ABSTRACT
This chapter describes and illustrates Freud's account in such pathological states as obsessional neurosis and melancholia. It considers some consequences when superego hostility is turned outwards against the object. It is concluded from this observation, that the idea of the "ordinary" or "normal" superego system is complex, and echoes Freud's description of the weakness and vulnerability of the system. The author discusses the murderous attack on the object, and its splitting effects on the perpetrator's superego system, i.e., the effects on the superego system of the survivor and his/her children. He also describes Karpf's experience and its implications for superego development not only because it reflects other research accounts of second-generation experience, but also because it provides a comparison with some clinical material. The chapter discusses and illustrates the fundamental processes of splitting and dissociation in the ego and superego systems in both the Nazi perpetrators of genocide and in their victims.
