In the twin processes of socialization and acculturation, we absorb and assimilate the values, the norms and the mores of our culture and the society we live in. We adopt behavioral scripts.
But where do we get all these from? We get all these via socialization agents. Socialization agents include parental figures, influential peers, role models, teachers, other members of the family, anyone whom we can model.
And this is the essence of social learning theory.
There are two points to make.
Number one, having assimilated these values, beliefs, norms, we tend to think of them as our own. This is called an attribution error. We attribute these things which have come from the outside, from other people, we appropriate them, we identify with them, and we come to erroneously believe that they represent us. They become the core identity, our core identity.
But the truth is that we absorb all these things from the outside. They are external, not internal. And this confusion between external and internal has a lot to do with the initial phase of narcissism in early childhood will come to it in a few minutes.
Like everything Jewish, this video is divided in two parts. First part is tips and advice. And the second part is the academic background for these tips and advice.
But who am I to give you advice to start with?
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. I'm currently a professor of clinical psychology and a professor of business management, in CIAPS, in Cambridge, United Kingdom, Ontario, Canada, and Lagos, Nigeria.
And today's topic is the ego ideal, the tyranny of the ego ideal over you, over your lives, over your behavior, of your choices, over your decisions, and above all, over your relationships.
What on earth is ego ideal?
You could think of the ego ideal as a container, a container of all these values and norms and beliefs that you have absorbed from the environment, that you have appropriated and annexed from other people.
When you listen to your mother or father or grandmother or grandfather or teacher or influential peer, or someone in the media or someone in show business, someone you identify with, someone you admire, someone you adulate, someone you wish to emulate and imitate when you listen to these people. You tend to absorb, you tend to identify with a part of their personality, and it becomes yours.
You are unable to tell the difference between what came from the outside and your own authentic voice.
Is this a good thing?
As far as society is concerned, it is. Because it keeps you in check.
It imbues you with inhibitions. It teaches you to behave appropriately in a socially condoned manner.
You become less antisocial, definitely not criminal, more productive. You cooperate and collaborate. You produce and consume.
That's good for society.
But is it good for you?
The answer is less than clear.
The ego ideal is the way you think you should be, the way you think you should become, the way you think you ought to be, what you ought to be, and what you should be, and what you should become.
So the ego ideal is the self-conception of how the self wishes to be.
The ego ideal therefore has many affinities with wishes, with fantasies, and that's why we call it ego ideal, because it has an idealized, unrealistic nature.
The ego ideal is sometimes synonymously used with the word superego.
But that's not entirely true.
It was Freud who suggested that the ego ideal be subsumed into the superego, but he may have gone too far.
There is a distinction between the ego ideal and the superego.
When you behave in a way which conflicts with your superego, you feel guilt because your superego is your conscience but when you behave in a way which conflicts with your ego ideal the outcome is shame not guilt.
So guilt and shame, the two emotions that regulate your behavior, that dictate your choices and decisions, that provide you with internal regulation, that somehow keep you in balance and in check and in control of yourself and of your interpersonal relationships and interactions.
The ego ideal, the way you see yourself as a good person, as perfect, as accomplished, as capable, as skillful, as talented, as lovable, as worthy. These are all elements of the ego ideal.
But the problem is, when you deviate and diverge from your view of yourself as an ideal object, when you contradict your ego ideal, when you conflict with it, when you behave in a way which the ego ideal finds unacceptable, you're punished, and you're punished with shame.
The fact is that your ego ideal is not you. It's definitely not your ego. It's someone else's ego. It's your mother's ego. It's your father's ego. It's society's ego. It's your teacher's ego. It's anyone's ego except for yours. It's not yours.
Lacan has dealt with it extensively in his work, as we shall see in the second part of this video.
So because this ego ideal is not yours, it's an imposition. It's a constraint. It's a kind of self-imposed, self-appropriated prison. It's a prison you inhabit throughout your life.
For example, the ego ideal might tell you that you need to socialize, but not everyone is built to socialize.
The ego ideal might tell you that you need to have academic accomplishments.
But not everyone is built to learn. Not everyone is built to have relationships. Not everyone is built to conform. Not everyone is built to work hard. Some people are lazy.
I mean, the ego ideal is an engine of internal conflict.
You measure yourself all the time according to the standards and expectations and demands of the ego ideal, and you inevitably and invariably come short.
You are setting yourself up for constant failure.
And so what is the ego ideal good for?
It's a source of motivation. It may even create ambition, which is a malignant form of motivation.
It pushes you. It pushes you to do. It pushes you to work. It pushes you to procreate, it pushes you to accomplish, pushes you to accumulate things, it pushes you.
Ego Ideal is used extensively in our consumer society.
We compare ourselves to other people, and through this mechanism of relative positioning, we are motivated to acquire, to acquire possessions and material objects, to acquire people as if they were commodities, to acquire relationships, to acquire status, etc.
Acquisition, the acquisitive drive. The drive to consume is absolutely a derivative of the ego ideal.
So as you can see, the ego ideal is very tyrannical, very dictatorial.
If you wish to live in a way that is authentic, loyal to yourself, you need to throw off the shackles of the ego ideal.
You have an image of how and what you should be, your ego ideal.
And as I said, your ideal ego sets you off for failure because it imposes on you expectations and standards and demands that you find difficult to meet.
Rather than try to change who you are in order to gratify or satisfy the ego ideal, you would do much better to modify your ego ideal.
Don't change who you are. Change your ego ideal, rather than attempt to motivate or incentivize or coerce other people to conform to your unrealistic ego ideal, change your ego ideal.
The core advice here is do not attempt to change your environment, do not try to change yourself, instead change the way you conceive of yourself within your environment, a way that is highly narcissistic because it's highly ideal, highly perfect.
You're not perfect, you're not ideal, and you're never likely to be so. So why don't you give up on this internalized fantasy which emanated from and came from its source was not you, but other people. If you can't be humble about your shortcomings, at least be realistic as to your limitations. Except that you cannot control or even motivate other people. You cannot change life in any meaningful way. You have a very limited purview over your circumstances, the environment, let alone the future. If you accept all these limitations, then you become humble.
To believe otherwise is the intoxicating manic phase of grandiosity, which is an integral part of the ego ideal.
I think you should focus on who you are rather than on who you should be, who you ought to be, who you want to be, who you hope to be, who you aspire to be, and who you try to be.
Focus on who you are.
You have strong suits, you have shortcomings. You have possibilities and potentials. You have limitations.
Ask yourself, is socializing my strong suit? Are relationships my strong suit? Are academic accomplishments and studies my strong point? What are my strengths and what are my weaknesses? A SWAT analysis, strength, weaknesses, and opportunities and threats. Ask yourself this question repeatedly. And when you discover a discrepancy between what your ego ideal is telling you and who you really are, choose who you really are. Get rid of your ego ideal. It's not helpful.
Exactly like the super ego, it imposes on you sometimes unrealistic demands and expectations, and it makes you feel bad. It could easily become an internal enemy, for example, in the case of pathological narcissism. Always choose who you are. Answer your questions with honesty, integrity and perspicacity.
Are you built to socialize? No, I hate people. Don't socialize. Are you built for academic studies? No, I can't learn. I can't focus. I don't have enough attention. I'd rather make money. I'd rather be with beautiful girls on the beach. I don't want to study. Don't study. Relationships. Can you be in a relationship? No. I dread intimacy. I hate proximity. I need to be alone. I need my space. I am
I... Then don't have relationships. No one has a monopoly on how you should behave. No one has the secret code of the universe.
These are all options and potentials, and it's a menu, and you can choose. When you enter a restaurant, you don't choose every single item on the menu. That's preposterous, and it would set you up for failure because you would not be able to eat everything. Same with the ego ideal. The ego ideal is a menu of a restaurant. Choose the items that cater to your appetites, your needs, your urges, your desires, and above all to your essence, to your quiddity, to who you are. When you emphasize your relative shortcomings rather than your relative advantages, it ends in failure, it ends in paranoid ideation, it ends in dejection, it ends in depression and anxiety.
Why do that to yourself?
Accept yourself as you are. Tell yourself, I am the best version of who I can be. How do I know that? Because I am. Ultimately, we all make choices, we all make decisions, and we all become the way we are because that's how we know best we know no other way given the information we have given our innate capacities given our limitations given our potentials this our potentials, this is who we are. This is what we become. And these are the decisions and choices we can make, no other. So be forgiving to yourself. The ego ideal is not forgiving. It's harsh. It's a harsh inner critic. It's punitive. It's an internalized bad object in effect. It's what used to be called in psychoanalysis, a primitive superego.
Get rid of it. It's not helpful. It's not realistic. It leads you nowhere except to heartbreak.
When you keep placing yourself in impossible situations with the wrong people, just in order to meet some criteria or satisfy some expectations or realize some fantasies, this leads you to hypervigilance. This leads you to defeat. This leads you to a compromise of your true values. This leads you to the negation of your core identity and ultimately to paranoid ideation because you fully expect failure and punishment.
One major sign if you're authentic, if you are true to yourself, is boredom.
If you're bored, you're not being authentic. You're not being true to yourself. You're trying to be someone you're not. You're trying to be someone you can never be.
Boredom is a major indicator of mental health pathologies such as narcissism, such as psychopathy, such as borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, literally all personality disorders, paranoid, etc. Boredom is a major feature.
And boredom is the divorce between your authenticity and the world.
Because when you're authentic in the world, you feel alive. And when you feel alive, everything around you is a miracle. Your environment is a wonder in the making.
You can never be bored when you are yourself. Can never be bored when you are yourself because there's a lot to explore inwardly inside you and there's even more to explore outside you and above all there's the exploration of the interactions between who you are and what the world is.
This is such an infinite field of possibilities and eventualities and events and occurrences that it leaves no place for boredom.
It's easy to understand.
Imagine that I force you to watch a movie, the topic of which is of no interest to you. A movie about something that you don't care about, you don't know anything about, and you never find interesting.
For example, imagine that you forced me to watch a movie about sports. I hate sports. So, of course, I would be bored. I would be bored because watching a movie about sports and athletics is a betrayal of who I am, a betrayal of my authenticity, so I'm bored.
But imagine that you asked me to watch a movie about multiple personality disorder. Of course, I would be riveted. I would be thrilled and excited. I would not feel boredom for a single second.
Why?
Because there's a correspondence between the world, the movie I'm watching, and between who I am.
So when your authentic self resonates with the world, when you are loyal to itself, when you don't betray yourself because of something your mother said, something your father expects, or something that society imposes on you. When you are you and only you, you the whole you and nothing but you.
When you are this, when you are sworn in the court, in your inner court, when you have sworn to be you, the whole you and nothing but you, at that point, you will never be bored again.
Because everything in the world around you, in your environment, will resonate with who you are. And these resonances are so colorful, so kaleidoscopic, so unpredictable, so thrilling and so exciting, that they leave no place for boredom.
Boredom is a major indicator that you're doing something wrong. It's a sign that you're not challenging yourself enough, that you don't know yourself at all, that you have no long-term plan or vision of yourself which corresponds to reality, or that you are highly insecure about who you are.
You don't trust yourself to be able to accomplish your goals, for example. You don't believe that you couldself-efficacious.
The minute you are bored, the minute you are bored, you should embark on soul searching, should get to know yourself better.
And then you should throw away all the artificial and superficial constraints, restraints, demands, expectations, edicts, laws, regulations, rules that don't apply to you.
Be yourself. And do not use your culture or your society, its mores and norms. Don't use this as an excuse to abuse yourself. Culture is not an excuse for abuse.
One's culture and one's society and one's period in history, in one's location, and more generally, one's external circumstances are never, never excuses for the abuse of others or for self-abuse.
Anyone abuses you, you cut them off, don't you?
If your ego ideal abuses you, cut it off, no contact, ignore it, reframe it, rewrite it.
Tell yourself, my ego ideal tells me that I should be married and have a family, but that's not me. So I'm going to revise my ego ideal.
And my new ego ideal, the new ego ideal that is coherent and cohesive and resonates with me in my new ego ideal, the ideal would be to live alone and to be single because that's who I truly am.
The need for a relationship to get married, to have a family, that's not me. That's my mother. That's my father. That's my society. That's my culture. That's not me.
Who am I?
I am a lone wolf. I'm schizoid. I hate people, I hate relationship, I love my space, I love my time.
If this is who you are, modify your ego ideal. Make this your ideal state.
If on the other hand you find that there is a correspondence between your ego ideal and who you truly are, then of course, do not revise and do not modify the ego ideal.
Maybe getting married and having a family would make you very happy, because that's who you truly are.
Go for it, pursue it, accomplish it. Lucky are the people whose ego ideal reflects perfectly who they are. Lucky are the people whose view of themselves in the future corresponds perfectly to their capacities and actions in the present.
These are the lucky few.
But in the overwhelming vast majority of people, as Jean-Paul Sartre, and prior to him Kierkegaard had observed, in the overwhelming majority of people, there is self-betrayal.
Self-betrayal, People sacrifice themselves just to satisfy the expectations of society as mediated via parental figures, teachers and morals.
This is social learning theory.
So anyone manipulates or coerces you into doing something. Anyone manipulates or coerces you into being someone.
You obviously walk away. You undo what you have done. You become you.
But rest assured, no one can manipulate you worse than you can manipulate yourself. No one can harm you more than you can harm yourself. No one can coerce you into dysfunctional, self-defeating, self-destructive behavior more than you can do.
You are your worst enemy, but you're also your best friend. Choose your best friend over your worst enemy.
Sometimes your worst enemy is society itself and its agents. Not in the sense that you have to be antisocial or of course not criminal.
Because to be antisocial and to be criminal is a form of self-destructiveness. It's a form of self-defeat.
Actually, we could have an ego ideal which says I am self-sufficient I am an enemy of people I am going to hurt people I'm going to be abusive I'm going to exercise power over people you could have an ego ideal I don't Hitler had such an ego ideal, for example.
So when in your quest for authenticity, you exclude options that harm other people, and you exclude options that lead to self-harm, to self-mutilation, to self-negation, to self-defeat and to self-destructiveness. These masquerade as authenticity. They're not. They're masochistic punitive internal objects that hate your guts and want you dead.
This is known as the primitive superego, the internalized bad object.
Never use your culture or your society as an alibi, as an excuse to not do the right thing.
And there is only one right thing to do in life.
How simple is it? Be yourself.