^#smrgSAHAF Man Morals And Society: A Psycho-Analytical Study -

This is a study of the psycho-analytical concept of the superego and of its relationship to morality and religion. The superego does not become completely ethical and reasonable as the child emerges from the Oedipus phase. Although its activity is modified to some extent by its interaction with the conscious ego-ideal, it still retains much of the magical, autistic, and aggressive characteristics of its origin in the unconscious mind. The natural aggression of the child when frustrated by parental restrictions is liable to turn inwards upon the self, as nemesism, and to reinforce parental prohibitions by the dictates of the superego. When these parental restrictions pass over into the moral restrictions and taboos of society, the superego enforces them as the voice of conscience and creates guilty feelings which occur when the restrictions are infringed. But because the superego retains the characteristics of the unconscious mind, its dictates are fierce, punitive, and irrational. They are in turn projected back on to society to form a basis for the aggressiveness and unreasonableness of much traditional morality and of many religious beliefs and customs. But the negative nature of the dictates of the superego may be, to a greater or less degree in certain cases, supplemented and superseded by the more positive and 'loving' standards of the ego-ideal.