasure principle as well as to the avoidance of traumatic helplessness. There is a sound basis for thinking that this configuration constitutes the early foundation of the ego ideal, the main vehicle of the pleasure principle in advanced psychic organization. There are good grounds for thinking that the concentration camps represented a delusional frame which formed the core of the Nazi ideology. They were an embodiment of delusive grandeur, aiming at the elimination of humiliation, shame, and guilt, attributes that characterize man's inner conflict.
