The child learns the parent’s moral outlook at an early age. Freud regarded the superego as virtually complete by the age of 7 years. He thought of it as rather like a parent who has taken up residence in the personality and is there ready to chastise a person or reward him or her. Since it does not occur to the child, or later the adult, to question this internal parent, the superego may have a lifelong influence. For example, a person who develops a strict moral outlook in childhood may suffer from unnecessarily high levels of quilt throughout life.
Superego and id are generally in opposition to each other. The superego is irrationally obsessed with the difference between right and wrong. It is essentially self – righteous in nature. The id, on the other hand, selfishly and hedonistically seeks the fulfilment of its own desires by what Freud called the pleasure principle, the principle of always seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.