CONSCIENCE AND SUPEREGO 443 



pattern of behavior, on which the defective qualities are based, 

 before the qualities themselves will suffer reformation. This is 

 not to say that formal psychoanalysis is required for every 

 character defect; the point is that in the psychological and 

 moral process of acquiring self-knowledge, the insights of depth 

 psychology are often the decisive ones. Therefore, spiritual 

 directors, counsellors, confessors and all those concerned with 

 the interpretation of character should be familiar with at least 

 the major psychological formations known to depth psychology. 

 To consider the multitude of specific moral problems on 

 which depth psychology has thrown some illumination would 

 be to carry this study too far beyond its original purpose. 

 The work of synthesis has been started and will continue, for 

 its practical value is already widely recognized. Eventually the 

 traditional expositions of morality and its defects should incor- 

 porate and be enriched by all that is sound in psychoanalysis, 

 as it has in the past absorbed and organized into itself whatever 

 was true and useful. This is its genius and we need have no 

 fear that it will forget it. 



Michael E. Stock, 0. P. 



Dominican House of Studies, 

 Dover, Massachusetts. 



