Conscience and Superego

CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO T HEOLOGIANS and philosophers have rightly stigmatized Freud's concept of moral conscience as a caricature of the real thing. The psychological phenomenon which Freud called the superego, and which he equivalated with the traditional notion of conscience, in fact lacks the essential note of conscience. Nevertheless, since Freud was a gifted investigator, the presumption is that the superego is a reality and, since Freud credited it with a significant note in human activity, it would seem to be something important. The following paper attempts to analyze Freud's conception of the superego in terms of Thomistic thought, comparing it with more valid notions of conscience, and defining the area in human activity, especially in moral activity, into which the functioning of the superego enters as something significant. I. THE NOTION oF THE SuPEREGO (1) The Fundaments of Human Nature According to Freud. Speaking broadly, the superego is the part in a man which tells him that he ought to do something or ought not to do it. In Freud's conception, a mature human personality comprises three basic structures: the id, the ego and the superego. If a rough description is permissible at the beginning, the id may be called the pool of instinctual drives, repressed complexes images and thoughts-a wholly unconscious area of the mind. The ego is the agency of all sense perceptions and conscious thought, and the initiator of deliberate activities. The superego is the source of moral incitement and constraint, and is largely unconscious. Of these three, the primitive part and only native part is the id. In the id, instinctual impulses arise, and indeed arise by a natural and uncontrollable necessity, welling up con544 CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO 545 tinuously, as it were, as the psychological manifestations of more basic vital processes. When an impulse-the raw material of psychological life-arises, it is credited with creating a psychological tension; when it is discharged through some appropriate motor activity (as, for example, the infantile impulse to suck may be satisfied by the breast), the tension is dissolved. This relief of tension is pleasure; the law of the id is to seek it. Once an instinct has found an appropriate means of satisfaction, it becomes attached to the activity, and to the images and ideas of that activity, and henceforth is oriented towards obtaining satisfaction continuously through the same activity. It happens, however, in the course of his development, that a child finds certain satisfactions prohibited, restricted, or prevented -he is not allowed to take the breast, or not allowed to keep it as long as he likes. He becomes more aware then of the impingement of the outside world; he is forced to take reality into account. Thus the ego begins to develop. The ego comprises the perceptions of the outer world, the coherent central processes of the individual, and the processes by which conscious motor activities are carried out. The principle that rules in the ego is reality; it relates man to the self he finds himself to be and to his environment. Fundamentally, of course, the ego is at the service of the id. Although it is attuned to reality, its main function even in this regard is to locate in reality the most appropriate means of satisfying instinctual impulses for the id, while avoiding the disagreeable results this satisfaction might sometimes entail. To obtain its proper results, the ego must ' censor ' the instinctual movements of the id, that is, when the id demands some satisfaction which the ego has learned is actually productive of disagreeable results-pain, punishment, parental disapproval-the ego must negate the id's demands. A conflict ensues when the ego refuses to execute the action sought by the id. Eventually the ego refuses even to allow the idea to remain in consciousness; it suppresses the idea. But the 546 MlcHAEt. E. STOCK idea with its instinctual drive does not die; it vanishes into the unconsiousness of the id, where it remains, still dynamic, still restless, still seeking some new outlet. How it can get past the censorship of the ego, and accomplish its purpose is a long and involved story; it is sufficient here...