CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO 437 



minds would be exposed by the stresses imposed on the psy- 

 chism, and more available to analysis. ^"^ He did not perhaps, 

 however, realize sufficiently the limits of his method and 

 material: that the patients he was examining were being moved 

 more by feeling and imagery than by reason. This may be the 

 reason he passed over the role of intelligence, in his analysis 

 of human activity in general, and in the study of conscience 

 in particular. It is also, however, the reason he may have 

 contributed much to the understanding of the nature of defec- 

 tive consciences, for the defects arise at the level of instinct, 

 imagery and passion. 



The study of the origin of a defective conscience (i.e. a 

 conscience formed non-reasonably) , must take into considera- 

 tion both the individual in whom the conscience is formed and 

 the agencies forming it. The individual may have native defects 

 of intelligence and of emotional strength and balance which 

 account for the formation of non-reasonable standards; on the 

 other hand, all else being equal, the imparting of the standards 

 by parents or community may preclude reasoned acceptance. 

 The child is born with no innate ideas about morality or any- 

 thing else, and throughout his life, but especially when he is 

 younger, will be swayed in the formation of judgments by his 

 imagination and memory, by his capacity to correlate concrete 

 experiences, by his emotional responses, by his attitudes and 

 interests, and so on. He is plastic regarding moral ideals, but 

 the form they take within him will be markedly conditioned 

 by the mode of his active acceptance of them. On the other 

 hand, the agent forming him will function more or less reason- 

 ably. So far as the norms proposed and imposed may not be 

 reasonable, they may more baffle intelligence than enlighten it; 

 they may impede or distort the growth to emotional maturity. 

 If the norms themselves are ill-proportioned to human nature, 



^'^ St. Thomas also considered certain psychological problems only in terms of 

 conditions of mental stress, e.g. of rapture and prophecy, and did not fail to 

 mention the analogies with mental disease. See Summa theologiae, II-II, qq. 171- 

 175; De veritate, qq. 12-13. 



