In this careful exposition of the concept of the ego ideal, the author explores the short cuts that are available to the psyche and traces the longer, more painful path to maturity. She develops in her own way Freud's view that people are forever seeking to regain a lost state of perfection, the state in which they were their own ideal - "primary narcissism". The book includes chapters on the following aspects of the ego ideal: perversion, genitality, being-in-love, groups, sublimation in the creative process, reality testing, and the superego.