ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the classical Freudian and some British, post-Freudian psychoanalytic explorations of subjectivity with specific reference to the relations between the ego-self, and the superego. His clinical research and theoretical explorations were rooted in the natural science of his time, especially in its faith in linear “progress” and its claim for the universality of its findings. These aims were allied to modernism as the residual belief in the supremacy of logic and scientific rationalism that assumes reality as a whole, that ideas and concepts are determinate, and that human beings share a level of universal experience with one another that is trans-cultural and trans-historical. The chapter also considers the superego system in relation to philosophical ideas of morality and ethics. The author demonstrates various ways in which the superego system and its parts malfunction to an extent that causes unbalance in the mind and describes serious problems for the individual, and for society as a whole.
