Superego Principle of Writing Criticism

Background: it's popular to say Freud was wrong, which is how you know he was largely on the ball. The id-ego-superego framework is useful. Recap: the id is the raw impulses, the ego is your rational reaction to your id, and the superego is your social norms.

All but the very best writers create characters who are pure superego. At best maybe they 'struggle' with 'temptation' of the id occasionally. Their social presentation is their entire reality.

This is often a good thing since Caino hypocriens is such a trash species. The egos suck, the id's impulses are all horrific, and the written versions are strictly superior. However, it's also boring. Story characters can't be hypocrites since they don't have any inner thoughts with which to differ from the outer. Unless you're literally retarded, you know what the social norms are supposed to be, and don't need them repeated at you again.

 

JBP says a hero is like a refined moral instruction. If you think about it, it means they're repeatedly distilled superego. Especially all those Japanese manga heroes who are paragons of their local virtue. Perfectly selfless, always get a present on your birthday, always forgive, don't want anything but to [protect]...completely, utterly uninteresting, because there's not actually anyone there.
Due to the writer's own superego, they can't even make the other characters react realistically to the Paragon of Virtue, which would at least be interesting in a world-building sense, because it would reveal that some of the Virtues aren't virtuous. Even if they sincerely have criticism of the virtue, they will never (really really never if Asian) say so out loud.

Anyone who isn't an "anti" hero lacks a personality. They're not a character, they're a paint-by-numbers scheme. Without the paint. And most "anti" heroes simply have a few signs reversed. They don't have a personality, they have -1s, moral "failings," as if the id is always merely the inverse of the superego. Outgroup is always exactly the opposite of ingroup, right simpletons?

Still better than most real dire apes. Yes, we can call that, at a stretch, a hero. 

 

This is partly why stories are usually for children. They don't fully know what the superego is supposed to be, and it's not wholly a waste of time to tell them.
Likewise it's not useless to read stories written for other cultures. You can investigate their superego, and the kind of society they say it's supposed to create. 

There's a cheap vaccine for authors who want to escape superego characters. Have them disagree on values (not facts) and have them both be correct. Recall that anything else is narcissism.

P.S. Obviously if you have criticism of a superego virtue, the play is to exploit the rubes who buy into it, not to disparage the virtue out loud. Friends? What are those? Vampires don't have friends, only bloodbags and competitors. Social species lol nice one-liner.