Ego ideal

[4] Freud's essay On Narcissism: An Introduction [1914] introduces "the concepts of the 'ego ideal' and of the self-observing agency related to it, which were the basis of what was ultimately to be described as the 'super-ego' in The Ego and the Id (1923b).

After The Ego and the Id and some shorter works following it, the term 'ego ideal' disappears almost completely from Freud's writing.

[14] While acknowledging the links between the two agencies, he suggested for example that "in humor the overcathected superego is the friendly and protective ego-ideal; in depression, it is the negative, hostile, punishing conscience.

"[16] In their wake, Otto Kernberg highlighted the destructive qualities of the "infantile, grandiose ego ideal" - of "identification with an overidealized self- and object-representation, with the primitive form of ego-ideal.

"[17] In a literary context, Harold Bloom argued that "in the narcissist, the ego-ideal becomes inflated and destructive, because it is filled with images of perfection and omnipotence.