412 MICHAEL E. STOCK 



found that the patient would offer ' resistance ' to the flow of 

 thoughts — his memory would ' fail,' he would be unable to 

 make a connection, he would dismiss a line of thought as 

 meaningless and irrelevant. Often these breaks in the mental 

 flow were accompanied by fairly distinct feelings of emotional 

 distress. Or again, sometimes, when a sound explanation of 

 some of the patient's thoughts or feelings was offered by the 

 analyst, the patient would firmly or even violently reject them, 

 for no manifestly good reason and with a gi'eat show of emotion. 

 Freud concluded that the mental force which originally cen- 

 sored and repressed certain ideas (which were generally shame- 

 ful or painful or humilating or in some way highly disagreeable) 

 must be still operative in the psychism, and that, moreover, 

 its present activity was itself largely unconscious. Therefore, 

 besides the conscious censorship of the ego function, it was 

 necessary to postulate another unconscious censoring agency.^ 

 Another factor which enlarged and confirmed the concept of 

 the superego was the sense of moral obligation manifested by 

 many neurotics. Many patients who came for psychoanalytic 

 treatment exhibited an intense need to measure up to moral 

 standards often impossibly high and rigid. They seemed to be 

 driven to achieve perfection according to self-imposed goals, 

 and unable moreover to make allowances for any personal 

 weaknesses or external circumstances which might make the 

 goals unattainable. Ruled by these interior compulsions, they 

 were unable to find satisfaction in the reasonable goals most 

 people are contented with, unable to find peace in anything 

 other than the achievement of their standards. Failure was 

 always attributable to some fault on their part, and failure 

 was followed by an acute sense of guilt. (This was also regarded 

 as a weakness to be stamped out, and failure to overcome it 

 produced further guilt feelings.) The standards by which they 

 lived seemed beyond their own judgment, modification and 

 control — they were unquestioned and unquestionable — and in 

 fact, they seemed to be largely unconscious. Such a phe- 



* Cf. Freud, The Ego and the Id, pp. 15-18. (Hogarth Press, London, 1957) 



