Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: What would the stages of the transformation of the concept of the superego be if it had to be distinguished from the philosophies of the ethical conscience? Two philosophical confrontations about the origins of this instance for Freud will illustrate its creation and fabrication. The first one is Rousseau’s ethical philosophy and the idea of negative education to the benefit of the birth of moral feelings—which is a “springboard” to Kant’s categorical imperative present in Totem et Taboo (1913). The second one is the legal doctrine of legal theorist H. Kelsen regarding his meeting with Freud (1922). After presenting the primal murder and repression, the duality of the drive, and the identification process stemming from the conflict of psychic structures, the idea of the law’s fundamental norm as explained by Kelsen will clarify the concept of the superego and its relations with the primary murder and taboo and its binding function synthesized by guilt and repeat. At the end, Moses and Monotheism ( L'Homme Moïse, 1939) might be the parabolic princeps of a law-making superego, which is the constantly renewing origin of the construction of the individual and the group.
Source: Enfances & Psy
DOI: 10.3917/ep.057.0137
Authors: Salah-Eddine Abbassi, Bernard Gaillard
Language: French
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2085932812