Whether the superego is the result of the unconscious and the conscious minds “cancelling out”, so to speak… I cannot say with certainty. We could take a pseudo-Freudian view and say that the ego is not a separate entity in itself, but the result of the eternal struggle between the base desires of the id, and the lofty ideals of the superego.
However the way I currently conceive of the mind is as a layered structure. In its deepest recesses is what Freud referred to as the “id” - consisting entirely of our most base instincts and primitive drives. Then is the superego, which is a “separate” and fully autonomous personality that acts in the background to guide the ego in subtle ways. It communicates with the ego via impulses, emotions, dreams, and intrusive thoughts (this is not an exhaustive list). Since we don’t understand how consciousness works, I don’t think it’s all that farfetched to say that the superego is literally a second consciousness living in your unconscious mind.
On top of that sits the unconscious, which can be thought of as both the foundation that the ego rests upon, and an interface between the superego and the ego.
Everything that I have described thus far is a vast ocean that resides in the unconscious mind (in this case by “unconscious” I mean everything that is not the ego/subconscious, not the unconscious of CSJ’s 4 sides model). To prevent confusion, I like to refer to it as the Shadow, as I believe this id + superego + unconscious is what Jung referred to as the Shadow. Deep, murky depths that are largely a mystery, even to ourselves.
Then there is the ego, which I see as an outgrowth of the unconscious mind. It is like a symbiote, in a sense - it is either very small and weak at birth, or possibly does not exist at all. It “grows” outward from the Shadow, acting as a sort of buffer between raw reality and the unconscious mind. In return for the ego acting as a shield for the Shadow, the Shadow takes care of many lower level and higher level mental functions that the ego cannot concern itself with, due to constantly being assaulted by reality.
As an aside, this model explains why hypnosis is real and why it works. Hypnosis is essentially a method of putting the ego into a sort of sleep or stasis, allowing the hypnotist to communicate directly with the Shadow. Because the Shadow normally relies on the ego filtering these types of things out, it has no defense against them and is thus extremely vulnerable to manipulation in the form of suggestions, commands, questions, etc.
This is essentially what advertising is - the advertisement itself is loud and distracting so as to draw the attention of the ego, so it can send a message directly to your unconscious that the ego is too occupied to filter out.
