Ego Ideal / Ideal Ego
The ideal ego is “an idea which the ego has of itself” (Hanly, 1984, p. 254), an idealized image of what the ego actually is, a secret, tenaciously guarded, deeply held belief in the ego’s solidity, permanence and perfection.
The ego ideal is that towards which the ego strives, that which it yearns to become, that into which it desires to merge, fuse or unite. Unlike the ideal ego, whose function it is to assure the self of its own inherent perfection, the ego ideal is associated with a yearning to become something that at its root is an internalized image of a lost state of perfection. The ego ideal, says Chasseguet-Smirgel, a French psychoanalyst responsible for much of the repopularization of the concept, represents “a narcissistic omnipotence from which (the individual) is henceforth divided by a gulf that he will spend the rest of his life trying to bridge” (1975, p. 7).
