In Part 3, Freud further develops the theme of The Conflict Between Ego and Id by introducing the concept of the super-ego. Returning briefly to the horse and rider analogy from Part 2, Freud argues that the rider (the ego) can control the much stronger horse (the id) only by means of “borrowed forces” (15). The super-ego is the intermediary through which the ego brings those borrowed forces—parental and religious authority, for example—to bear. Here, Freud turns to mythology for a theory of how this ego ideal is formed. Drawing from Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Rex, Freud argues that a child’s id reacts to an erotic impulse (Eros) toward the parent. Since this erotic impulse cannot be satisfied, the ego instead identifies itself with the parent, effectively offering itself to the id as a substitute object of desire. The super-ego results from this identification as the child’s psyche incorporates the parent’s authority. Thus, the super-ego initially is connected to the id, which is why they both share the characteristic of being unconscious. The super-ego is reinforced by authoritative institutions like education and religion. Though the super-ego is an internalized form of moral authority, the individual super-ego does not necessarily align with societal consensus on right and wrong. In a somewhat hyperbolic example, if an individual internalizes a parent’s notion that it is right to kill people, that notion becomes part of the individual super-ego’s framework even if society writ large sees murder as wrong.

The Oedipus complex, briefly discussed in this section, is one of Freud’s most famous and controversial theories. In Sophocles’s play, it is prophesied that the eponymous Oedipus will kill his father and marry his mother. Though Oedipus goes to great lengths to avoid fulfilling this prophecy, a series of tragic accidents makes it inevitable. Freud uses this plot as the basis for his theory of the formation of subjectivity and self-identity. He argues that in infancy, a child forms an erotic impulse toward the mother (this theory presupposes a male subject, a problem endemic to much of Freud’s work). This impulse should not be understood as precisely sexual in nature, but rather more generally connected to Freud’s notion of Eros as a life drive or life impulse, as described in Part 4 of this essay and in Beyond the Pleasure Principle in greater detail. The child feeds from the mother’s breast, thereby fulfilling the erotic or life-fulfilling drive. Initially, the child identifies with the father, who shares his erotic impulse toward the mother. However, as the child matures, he comes to see the father as a rival for the mother’s affections, and he wishes to “get rid of his father in order to take his place with his mother” (22), just as Oedipus does in the play. The resolution of this complex results in ambivalence: a feeling of both love and hatred toward the father. Having internalized the father-object, the child adopts the authority of the father as an element of the psyche; the identification of the father is now internally embedded in its mind, telling it what to do or not do. In this essay, Freud stresses that this Oedipus complex is actually more multi-valent than the brief outline provided above “due to the bisexuality originally present in children” (23). That is, a similar process occurs in children of both genders toward parents of both genders.

Freud’s claim about bisexuality in children is not the only point of controversy in this part of the essay. He also asserts that the id is “heritable.” What precisely Freud means by this has been debated by scholars for decades. As identified in the Analysis of Part 2, Freud broadly eschews material foundations for psychic dynamics, which would suggest that he would not think mental characteristics can be passed down through genetics. Further, his claims about what is termed phylogenetics, or the study of genetic heritability and its role in the evolution of species, are colored by his prejudices, as in his discussion of the beliefs of “primitive peoples” and their alleged practice of “cannibalism” described in Footnote 2 of Part 4 (19). For more background on this debate, see Francisco Pizarro Obaid, “The phylogenetic argument in Freud’s metapsychology of anxiety,” in History of Psychoanalysis, 2022.