The two notions of ideal ego and ego ideal might seem to be used interchangeably by Freud. However, their first appearance in "On Narcissism" (1914c) showed them to be different insofar as the ideal ego is taken to be the recipient of the self-love that the ego enjoyed in infancy. The distinction is between reality and an idealization of that reality, enforced by the fact that from infancy on, that reality seems forever lost. The ego ideal, on the other hand, is a dynamic notion: The person, as Freud wrote, seeks to regain the narcissistic perfection of its infancy under the new form of the ego ideal, which is deferred as a goal to be attained in the future. Thus the ideal ego could be seen as the nostalgic survival of a lost narcissism, while the ego ideal appears to be the dynamic formation that sustains ambitions towards progress.

The ideal ego is a modification of infantile narcissism and the omnipotence that...