424 MICHAEL E. STOCK 



cooperation in the discovery and acceptance of ideals and pro- 

 hibitions, which, so long as they are objectively valid, serve 

 not to stultify the character but to enlarge and enrich it. 

 There is moral growth through widening awareness and revision 

 of old standards in the light of new ones. This is not to say 

 that such a conscious drive towards self-realization operates 

 equally well in everyone, or entirely in anyone, but it is in 

 evidence frequently enough to demand some explanation be- 

 yond Freud's. Nuttin therefore rejects the idea that the original 

 identification of a child is purely the result of the failure of 

 sexual possession, and that subsequent identifications are really 

 the infantile identifications repeated in new instances, and 

 finally that real moral development is arrested at the infantile 

 stage. Finally he rejects the ubiquity of the Oedipus complex, 

 and, consequently, the doctrine that the resolution of this 

 complex results in the formation of what is man's sole agency 

 of normative or moral conduct, a superego.-^ This also seems 

 to be the position taken by Roland Dalbiez in his critique of 

 Freudian doctrine.-^ 



(b) Conclusions about the superego. 



What therefore can be concluded? Certainly it can be granted 

 that there is an internal but acquired norm for judging right 

 and wrong, and that in its formation it is closely connected 

 with parental training, deriving indeed much of its efficacy 

 from the deep emotional ties with parents, which in infants 

 constitute almost the whole of affective life. The first and 

 natural impulses of a child would be to be like his parents. 

 It can also be seen that excessive harshness in discipline can 

 cause excessive rigor in the norms adopted by children, and 

 excessive sensitiveness to the demands of these norms, and that 

 obedience to the norms can generate a sense of satisfaction, 

 disobedience a painful sense of guilt, quite dissociated from real 



^^ Joseph Nuttin, Psychoanalysis and Personality, pp. 63, 178-183. 

 "'Roland Dalbiez, Psychoanalytic Method and the Doctrine of Freud, vol. I, 

 pp. 407 seq.; vol. II, pp. 280-327. 



