ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the general orientation of Sigmund Freud’s model of mind and then follow one thread of it, the idea of the characterologically based ambition. It shows how characterological ambition has been discussed by some psychoanalytic writers in order to illustrate the importance of the concept of the superego in Freud’s work. When psychotherapists speak of personality disorders or characterological issues, very often it concerns the patient usurping the place of a parental imago that was formed in psychosexual development and projecting out the self—in effect identifying with another person who is now the person’s double. The chapter seeks to show how there must be a dialectic between the individual personality and the shaping or molding that societies and families perform, and in some cases, fail to perform upon them. It explores several clinical vignettes to illustrate the empirical nature of psychoanalytic concepts.
