The exceptions. Structural and dynamic aspects

Selected details are presented from the history of an adult analytic patient who had many of the characteristics Freud describes in his essay on the "exceptions" and are used as a starting point for discussing certain dynamics of this character type. This essay argues that the ego attitude of justified rebellion, which develops in some children because of early maltreatment or physical shortcoming, leads to a distortion in ego-superego interaction and interferes with normal superego maturation. The tendency to massive superego externalization, normal in early latency, is never outgrown and results in many of the characteristic features of the "exceptions."