Taming The Abusive Superego

By Cynthia Moore

Cynthia Moore, MA, CCHT, has developed a process called Core Integration, and works in private practice with groups, couples and individuals in Berkeley and Lafayette. Cynthia has her training in clinical psychology, hypnotherapy, shamanism, Buddhist meditation and the arts.

How do you speak to yourself?

What tone of voice do you use when you've momentarily allowed your instincts to overrule your "better judgement"? When you've overeaten, fed an addiction, expressed anger, or abandoned yourself?

Does a harsh, critical voice successfully change these behaviors? Does it stop the addiction? The eating? The anger? The self-abandonment? Probably not. In fact, it may intensify the desire to act out again, later, after the regret has dulled and the shame has dissolved. Thus, we engage in a bitter cycle of uncontrollable behavior and self-recrimination, impulsive gratification and subsequent condemnation. We cannot live up to our own unattainable standards, and we attempt to enforce compliance by employing a rigorous voice of authority which Freud, almost a hundred years ago, dubbed the Superego.

So, what's actually going on underneath the rhetoric of self-condemnation? Imagine for a moment that hidden behind our familiar, primary identity is a secondary, or marginalized identity that is attempting to emerge. In the hustle and bustle of our daily life, we don't listen to anything that may threaten our recognizable sense of self. Often this shadow self carries aspects vital to our personal development, such as suppressed feelings and disavowed needs, and they can build at times to an urgent pitch. In order to suppress this clamor from within, we overeat, use drugs, speak in anger, go unconscious. We push down the voice of our inner requirements in order to go about the business of living. In the aftermath of this regime of oppression, we may scold that shadow identity, resent it, or wish to rid ourselves of it altogether. This only leads to a state of further hostilities, and we create an internal war zone. If we're not careful, this conflict will lead to stress and illness.

Consider, alternatively, taking the tone of a kind and loving mother with our instinctive, impulsive self. A mother who listens and understands, who embraces, befriends, and gently sets limits. Rather than the Superego's voice of righteousness and authority, of command and insistence, imagine a voice of gentle compassion, which expresses a willingness to listen internally to what is trying to be heard.

Behaviors begin to shift. The need to rebel and act out diminishes. The inner society we create is predicated on kindness and cooperation rather than on tyranny and control. Author and psychologist James Hillman asks: "How far can we build an inner society on the principle of love?" He goes on to wonder, poignantly, what it might mean for our global interconnections if each of us had an internal environment organized around kindness and acceptance.

The wars we wage within create wars without. By cultivating acceptance and peace within, we begin to create an outer world that thrives on –- is it so difficult to imagine?— peace.

In his Discourse on Metta, the Buddha said:
Just as a mother protects her child from harm,
So within yourself let grow a boundless love for all Creatures.
Let your love flow outward through the universe...
Your life will be a blessing to the world.
Let's begin now.