BOOKS
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pire. Because social protest is for him only the externalization of an
inner struggle with authority, psychological man looks inward for
solutions. And if virtue is the civilized mask for base longings, the
neW morality is compelled to question the legitimacy of good.
The caricature obliges us to recognize a number of traits that
are identifiable as modem and a considerable number of beliefs that
claim
the authority of psychoanalysis. Rieff himself, by examining
the entire body of Freud's works, identifies him as the educator of
psychological man. Psychological man appears as the personifica–
tion of the ego, judiciously regulating the demands of the id and
the demands of the superego. The moral neutrality of psycho–
logical man suggests the moral neutrality of the analyst and the
analytic method, in which the patient is asked to suspend his critical
attitude; and the reasoned morality of psychological man may be
taken as the triumph of the therapeutic ideal in which the irrational
dictates of the superego are .overcome by rational thought processes.
Above all, Freud discovered the tyranny of conscience and, in Rieffs
view, made guilt a disease. "Freud," says Rieff, "can conceive of a
person's feeling guilty not because he has been bad but because,
as a result of his repressions, he is too moral. This is one source of
his influence: his diagnosis that we are sick from our.ideals and that
the one practical remedy lies in an infusion from below."
A large part of Mr. Rieff's argument rests upon his erroneous
conception of the superego. Rieff sees the superego as "imposed or
superinduced on the real individual (ego)" which he understands
to imply an alienation of "the social personality (superego) from the
genuine self (ego)." Rieff appears to believe that the superego
is
ahnost entirely unconscious, which then leads him to say, "Implicitly
reud presumes that the decisions of conscience are invariably ir–
rational; indeed conscience is defined as being-it is a powerful
rhetorical affront-no less irrational than the instinctual id." Rieff
speaks of "the ostensibly amoral knowledge of the ego." And later:
"Against the rigid moralizing tyranny of conscience, Freud posed a
flexible but highly limited administration by the rational ego. . . .
Thus narrowly defined, reason makes a weak champion."
Now, of course, if conscience is irrational and the "amoral" ego
i, weak against its tyranny, the whole question of values, moral
choice, and moral responsibility is thrown into confusion, and . his
