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MICHAEL E. STOCK 



mind and heart (i. e,, in the psychological operations and their 

 principles) of the growing child. St. Thomas, speaking of the 

 universality and immutability of the natural law in men's 

 hearts, summarizes briefly the reasons which may make it fail, 

 " Some have a mind depraved by passion, or by bad customs, 

 or by bad natural dispositions, for example, robbery was not 

 reputed evil among the Germans formerly, although it is 

 expressly against the natural law." ^^ " In regard to other 

 secondary precepts, the natural law can be wiped out of the 

 hearts of men, either on account of bad persuasions, ... or 

 even because of depraved customs and corrupt habits." *** 

 Freud, with the methods he developed, brought forth an 

 amazing wealth of detail which up to that time had only been 

 suspected or more or less generally intuited concerning the 

 actual conditions of the genesis and development of a " mind 

 depraved by passions," of " bad natural dispositions," and 

 " corrupt habits." He laid the foundations of a science treating 

 of the instinctual movements in man and of their vicissitudes 

 when they are blocked, of the formations of complexes and of 

 psychological conflicts, of the formations of attitudes more or 

 less unrealistic, of the breakdown of the mind and emotional 

 balance under the stresses of these aberrations, of the force 

 of these factors and of their unconscious mode of operating. 

 He emphasized in a striking manner what was known before 

 him but not perhaps sufiiciently evaluated — the importance 

 of the emotional factor in the child-parent relation, not only 

 by the way it may take the place of reason in the adoption 

 of norms of conscience, but also how it reinforces the power 

 of reason in the development of a true conscience. It was not 

 perhaps realized before Freud the depths to which the child 

 was formed and conditioned purely on the basis of his own 

 emotional response to the dominant figures in his environment, 

 especially by the motives of love and fear. It gave many 

 explanation of the roots of actions and attitudes, not only from 



'* Summa theologiae, I-II, q. 94, a. 4. 



*° Ibid., a. 6. 



