ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the character of the depression-prone person’s superego and finds it exacting, ruthless, harsh and unforgiving in the face of their failures and mistakes, demolishing them with overwhelming shame and/or guilt, leaving them feeling hopeless, helpless and worthless. The composition of the superego is envisioned through the analogy of a musical ensemble: four aspects of the personality combining to produce a moral quartet of ideals, social rules, unconscious aggression and ego functions devoted to moral duties. The antecedents of depression are located in the person’s troubled relationship with their aggressive impulses and their difficulties with accommodating the serial losses which are facts of life. Fearful of their aggression and unable to adapt to life’s losses, depression-prone people are impeded from integrating their aggressive energies into their personality for developmental purposes leaving them ill-equipped to find creative avenues out of depressive states of mind and reactions. It is proposed that psychoanalytic therapy can offer remedial work utilising the therapeutic relationship to strengthen the patient’s ego, establish benign and protective superego capacities to moderate his harsh moral proclivities and facilitate the individual’s development of a more realistic personal moral compass.
