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In Hate and Love in Psychoanalytic Institutions, Jurgen Reeder investigates the professional superego of the psychoanalyst. This superego designates a prescriptive and prohibiting role that the individual must play within the parameters of a certain occupational sphere.
The prescriptive aspect works like a professional ideal, and in this respect the superego can be said to sustain a professional ‘ethos’ or spirit, commanding what the professional should know, and what his or her relations to clients and colleagues should resemble. It helps to bind the members of the analytical community together.
The prohibiting aspect installs a vigilant inner eye. It offers necessary protection against detrimental aberrations, but it also evokes fantasies of critical or condemning colleagues who might have insight into what transpires within the walls of the analyst’s own private practice–leading to a reluctance to communicate openly about the analytical experience. In this sense, the professional superego contributes to the ‘paranoization’ of collegial communication, a circumstance that has a hampering effect on spontaneity and creativity in both clinical and theoretical work.
Jurgen Reeder’s groundbreaking research, uncovering the dynamics of the professional superego in psychology, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, can be applied to other professions as well, including social work, medicine, education, law, and the ministry.