Comparison Of Conscience With Super Ego And Mature Moral Conscience

In this essay I am going to discuss a conscience dominated by the super-ego and a mature moral conscience, I will then discuss the differences that lie between them. It is said that our conscience is a person’s moral sense of right and wrong. We gain our conscience from our education, at home or in school and the background we come from. I will be discussing conscience in relation to a mature moral conscience and a conscience dominated by the super ego. As Aquinas stated in relation to the primacy of conscience ‘every conscience, whether right or wrong, obliges us in such a way that whoever acts against conscience sins’ (Aquinas, 1274).

Sigmund Freud’s theory was that the human psyche has more than one aspect. He saw personality being divided into three different parts, and all three developing at different stages in our life. The id is the primitive and instinctive component of personality, the infantile bundle of needs and wants of the child. ‘The unconscious reservoir of instinctual drives largely dominated by the pleasure principle’ (Richard Gula, ). The ego is ‘that part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world.’ (Freud, 1923) It mediates the demands of society and reality of the physical world. The super-ego incorporates the values of society that are learned through education, by someone’s parents or guardian or school. ‘The ego of another superimposed on our own to serve as an internal censor to regulate conduct by using guilt as its powerful weapon’ (Gula, ). Behaviour, which falls short of the ideal self, may be ‘punished by the super-ego through guilt’ (McLeod, 2016). The super-ego can also reward us through the ideal self ‘when we behave properly by making us feel proud’. (McLeod, 2016) A person may set their standard too high and as a result anything they do will present the idea of a failure. The ideal self and conscience are strongly determined from childhood by the parental values and the background of where you are brought up.

‘Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil.’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par 1777) The dignity of the human person implies and requires uprightness of moral conscience. Freud argues that the moral feelings such as shame, guilt and remorse are generic qualities and that the presence of these are explained by the beliefs and interpretations of the person who is feeling the shame, guilt and remorse. ‘A person is said to have bad moral conscience because of consciously entertained beliefs about himself and his situation, not because of the presence of specific sensations, occurrent-feelings or the presence of a disposition to certain kinds of behaviours.’ (Freud, ) Freud then goes on to discuss the concept we have for characterising human experiences, they ‘signify abilities, tendencies or pronenesses to do, not things of one unique kind, but things of lots of different kinds.’ (Ryle, 1976)

Distinguishing the superego from the conscience is showing the patient the difference between ‘you should’ or ‘you must/mustn’t’ and ‘I want to/I desire’ as imperatives of his/her behaviour. You should/you must/ you mustn’t are someone else’s commands, whereas desires belong to ourselves. Richard Gula’s book Reason Informed by Faith contains a 9 point table including the differences between the super ego and conscience. The superego commands us to act for the sake of gaining approval, or out of fear of losing love compared to our conscience responds to an invitation to love; in the very act of responding to others, one becomes a certain sort of person and co-creates self-value. The second point outlines the superego as turned in towards self in order to secure one’s sense of being of value, of being loveable compared to the conscience being a fundamental openness that is orientated toward the other and towards the value which calls for action. The superego tends to be static by merely repeating a prior command, it is unable to learn or function creatively in a new situation. The conscience tends to be dynamic by a sensitivity to the demand of values which call for new ways of responding. As a result of our background and prior knowledge our conscience is able to tell us the right or wrong thing to do in a new situation compared to the superego being unable to do so. Number 4 in Gula’s table states that the superego is orientated primarily towards authority, just obeying the command rather then responding to value like conscience. Conscience responds to the value that deserves preference regardless of whether authority recognises it or not.

Gula’s number five links back to the idea of our conscience growing over time and coming from our background and education. With the superego, primary attention us given to individual acts as being important in themselves in comparison to conscience giving primary attention to the larger process or pattern. Our superego is also linked to the past, for example, ‘the way we were’ compared to our conscience asking us ‘the sort of person we ought to become.’ Our conscience is orientated towards the future. Gula’s seventh point on his table states that with the superego, punishment is the sure guarantee of reconciliation. The more severe the punishment, the more certain one is of being reconciled. In contrast with conscience, reparation comes through structuring the future orientation towards the value in question. Creating a new future is also the way to make good the past. The transition from guilt to self-renewal comes fairly easily and rapidly by means of confessing to the authority with superego but the difference with conscience is that self-renewal is a gradual process of growth which characterises all dimensions of personal development. The final point from the tables states that often the superego finds a great disproportion between feelings of guilt experienced and the value at stake for extent of guilt depends more on the significance of authority figure ‘disobeyed’ than the weight of the value at stake. In comparison, the conscience experience of guilt is proportionate to the degree of knowledge and freedom as well as the weight of the value at stake, even though the authority may never have addressed the specific value.