Ego Ideal

An ego ideal is the inner, or mental, image of what a person wants to become. According to Freud this is housed within the superego and consisting of "the individual's conscious and unconscious images of what he would like to be, patterned after certain people whom ... he regards as ideal." It is the inside image of the person an individual wants and aspires to be. It is the perfect form of the self that a person strives to be. Freud first introduced it in 1914 in regards to his work on narcissism and later psychodynamic theories suggested the ego ideal was a combination of the ego and the id.