Superego Quotes

• The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three...The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id.

  Sigmund Freud

  Tyrants, Ego, Three

  "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis". Book by Sigmund Freud, transl. by James Strachey, "The Anatomy of the Mental Personality" (Lecture 31), 1933.

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• The Superego, in censoring the unconscious and in implanting conscience, also censors the censor.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Unconscious, Censoring, Conscience

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.76, Beacon Press

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• Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.

  Sigmund Freud

  Religious, Teaching, Views

  "The Future of an Illusion". Book by Sigmund Freud, Ch. 8, 1927.

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• Freud taught us that it wasn't God that imposed judgment on us and made us feel guilty when we stepped out of line. Instead, it was the superego - that idealized concept of what a good person is supposed to be and do - given to us by our parents, that condemned us for what had been hitherto regarded as ungodly behavior.

  Tony Campolo

  Taught Us, Parent, Lines

  "Religion After Freud" by Tony Campolo, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2007.

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• Every morning is a battle between the superego and the id, and I am a mere foot soldier with mud and a snooze button on her shield.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Morning, Feet, Soldier

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• Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done Theology calls it building a conscience or developing a spirit of selflessness. Psychology calls it the growth of the superego. Considering how long society has been at it, you'd expect a better job. But the campaigns have been badly planned and the victory has never been secured.

  B. F. Skinner

  Jobs, Long, Psychology

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• I've always had a very developed superego. I also had a very powerful id, but there was no ego in the middle. So writing was always like letters sent from the id to the superego, saying, "What's going on here?" What I loved about writing was that I was totally weightless. I was amazed at the fact that I could be myself without being afraid that anyone would get hurt.

  Etgar Keret

  Hurt, Powerful, Writing

  Interview with Ben Ehrenreich, www.believermag.com. April 2006.

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• It doesn’t matter how many years go by, how much therapy I embark on, how much I try to achieve that elusive thing known as perspective, which is supposed to put all past wrongs into their rightful and diminished place, that happy place where all the talk is of lessons learned and inner peace. No one will ever understand the potency of my memories, which are so solid and vivid that I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me they are driving me crazy. My subconscious has not buried them, my superego has not restrained them. They are front and center, they are going on right now.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Memories, Crazy, Past

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Animation is capable to go beyond superego defense strategies and touch deep human being contents as no other art expression.

  Luiz Bolognesi

  Art, Expression, Defense

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• The daimonic refers to the power of nature rather than the superego, and is beyond good and evil. Nor is it man's 'recall to himself' as Heidegger and later Fromm have argued, for its source lies in those realms where the self is rooted in natural forces which go beyond the self and are felt as the grasp of fate upon us. The daimonic arises from the ground of being rather than the self as such.

  Rollo May

  Lying, Fate, Men

  Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

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• Who's to say that there is any more support for Freud's psychoanalytic concept of the superego than there is for that old time religion that asserted that there is a God who ordains what is right and wrong, and that His righteousness endures for all generations?

  Tony Campolo

  Support, Generations, Righteousness

  "Religion After Freud" by Tony Campolo, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 31, 2007.

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