What is "ego ideal"

n. (psychoanalysis) the part of the ego that contains an ideal of personal excellence toward which a person strives

In Freudian psychoanalysis, the ego ideal is the inner image of oneself as one wants to become. Alternatively, "the Freudian notion of a perfect or ideal self housed in the superego," 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."

In the French strand of Freudian psychology, the ego ideal (or ideal ego, ) has been defined as "an image of the perfect self towards which the ego should aspire."