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sonality would collapse. A successful psychoanalytic therapy
strengthens the superego by partially freeing it from irrational forces.
It restores guilt feelings to appropriate moral functions, making
available a store of energy for constructive action bound
in
disease
to magic acts of repentance, self-abasement and avoidance.
If
there are any moral implications that can be derived from
psychoanalytic therapy it might be said that a man who has
achieved relative freedom from magic and the demands of the
drives may have relative freedom to choose. But the question of
moral choice cannot be dealt with apart from the question of moral
imperatives, and here the relevance of psychoanalysis is important.
Heinz Hartmann, probably the outstanding psychoanalytic theorist
today, takes up the problem of psychoanalysis and moral values in
his recent essay, written for a psychoanalytic audience. Psychoanaly–
sis, he says, presents us with a psychology of moral behavior.
Through Freud we have come to understand how moral impera–
tives are derived from the earliest love ties of child to parent and the
means by which moral imperatives are internalized in personality.
But a psychology of moral behavior cannot be taken as a guide to
moral conduct. (In the same way, I would suggest, a psychology of
art cannot give us standards by which to judge art. Rieff gets side–
tracked here, too.) Moral imperatives, therefore, cannot be
derived
from psychoanalysis, or from psychoanalytic therapy or from any
system of "health-values." The "thou shalt" and "thou shalt not"
can only achieve their imperative quality through the unique condi–
tions provided by the dependency of the child upon his moral
teachers and are given permanence in character through his identi–
fication with them.
The analysis of moral imperatives in psychoanalytic therapy
does not deprive them of their power to influence moral judgments.
(As examples I would point out that the analysis of incestuous
wishes toward the mother will not lead to incest; the analysis of de–
structive wishes toward the father will not lead to murder. Analysis
deprives the unconscious incestuous and murderous wishes of their
power to contaminate areas of normal functioning, to inhibit the
sexual function, or work, or to create symptoms.) Psychoanalysis,
therefore, can confirm the existence of moral motivations in human
character that are permanent and irreversible.
