EGO IDEAL AND SUPEREGO: LACAN AS A VIEWER OF CASABLANCA
This Chapter explores the concept of the superego and how it effects us in the everyday. Freud termed superego as an aspect of ones personality that acts upon desires and the internalized ideal. When speaking of Lacan’s theories Zizek suggests that the superego attempts to make the ego act morally not realistically.
‘ideal ego is imaginary, what Lacan calls the “small other”, the idealised mirror-image of my ego; Ego-Ideal is symbolic, the point of my symbolic identification, the point in the Big other from which I observe (and judge) myself; Superego is real, the cruel andinsatiable agency which bombards me with impossible demands and then mocks my botched attempt to me them.’ (p.80)
Lacan termed a fourth ‘the law of desire’. The superego fights for our desiresThe feelings we feel through recognising or acting on our desires is Real.
Is the Superego the exposure of our desires? In life is the superego hidden behind the symbolic order. Behind symbolic meanings is there a diverse intention, carried through the superego? Superego stops us from acting on desires, but from noticing them the superego enables us to experience a Real feeling.
The link below is a little video about Freud’s Id, Ego and Superego is basic terms, which can help to understand what Lacan was suggesting