116
SELMA FRAIBERG
analytic scholars to the study of the ego and who laid the theoretical
groundwork for an ego-psychology.
Finally, something must
be
said about the most unsettling ques–
tion that arises out of Freud's writings, the question of moral reo
sponsibility.
If
unconscious wishes can motivate behavior is a man
fully responsible for his actions? Does he have moral responsibility
for ideas of which he has no conscious knowledge? Does he have
moral responsibility for his dreams? Rieff understands Freud to give
moral absolution for unconscious thoughts. Rieff writes: "We can–
not
be
held responsible, Freud argues, for the thoughts expressed in
our dream life." He cites as authority Freud's essay, "Moral Re–
sponsibility for the Content of Dreams" and, unaccOlmtably, he has
exactly reversed Freud's statement! This is what Freud said:
"Obviously one must hold oneself responsible for the evil im–
pulses of one's dreams. In what other way can one deal with them?
Unless the content of the dream (rightly understood) is inspired
by alien spirits, it is part of my own being.
If
I seek to classify the
impulses that are present in me according to social standards into
good and bad, I must assume responsibility for both sorts; and if, in
defense, I say that what is unknown, unconscious and repressed in
me is not my 'ego', then I shall not be basing my position upon
psychoanalysis. . . ."
Rieffs psychological man, the man of reasoned morality,
prudently steering his course by self-interest and health-ethics, is
worth the attention bestowed upon him by a social scientist. He re–
mains unclaimed by psychoanalysis, and the authority of psycho–
analysis which Rieff claims for him is not supported by the theory
or the therapeutic method of psychoanalysis. Rieff could have made
a stronger case for his new moral type if he could have separated
the scientific idea from its later forms as it became absorbed into the
culture. A scientific idea may retain its integrity as long as it retains
its connection with science and its methods. When it passes over into
popular usage it inevitably acquires new meanings and uses which
are no longer subjected to definition or to scientific validation. The
term "repression," for example, as it was absorbed into popular cuI·
ture and usage has lost nearly all connections with Freud's concept
of repression, except through the name itself. In contemporary
thought and morality the concept of repression has probably had
