The superego is one of the three components of the psyche, according to Freud’s structural model of 1923. In 1923, Freud moved his map of the mind from a topographical model, which divides the psyche into the conscious, preconscious, and the unconscious, to a structural model. This modification emerged from Freud’s clinical experience with patients and his growing realization that the former model was insufficient to capture the central element of psychopathology: the internal conflict between different parts of the mind (Mitchell and Black 1995). Freud suggested that the conflict occurs between different structures of the mind rather than between the strata of consciousness (Mitchell and Black 1995). The structural model is focused on the division of the unconscious into three primary components of the psyche: the id, (see: id) the ego, (see: ego), and the superego.
The superego is a cluster of internalized parental or societal moral values and censuring stances that are held within...
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References
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Patrick, E., Diamond, E. (2017). Superego. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_633-1
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