A psychoanalytic approach to ethics

The paper addresses some of the problems of the relationship between ethics and psychology. Philosophical assumptions which are considered are shown to bear directly on the source of the conviction that one ought to behave in some particular way. The choice of an "empirical" ethic, i.e., an epistomology which rests on psychology, is perceived to be a confusing pseudo-scientific error, which has developed in response to increasing guilt. Guilt is seen to play a central role in the evolution of the superego and the self, considered from both an ontological and and phylogenetic basis. These problems, first presented in Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud, 1930), are considered from the standpoint of what is known about normal superego development, the influence of social and historical forces on such development, and pathological superego development. The Kantian assumption of a transcendent moral authority is shown to be related to the earliest symbiotic unity of mother and child, in the context of the first internalized constraints on the aggressive and libidinal drives. The burden of such constraints is seen to be guilt, increasingly less tolerable through the interaction of social, historical, and psychological influences. The response to this guilt is a major influence in the denial of a transcendent moral authority, and the shift toward fewer constraints on the drives. The more obvious social and political consequences are considered.