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PARTISAN REVIEW
idealization. Strong posltlve attachments to parents were not
established, and hence internalizations of parental ideals were poor,
as were certain further internal structural consequences of such an
absence . Kardiner reminds us that if his theory is correct , then it
follows that "repressions do not fall in the same place in all cultures ."
And he concludes that "if the super-ego is inadequate and there is no
internalization of discipline, we cannot expect the society to have
any interest in social justice, in a judicial system, or even in
government. "
The last culture Kardiner examined was a rural, Midwestern
American community, "Plainville, U.S.A." Kardiner had no
difficulty in constructing from
J
ames West's accounts the familiar
basic personality type of our society, formed in this connection in
childhood primarily out of strong attachments by way of idealization
and internalization of the parents, especially the mother. This
personality was also thwarted sexually in ways that psychoanalysis
had for some time made readers familiar with . However, a number
of changes also seem to have occurred. Except for the very poor,
religion was already (in 1939) in a state of desuetude, and had been
replaced as a salvational equivalent - as it had been in the society at
large-by "success or social well-being." In order to begin to explain
some of the complexities of our civilization's internal character,
Kardiner undertook a schematic interpretation of its past history.
Medieval cosmology conceived of the world as governed by a
"powerful father whose commands" were at the same time "natural
law ." Under the dual influence of the Reformation and the new
natural and mathematical sciences of the seventeenth century that
succeeded it, the elements of this constellation underwent a trans–
mutation . Natural law was freed from its contingency on divine will;
man's conception of himself and his relation to both the deity and the
world shifted , as did the valences and vectors of force within those
mental agencies which govern the individual person's sense of
responsibility for himself and his sense of authorization to
investigate and explore freely both external and internal circum–
stances. It amounted, in Kardiner's words , to "a new allocation of
the superego or conscience mechanisms." This new allocation had its
due influence on social and personal realities , on notions of the ·
deity, on economic formations (which of course also influenced these
allocations in turn) , and on changing class and status groupings.
But, according to Kardiner, the most direct and important
consequences of these summatory changes was an "alteration of the
whole superego system."
