Plurality of the Origins of the Superego ... Conflicting Identifications?

Abstract

In this work I start by asking myself about the origins of the superego and its connections with the deathdrive. I search through some Freudian texts trying to uncover the different explanatory paradigms which Freud uses to understand the origin of the self destructive in the psyche. Finally, I take into account some proposals from post-freudian authors. I conclude that although in the work " Beyond the principle of pleasure" Freud appoints the destructive to a drive which is original, in his work there are also other explanatory lines which stand out the importance of the finding of the libidinal other. Both in his explanations regarding melancholy in "The ego and Id" and in " Grief and Melancholy" , as in his work about "The ominous" , Freud gives us hypothesis which let us think that the failure of the other can generate pathological identifications or the impossibility to abandon archaic functionings whose consequences finish by setting the repetition of the distructive into the psyche. The presence of pathological identifications has consequences for the formation of the superego, which makes me address the superego as a mosaic of identifications which come into conflict. Thinking in this way, we are mean a conflict of the psyche which is found not only among instances but also among intrainstances. Conflicts among identifications which involve the intrusive of the other and identifications which contain the enabling, between signals which transport love signals and the acceptance of the other and and marks that transmit messages of coldness and rejection.