Some thoughts on the ego ideal. A contribution to the study of the "illness of ideality"

Abstract

Man searches continuously for the time when he was his own ideal--a time that is coincident with primary fusion with the mother. The fantasy of this fusion underlies the incest wish. Because of his helplessness, the child must postpone the realization of his incest wish and project it forward into the future. However, if the subject chooses the pathway of the oedipus complex and identification with the father to realize his incestuous fantasy, circumstance may lead him to circumvent the oedipal shpere and, through the mechanisms of regression, return to the mother of primary fusion. As in Aesop's adage, the ego ideal is at the source of the best and the worst of things.