CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO 423 



lively prevents true standards from developing. In two ways 

 this formulation of superego activity is a radical departure 

 from Freud's. In the first place, it allows for a twofold form 

 of moral standards in individuals — a true moral code based on 

 verified and voluntarily adopted standards, and a false moral 

 code, based on parental dominance. Freud would have all moral 

 codes to be of the second type. Secondly, the latter type of 

 moral codes does not necessarily have to appear in a child — 

 the Oedipus complex is not universal, hence not universally 

 resolved by the introjection of parental images. Hence a purely 

 superego-type moral standard may not always appear, and 

 even when it does appear, it may be resolved and supplanted 

 by a reasonable and conscious form of morality. What is 

 involved in this latter form of moral sense (and rejected in 

 Freud's formulation) is an enduring capacity in the individual 

 to grow morally, from infant morality to mature morality, by 

 a qualitatively differentiated development of moral insights. 

 Hence the effects of infantile experiences and the modes of 

 infantile reaction, however profound, are not the decisive deter- 

 minants of mature character.-* 



Other psychoanalysts have followed these same general paths, 

 deriving many fundamental ideas from Freud, but developing 

 them less mechanistically, and with more appreciation of the 

 intelligent and free aspects of human psychology, and more 

 optimism about its plasticity in response to these more human 

 influences. Fr. Joseph Nuttin accepts the notion of the deep 

 influence of parental authority on the mind of children, but 

 insists on the positive and creative elements in the child's 

 reaction. For him, identification is not merely a passive adop- 

 tion of alien standards consequent on the repression of sexual 

 urges, but more a drive towards self-realization, which in the 

 child is admittedly in the direction of being like his father, 

 but even here is not wholly devoid of some kind of appreciation 

 of the values adopted. And as the child grows older, there is 

 more and more the aspect of reasonable discernment and willing 



** Karen Horney, Neio Ways in Psychoanalysis, Chap. XII. 



