Sigmund Freud

• Who is Sigmund Freud?


  Austrian neurologist (1856-1939).
• What is the key quote that Sigmund Freud says relating to conscience?


  “Conscience as an aspect of the super-ego.”
• What did Sigmund Freud suggest about a person’s development?

  
  

  • He suggested that a person’s development is determined by childhood events which may have been forgotten or repressed.
  • Where the conscious mind is in conflict with the unconscious mind, trauma, or neurosis (mental sickness) can result.
• What is Freud’s view on the conscience?

  Freud produced the best-known account of the conscience as a psychological phenomenon. It derives from his account of the mind, including that part of it termed the ‘unconscious’. He distinguished between 3 elements in the mind: the id, the ego and the super-ego.
• What is the id?


  The id is the unconscious and instinctive part of the personality at the level of its basic physical and emotional needs, and includes (for example) eros - the instinct for love, sexuality & satisfaction; & thanatos - the drive for aggression, violence & death.
• What is the ego?


  The ego is the rational self. It mediates between the desires of the id and what the world lets us have.
• What is the super-ego?


  The super-ego (literally ‘above I’) is the controlling, restraining self. it develops (according to Freud) around the age of 3-5, and it controls those impulses that can be damaging to society such as the eros & thanatos instinct.
• What is the role of the super-ego?


  The super-ego also has an important role in developing a person’s morality. In particular, it acts as an ’inner parent’, in the sense that it can literally be the place where your parents‘ moral commands delivered from infancy are stored, together with the commands of other authority figures.

  —> On this account, then, conscience is an aspect of the operation of the super-ego.
• How does the super-ego work?


  The rules and regulations given to us by authority figures, particularly one’s parents, are internalised so that we cannot escape them. To try to do so brings about guilt. In this way, conscience is the repository of our parents’ commands to us during childhood.
• How does the conscience function at a conscious and unconscious level?


  According to Freud, the conscience can function at both the conscious and the unconscious level. At the unconscious level, it manifests itself by feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety and remorse. An active conscience tends to be a guilty conscience.
• Examine Freud’s views?

  If conscience is simply an expression of our unconscious application of rules that we have been given in our early childhood, then it CERTAINLY DOES NOT PROVIDE SOME ALTERNATIVE SOURCE OF MORAL AUTHORITY. Since it is no more than an expression of the wishes of one’s parents or other significant adults.

  Also, IT CANNOT BE SEEN AS THE VOICE OF GOD, OR AS AN EXPRESSION OF A NATURAL SELF, because - however we experience it now - it is nothing more than a left-over expression of our childhood training.
• According to Freud, do we Grow out of conscience?


  Logically, we would be expected to grow out of conscience as we get a more balanced and mature view of ourselves, and as our rational ego asserts itself. But for Freud the super-ego remains as an unconscious force shaping our adult lives.