[23] One is reminded of Rousseau’s famous mandarin!
[24] Every reasonable person will understand and take into account that
in this descriptive survey things that in reality occur by gradual
transitions are sharply differentiated and that the mere existence of
a super-ego is not the only factor concerned, but also its relative
strength and sphere of influence. All that has been said above in
regard to conscience and guilt, moreover, is common knowledge and
practically undisputed.
[25] This increased sensitivity of morals in consequence of ill-luck
has been illustrated by Mark Twain in a delicious little story: _The
First Melon I ever Stole_. This melon, as it happened, was unripe. I
heard Mark Twain tell the story himself in one of his lectures. After
he had given out the title, he stopped and asked himself in a doubtful
way: ‘Was it the first?’ This was the whole story.
[26] As has rightly been emphasized by Melanie Klein and other English
writers.
[27] In his _Psychoanalyse der Gesamtpersönlichkeit_, 1927, Franz
Alexander has, in connection with Aichhorn’s study of dissocial
behaviour in children, discussed the two main types of pathogenic
methods of training, that of excessive severity and of spoiling. The
‘unduly lenient and indulgent’ father fosters the development of an
over-strict super-ego because, in face of the love which is showered on
it, the child has no other way of disposing of its aggressiveness than
to turn it inwards. In neglected children who grow up without any love
the tension between ego and super-ego is lacking; their aggressions can
be directed externally. Apart from any constitutional factor which may
be present, therefore, one may say that a strict conscience arises from
the co-operation of two factors in the environment: the deprivation of
instinctual gratification which evokes the child’s aggressiveness, and
the love it receives which turns this aggressiveness inwards, where it
is taken over by the super-ego.
[28] Goethe, _Wilhelm Meister_. The Song of the Harper.