410 MICHAEL 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 to note that sometimes 

 the instinctual drives successfully accomplish their aim; some- 

 times they are deflected from a minor object without severe 

 psychological injury resulting; sometimes they are deflected at 

 some cost to psychological balance.^ 



Within the ego, the superego is formed. Freud's earliest 

 works did not mention this mental agency, but after long 

 investigation, he found himself constrained to postulate some 

 institution in the mind distinct from the ego and the id." 

 He found that much of the censoring process — the ' do this ' 

 and ' do not do that,' in the sense of moral obligation — was 

 accomplished not consciously, as the ego works, but uncon- 

 sciously; and not on the basis of reality as the ego perceives 

 it and consciously evaluates it, but on some other basis more 



^ Cf. Freud, " Neurosis and Psychosis," Coll. Papers, Vol. 2, pp. 250 seq. (Hogarth 

 Press, London, 1956) 



' Perhaps it would be useful here to note two of Freud's methodological canons, 

 as an aid to following his reasoning on these subjects. First of all, he tried always 

 to proceed on a strictly empirical basis. He would examine the psychological mani- 

 festations — thoughts, images, feelings, urges — as they were conscious or latent or 

 dreamed, whether they seemed meaningful or not, whether they were competent or 

 apparently disorganized and defective — and from the material gathered proceed to 

 the postulation of the mental structures to explain them. This is, of course, the 

 classic mode of procedure in establishing a faculty psychology; Freud, however, 

 totally disavowed faculty psychology. To distinguish faculties by their acts and 

 objects, and, more to the point, from their activities and objects, seemed to him a 

 display of sterile theorizing. He was content in determining manifest activities in 

 their concrete complexity, and the hidden activities, especially buried complexes, 

 they seemed to postulate, but he did not attempt to define a structure of faculties 

 which might underlie the variety of activities. His result would most resemble, in 

 Thomistic terms, a description of actual habits or dispositions. Secondly, Freud tried 

 to conceive the elements of his psychological structure in mechanistic and physical 

 terms, in consonance with a basically anti-vitalist and materialist outlook. For this 

 reason, many of his conceptions and the terms he uses to express them, seem mere 

 metaphors, and not particularly apt metaphors, for the world of machines does not 

 do justice to the subtleties of the mind. Once however these biases are taken into 

 account, the real meaning of the things he is discussing is more apparent. 



