436 MICHAEL E. STOCK 



child will most rapidly attain the full and balanced use of his 

 own powers, and precisely under the influence of obedience. 

 In the moral order, obedience leads to the knowledge and 

 acceptance of the right reason which is actually right, and that 

 is the ideal norm of conscience. 



(2) A superego-like conscience. 



In the account given above of the function of reason in the 

 formation of the norms of conscience, and of the role of insight 

 and obedience, the words ' ideal ' and ' ideally " have been 

 carefully inserted at strategic points, for, undeniably, the des- 

 criptions have been more idealistic than realistic. In the world 

 we live in, the ideal is never achieved; if a family or community 

 tends to approach it, we say it is good, and where they more 

 or less fail, we have a more or less corrupt or degenerating 

 society. But wherever there is failure to attain to the ideal 

 development of the norms of conscience, the alternative is not 

 a lack of norms, for people do not live without any standards 

 of right and wrong. When reasonable norms do not develop, 

 distorted norms take their place, and if reason has not produced 

 the norms, they have their origin in other psychological pro- 

 cesses. The investigation of these distorted norms, the un- 

 covering of their roots and the tracing the paths of their 

 development have been Freud's helpful contribution in the total 

 picture of conscience and morality, and a contribution which 

 is of no small import. For while Freud did not come to a 

 sound notion of the nature of real conscience, he did come to 

 a deep understanding of the psychological processes that often 

 pass for conscience, and in fact the purpose, nature and con- 

 ditions of his work would bring him most in contact with these 

 aberrations. His work was mostly with those who were men- 

 tally or emotionally troubled, and he took advantage of the 

 unusual opportunities presented to him to open up to inves- 

 tigation by means of the technique he had invented, whole 

 new realms of psychological activity. He realized that factors 

 which operate almost imperceptibly in normally functioning 



