The split of the Ego in the constitution of the Superego

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection on the issue of the split of the Ego, taking as a reference the operation of repression: founding split of the repressed unconscious. Understanding this, in Freudian thought, as an organizing device of the architecture of the psyche, both in its structuring aspects as in its psychopathological aspects, resulting from the perception of castration. In view of this observation, a question emerges: if the repressed is torn from the Ego by the anticathexis of repression, what would be the device responsible for the split that separates the Superego from the Ego? In order to resolve this enigmatic question, the paths of pre-repressed drive destinations were followed to support the proposition that makes anticathexis in reaction-formation the outlining element of the foundation of this psychic instance - the virtual reaction-formation. In this direction, we seek to overcome the limits that make reaction-formation just a psychopathological symptom. By going beyond this restrictive view, the link with moral virtues is rescued: The influences of civilization provoke, due to a mixture of erotic elements, an ever increasing transformation of selfish tendencies into altruistic and social tendencies.