The Superego And The Negative Core - What Is There In The Depths Of Our Psyche?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In cognitive behavioral therapy (Aaron Beck), there is such a thing as "negative core". When researching the client's negative thoughts about himself in the course of therapy, in the end, all these long thoughts, phrases, ideas about oneself as a weak, ugly, stupid, etc., formulated in long phrases, are reduced to very short: I - bad, I am weak, I am ugly, etc.

The work is difficult and unpleasant. Finding in the depths of your psyche that this is how you think of yourself is extremely unpleasant, often painful, although therapeutic. Further, the therapeutic work itself begins - a confrontation with these ideas about oneself, the debunking of this conviction and the return of an adequate self-esteem to oneself.

In the CBT concept, these short thoughts are located in a kind of “negative core” (or represent a negative core).

Since my main psychological education is psychoanalytic, and although I got acquainted and studied other modern directions of psychotherapy: gestalt, the already mentioned cognitive-behavioral approach, existential and Dasein analysis, and I am more accustomed to the structural model of the psyche proposed by Freud, nevertheless it seemed it is interesting to try to correlate with each other two constructs from different psychotherapeutic schools - namely, the negative core and the Superego.

Let me remind you that the Super-Ego (Freud used the name Uber-Ich, that is, "Super-I", the word Super-Ego was invented by William Jones when he translated Freud into English) is such an instance in the human psyche that is responsible for controlling his behavior, does not allow the instinctive desires of a person that violate the norms of public morality in his behavior.

The superego contains introjected messages (mainly parental, but not only) explaining and indicating how a person should behave in certain life situations. During psychoanalytic therapy, these messages emerge in the speech of the patient (client) as a must. You should behave modestly, not start eating first, when men look directly at you, be embarrassed and avert their eyes, etc., etc. Do I need to explain that these introjects are not always useful in life? Perceived in childhood as absolute, universal for all life situations, they often make our behavior maladaptive, complicate our life, instead of making it easier and more convenient for us. So, for example, a girl who carries introjects about modesty (as mentioned above) cannot build normal relationships with men, even just start them.

The superego also contains not only obligations, but also assessments, sometimes associated with these obligations, sometimes not. You are too weak, so you must avoid conflicts, you cannot stand up for yourself. You are ugly, so the boys will not be interested in you.

That is, in the superego, these messages sound with the word you: You are ugly, you are cowardly, weak, etc. Then, somehow, these messages (introjects) are processed by the psyche (assimilated), become part of the Ego or personality already with the word "I". I am weak, I am ugly, etc. And, if in this place we boldly combine two constructs from different psychological schools, they will form a negative core.

Negative messages from adults (less often - peers) in childhood with the word "you" are transformed into a negative self-image in the negative core. Of course, this happens if the child (unconsciously, of course) agreed with such an assessment of himself as an adult and accepted his rules of behavior.

In order to form negative self-images, it is not necessary to have just such a direct message with the word "you". In principle, a child can formulate such a statement about himself and independently, in response to the reaction of an adult. For example, an irritated mother may, without waiting for the child to finally tie the shoelaces, push his hands away and tie it herself. “I am unable to do something on my own,” the child's thought is formulated. Of course, here I am giving a somewhat simplified model of the formation of negative self-images, everything is not so simple and not so linear, but the general scheme is something like this.

In therapy, no matter in which approach: CBT, psychoanalytic therapy, etc., these introjects and self-concepts are taken to work, the client, in joint work with the therapist, firstly, realizes them, and secondly, overestimates them personally seeing their fallacy and how they prevent him from living.

In this article, it was interesting for me to consider precisely the correlation with each other of two constructs from different psychotherapeutic systems - the superego and the negative core. In my opinion, this correlation in the hellish context is quite correct - in terms of considering how “you-messages” and obligations “flow” from the superego, the negative self-concepts of the negative core of the psyche are transformed.

I deliberately call both the superego and the negative core constructs, since, in my opinion, they are not mental phenomena, but a kind of metaphor that helps to better understand the processes taking place in the psyche. Metaphor is an imprecise word, construct is more precise.

The very process of transformation of "you-message" into "self-concept" remains outside the scope of the article, perhaps this is a topic for further reflections and a topic for some future article, or, perhaps, it has already been described by one of the authors and has simply not been studied by me yet. …

Please write your comments and reflections on the topic of this article or related topics. It will be interesting to speculate together)