CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO 421 



of moral conduct having once been established in early child- 

 hood, do not mature thereafter. The do's and don'ts of the 

 infantile period are basically the do's and don'ts of a whole 

 life span. As other factors make their influence felt on the 

 growing child — teachers, other members of the family, civil 

 authorities — and other ideals attract him — heroes, leaders — as 

 new goals and new prohibitions are incorporated into the super- 

 ego, they are automatically associated with the old solely in 

 virtue of their identifiability with the original and basic parental 

 images. The latter, moreover, always remain the strongest and 

 most decisive elements in the individual's sense of right and 

 wrong. 



(5) The Superego after Freud. 



Psychoanalysis, following Freud, has been more or less faith- 

 ful to his formulation of the notion of the superego, although 

 it has assiduously worked to clarify and enrich the concept, 

 Freud himself admitting that there was much yet to be ex- 

 plained. Ernest Jones, an orthodox disciple, introduced a 

 distinction into the superego, setting off a conscious sense of 

 morality which corresponds to adult moral valuation against 

 the unconscious moral norms derived from infantile reactions. 

 This distinction certainly goes a long way towards aligning 

 the superego with the moral sense as it is generally conceived. ^^ 



An instance of another approach, aiming at clarifying and 

 stabilizing the relationship of the superego to infantile mental 

 formations, shows the varieties of infantile thinking often 

 manifested in superego activity. Children, for example, exhibit 

 a species of magical thinking, not clearly distinguishing fact 

 from fancy, and wish from deed. There is also a childish sense 

 of justice — the child thinks he must be punished for wishes as 

 well as deeds, and that punishment is inevitable and poetically 

 proportioned to the crime. He also thinks he can propitiate an 

 offended authority by ritualistic acts, by undoing in an imagi- 

 native way the wrong he has done. This kind of thinking is 



" Cf. Dalbiez, op. cit., p. 409. 



