ABSTRACT
In consequence, attempts to prevent and to rectify such behaviour by measures such as punishment directed solely towards the ego are doomed to failure because they leave its unconscious sources unaffected. An interesting confirmation of the ego-less origin of the psychology of legal punishment is that it fails to take into consideration the nature of the human material with which it deals. The psychology of the punished has had much attention, and the chapter focuses on the psychology of the punisher. In a psyche trodden down by a severe superego or in an individual trodden down by a severe law, the aggressive instinct is not the only one straining at the bars of its prison. The function of the ego in the phenomenon of punishment is therefore seen to be in the nature of a resistance to a too conspicuous revelation of id-aggression, sometimes even in its superego displacement.
