system of the parents or their substitutes, with their prohibitions and demands but not their privileges. Freud named this psychological organ of adaptation the super-ego, or ego ideal, and he describes it as the most powerful factor favouring repression. In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego he says:

It comprises the conscience, a critical faculty within the ego, which even in normal times takes up a critical attitude towards the ego....On previous occasions we have been driven to the hypothesis that some such faculty developes in our ego which may cut itself off from the rest of the ego and come into conflict with it. We have called it the 'ego-ideal,' and by way of functions we have ascribed to it self-observation, the moral conscience, the censorship of dreams, and the chief influence in repression1.

The part played by the super-ego in the instigation and maintenance of repression is sufficient ground for the suspicion that alterations and distortions of its function are likely to be present in pathological conditions, in which repression plays a part, and that such is the case has been amply proved by psycho-analytical investigation.

Before approaching this side of the subject it would be well to discuss in more detail the structure and function of this institution. Freud speaks of it as the heir of the Oedipus complex, and states that the most simple and uncomplicated form arises as follows. At the earliest stage identification and object-cathexis cannot be distinguished, but this distinction is soon demonstrable and the first object-choice is the parent of the opposite sex, whilst the identification with the parent of the same sex persists. When the Oedipus stage is reached the intensification of the object-cathexís is accompanied by an intensification of ambivalence to the parent of the same sex, who stands in the way and prevents the fulfilment of the positive heterosexual wishes. The outcome of this situation may be an intensified identification with the parent of the same sex, or an identification with the parent of the opposite sex; the first result favours a normal heterosexual development, whilst the second, as we shall see later, has relation to the development of homosexual trends.

In a recent article on "The Origin and Structure of the Super-Ego" 2 Dr Ernest Jones points out that hostility towards the parent concerned is the essential condition of super-ego formation, whether the identification is with the parent of the same or the opposite sex, and draws attention to the analogous mechanism which operates between homosexual brothers, where the primary hostile feeling is superseded by an objectcathexis which results in an identification.

1 Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, p. 69.

2 International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. VII, p. 303.

The constitutional bisexuality of mankind plays an important part in determining the type of identification, and is also probably responsible for the mixed and complicated psychological structures which occur especially in pathological mental states. A comparison between the development of the super-ego in the two sexes should be of some moment to us. In both cases the first person towards whom ambivalent feeling, i.e. love and hate, is directed, is the mother. Primarily this feeling is directed to the mother's breast which supplies needs and gives the required sense of contentment and pleasure at one time and withholds it at another. In the normal male, theoretically, the oral and pregenital ambivalence passes on to object-love towards the mother at the genital level, and as this stage is reached ambivalent feelings are developed in relation to the father, who is the feared, admired, and envied obstacle to the fulfilment of the positive love-wishes. Self-preservation, stimulated by castration-fears, sets in motion the identification with the father, it is as if the helplessness of the boy-child makes him say “To do what father does, I must first be like father." This resolve includes therefore a temporary abandonment or postponement of infantile desires, and instinct-aim is temporarily diverted to achieve the necessary ego development. Expressed in terms of the libido theory, we should say that cathexis is partially withdrawn from the external object, the mother, and is transferred to a part of the ego; object-love is abandoned in favour of secondary narcissism. This transference of libido is accompanied by a partial desexualization which corresponds to the change in aim already referred to. The formation of the super-ego can be regarded therefore as a form of sublimation, and it is interesting to note that further development of the super-ego takes place especially during the latent period, which coincides with the beginning of education-a time when doors are opened to other roads of sublimation.

In the case of the girl the primary ambivalence to the mother persists and the primary identification merges into super-ego identification at the Oedipus stage when the main object-cathexis belonging to the father is withdrawn from him.

The question arises what it is in the case of the girl that corresponds to fear of castration in the boy, and causes her to abandon her Oedipus wishes and to identify with her parents, thus forming her super-ego. Freud was inclined to believe that the Oedipus complex fades away1 as the result of the hopelessness of realization, but recently he has suggested that it is fear of the loss of the mother's love which is the dynamic factor, and he holds the view that as a result of the difference in origin the

1 Freud, Collected Papers, vol. 11, p. 275.

super-ego is not so inexorable, impersonal or independent of its affective origin in woman as in man, and that woman's level of moral normality is different from that of man.

In a recent article, called the "Flight from Womanhood,"1 Dr Horney of Berlin has made some interesting references to the possibility of errors arising in the interpretation of woman's psychology in terms of man's psychology, and one point which she stresses is that the fears of the little girl which up to now have been interpreted in terms of the castration complex may have another origin. From the analysis of many women patients she points out the frequency with which the fear of injury from assault and childbirth can be traced back to childish phantasies concerning the 'big father' and the 'big baby.' We have only to remind ourselves that in the child's mind the perception of size is of fundamental importance. Power, strength and importance, are all estimated by size. We see this in dreams which employ infantile modes of thought; the importance of a figure may be represented by exaggerated proportions.

The fear roused by the incest phantasy in relation to the big father, and fear of the injury caused by the fulfilment of the desire for the relatively big baby, is fear of a real danger, in the same sense as the boy's fear of castration is; especially if a birth in the family has shown that the mother is ill in bed when the baby arrives.

The fear is of course linked to incest guilt just as the boy's fear is. I have recently analysed a case in which this fear of injury from the large penis, and fear of childbirth were unconsciously the cause of dyspareunia because of their association with the incest phantasy. The guilt was associated with masturbation, and realization of the unconscious phantasy had been obtained by instrumental dilatation of the vaginal orifice, a treatment which had no organic justification. It was an attempt to obtain a repetition of this treatment which led to her being sent to me for analysis. Another patient, when speaking of her childish theories of birth, said to her analyst, "I think I wondered how such a big thing could get out."

Material kindly supplied by another analyst, from the analysis of a young unmarried woman who was suffering from a severe psychoneurosis, is particularly appropriate. The patient came into the room looking disturbed. Her first words concerned her housekeeper, a young married woman, who feared she was pregnant as she had missed four menstrual periods, "Why doesn't she want a baby?" the patient said, "I can't think why she doesn't." She then remarked that she had not menstruated for four months, but did not bother about it. Then she 1 International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. ví, p. 324.

grew restless and kept repeating "I'm afraid." She got up and walked about the room, and then sat down and exhibited signs of agitation, saying, "I can't go on with this." The analyst asked her what she was referring to. She was confused but said she meant coming to the treatment. She paced the room a second time and sat down saying to herself quietly "How can a camel get through the eye of a needle?" "It must be cut into tiny pieces but it won't be a camel any longer." There followed a quotation from Richard II (act v, scene v):

"Come little ones," and then again,

"It is as hard to come as for a camel

To thread the postern of a needle's eye."

Then the patient said "What is all this about?" The explanation was led up to by reference to the idea of the huge camel getting through a very small hole. The patient saw the association to the birth of a baby and understood that the fear was based upon the phantasy of a baby of disproportionate size to the body of the child who wishes to have a baby of her own, i.e. how will it get out? The patient thought that the only possible way a child can imagine is by actual destruction of life. After this explanation the agitation completely subsided and the patient proceeded with new memory-material from her childhood days.

It is possible therefore that fear of two dangers causes the girl child to abandon her Oedipus complex: (1) the danger of the loss of the mother's love, which stands for the fulfilment of all bodily needs; (2) the danger of injury in the event of the fulfilment of the incest phantasy.

The strength of the latter determinant must have an important influence on the relative importance of the mother and father identifications in the super-ego, because fear of injury provokes hostility, and hostility identification. Thus we should expect the father-identification to be accentuated in those cases in which the fear of injury was prominent. Possibly the frequency of the mixed identification in the super-ego of the woman may have some explanation here.

If the super-ego of the woman differs from that of man in the way suggested by Freud, the differences appear to me to be that the superego of the woman retains more infantile characteristics than that of the man, that is to say it is more prohibiting, and less permitting, certainly as far as sexual gratifications are concerned. We may take for example the frequency of frigidity in an otherwise healthy woman, which denotes the persistence of the taboo of the infantile super-ego; secondly the much greater guilt reactions to masturbation in a girl than in a boy; thirdly the fact that functional nervous disorders are more common in woman than

in man, and are predominantly the result of repression in connection with the Oedipus complex and the formation of the super-ego.

One factor in the causation of the persistence of the infantile superego in woman is certainly an external social and economic one which in the past has prevented adequate realization of positive wishes bound up in her super-ego formation, especially when they resulted from her father-identification. Reich has pointed out1 that the real ego develops largely by the carrying out of the super-ego wishes, as a result of which they become part of the ego, thus strengthening and developing the personality. It is obvious that external difficulties may hinder this egodevelopment and tend to thrust the individual back to infantile demands and the subjective attitude of childhood. It will hardly be denied that early nursery authority is usually more lenient to the boy-child than the girl, so that the way is paved for a prohibiting rather than a permitting critical faculty which ensures progress and advance to maturity and health.

The relation of the super-ego to consciousness brings us to another important question to be discussed in this paper. We are familiar with the super-ego as a conscious critical faculty establishing a conscious ideal. The success or failure of the ego in attaining the ideal is attended with corresponding feelings of well-being or of failure and guilt. Theoretically it might be expected that the super-ego must in part function unconsciously, for at least three reasons: (1) Because it is an instigator of repression, which is an unconscious process; (2) Because of its intimate association with the Oedipus complex, and thus with the most primitive instinctual impulses which are unconscious; (3) Because the presence of conscious guilt feeling without adequate cause in some cases leads to crime in order to satisfy an unconscious need for punishment. A common example of this mechanism is found in the man who confesses to a crime which he has not committed. An illustration met with in analytical experience was that of a little girl of nine who was found by her teachers giving herself bad marks although she had done nothing wrong. The unconscious need for punishment which had caused these actions yielded to analytical treatment. It proved to be due to the unconscious desire to be given a baby by her father.

Freud has made it very clear to us how he first arrived at the conclusion that in many cases of neuroses there is an unconscious moral factor which jeopardizes the chance of cure. He says that he met with a type of case in which the therapeutic result did not correspond with that which previous experience had given him the right to expect, and

1 Der Triebhafte Charakter, p. 11.