From long and congenial association with various branches of The Society for Ethical Culture, I know I need not make any apology for my subject,—Freud and Scientific Morality. However, even with a hardy-minded group of seekers after truth, it may not be amiss to make at the outset two explanatory and extenuating reservations. The first is that, in discussing Freud’s profound and revolutionary contributions, I am giving him credit, as is proper, I think, for many later developments not explicitly in his immediate teachings which his reorienting insights, however, made possible. A great innovator deserves credit for his influence as well as his explicit doctrines, especially when he has undergone, as did Freud, the martyrdom of a crusading pioneer. The second explanation concerns a perhaps disproportionate emphasis on these later developments, with references to some of their yet undeveloped potentials, in the interest of making the discussion as constructive as possible with regard to certain contemporary practical aspects of the eternal but ever-changing problem of what are the best and most fruitful sanctions of morality in human society.
Any consideration of Freud in historical perspective clearly reveals the basis for the initial misunderstanding and distrust of his new theories about the basic mechanisms of human behavior. In exposing the factors of irrationality and the wide areas of irresponsibility in human conduct, he could not help appearing to most of his generation as a psychological Beelzebub coming to overthrow the temple of morality, and undermining, if accepted, its very foundations,—the concept of basic responsibility in intent and in deed for waking behavior. Here, the conventional moralists thought, was a scientific amoralism which threatened to sap the very essence of morals and justice. There are unfortunately recalcitrant conservatives who still think so. But a longer perspective on the progression of moral theories acquaints us with similarly critical upheavals that in the end have merely shifted the basic rationale of morality, and if anything, reenforced rather than destroyed its effective structure. In the context of a customary morality of outward conformity of deed, the Christian and other ethical reforms that pivoted morality on intent were, in their day, radically revolutionary. They were inevitably regarded as dangerously ineffective and anarchistic. Historically, however, they raised morals to a new level. Again, centuries after, the Protestant revolt against institutionally imposed orthodoxy and moral paternalism, seemed to conservative minds an irreparable breach of moral authority and an invalidation of a standard right and wrong. But historically the Protestant reform reenforced the conscience sanctions inherent in Christianity, and where vital, enlarged the scope of the individual’s moral initiative and responsibility. But here, too, were the unrealistic assumptions of Puritanism,—free-will and full moral responsibility for all mature behavior, and to offset the inconsistencies of fact, an overemphasis on the myth of the two Adams,—man’s carnal and spiritual selves. Freud’s sub and Unconscious came as a terrible and terrifying heresy to all this, and traditional morals have not yet recovered from the shock or been able to absorb constructively to any great extent the constructive scientific implications. For this fourth great reform of morals, like its predecessors, has only slowly passed through its iconoclastic stage into a constructive and reformative phase.
Inevitably shocking and disillusioning were its first onslaughts, especially the introduction of the concept of instinctual motivation and comparative irresponsibility. Scientifically demonstrable though they were, they seemed to undermine all absolute moral standards and neutralize the moral force of sin. Frustrations and the trauma of past experience seemed, as explanations of much significant human conduct, pillars of a new amoralism, unwarrantable alibis for crime and misbehavior. Only the extreme pathological degrees were conceded; as general explanation of conduct Freudian interpretations of conduct were sinister and demoralizing. Only slowly was it recognized that blame and responsibility were not eliminated but projected more scientifically and more objectively to the right foci, with consequently more realistic and reliable causal interpretation. And more important still, that eventually preventive moral discipline was within grasp when such mechanisms were fully understood. Early environmental experience, especially parental ignorance and conflict, so to speak took the place of “original sin” and evil nature, and immoral society became one of the prime causes for immoral man. Not that the individual, in any amended contemporary form of Freudian thought, is regarded as an instinctual automaton or as completely “determined” as in the early Freudian interpretations, but nevertheless, the foci of moral blame and responsibility are basically different and the procedure of moral pedagogy must be shifted accordingly. In scientific morality, society must be made conscious of its determination now and assume its share, usually the larger share, of moral blame and responsibility. The pragmatics of family and school conditionings must be regarded as the building forces of morality rather than their homiletics and their verbal professions; the emotions and instincts must be conceded their primary roles and be rated according to their strength and their functional objectives. There is, of course, a real threat to the traditional substance of morality, especially its conventional sanctions and its traditional rationale, but a morality founded on unrealistic notions of the basic mechanisms of human behavior cannot stand the impact of a scientific age, and must become reconstructed in order to survive. It need not perish, however, and will not except where it is too conservative to change.
In all of this, of course, one does not confuse part explanation with the whole many-sided situation that is not to be accounted for in terms of psycho-analytic factors solely. Nor should one confound original Freudianism with the many modifications of later dynamic psychology and psychoanalytic theory. The significant point is that human behavior, once approached from this realistic and objective Freudian point of view can never revert to the old view of an original or permanent human nature or an absolute, arbitrary and unchanging morality which was its associated corollary. And the new view, now corroborated by more recent developments in all phases of psychology, and sociology, as well as by contemporary cultural and social anthropology confirms what originally came into view with Freud and his basic theories. As Judd Marmor recently puts this; what we call human nature grows out of man’s social relationships and experiences and cannot be separated therefrom. “To add the revolutionizing moral corollary to this, we might say: human nature thus understood is a by-product of its social conditionings and not only varies but can be moulded and controlled within limits of course, through our knowledge of these ways of conditioning.”
This, in final analysis, is to make morals basically a socio-biological matter, where individual character and personality patterns are products primarily of the interaction between individuals and their social environments, especially their early social experiences. The evil in man ceases to have metaphysical and theological explanation and implications. It becomes, (with the good also) a function reflecting of the conflicts and maladjustment or the harmony and functional adaptation between these conditionings and the demands and objectives of the social cultures and societies in which men must live and move and find their satisfaction or sorrow, their effectiveness or failure, their self-realizations or frustrations.
This all adds up to the whole contemporary and emerging “science of man,” but there can be little doubt that the core idea and the dynamic principle of interpretation issued from the historic shock and the drastic reorientation of viewpoint involved in the Freudian account of the hidden mechanics of basic human behavior. Such a functional interpretation of human conduct, with its operational theory of human nature, has long since passed its initial negative phase of demolishing traditional and unrealistic thinking. Slowly it is developing a positive phase which promises in time to rebuild the temple that at the outset it seemed destined only to destroy. In addition to a reliable diagnostics of character and personality, it promises even an objective etiology, so to speak of sin, and more important than that even, to make possible not only an effective moral therapy but a scientific and reliable moral pedagogy and a preventive moral and mental hygiene. Character is clearly seen as susceptible of scientific control at least in the early formative stage of its making, and so, with this potential of scientific control, dynamic psychology could well become the prime guardian of morality in terms of a new and realistic moral pedagogy. Few would complain of the sentimental loss of the old idealistic explanations and their purely abstract rationailsations if such a concrete base were to be substituted, whereby individual reform and social reconstruction became subject to predictable manipulation.
To quote Marmor again, and more extendedly: “The advanced psychoanalytic view today sees the relationship between the individual and society as a dialectical one and denies that any basic conflict of interests inevitably exists between them. It affirms that human personality is neither innately “evil” nor innately “good,” and that man’s potentialities in either direction depend on the incentives offered by the society in which he develops. It recognizes that human consciousness is a unique resultant of the interaction between the human organism and the social influences to which it is exposed from the moment of birth onward. It asserts that the particular medium in which this occurs is pedagogic conditioning.
If this is true, through the clearer more objective vision of such doctrines, we have a scientifically attainable good in terms of predictable pedagogy of conditioning, and this pedagogy is both constructive through proper early conditioning and reconstructive in terms of psycho-therapy for the individual and possibly also through social psychoanalysis ties for societies and cultures. Parallelling this, we have two scientific and manageable substitutes for the Devil and metaphysical evil,—parental and pedagogic ignorance and the social irrationalities of self contradicting values in social usage and tradition. Both are realistic enough for progressive exorcizing without magic or miracle.
It is to a consideration of the latter that in conclusion I should like to turn. It concerns particularly the moral dilemmas of our time, the old dilemmas perhaps but so tragically multiplied by the complexities and expansions of our modern ways and means of living. The crucial moral problems of the day concern group relations and the morality involved in their control, although the same complications cover the relationship of the individual to our modern complex and confused society. Here the insights of psychoanalytic psychology are most promising, and come in the nick of time considering both the pressure of the problems and the complete default of the old morality in even understanding their origin, not to speak of their preventive control. Dynamic psychology has plunged into this cauldron of the times and found most promising clues. The diagnosis is disillusioning and hard to face, but under the scrutiny of social psychoanalysis society turns out to be the Great Sinner by reason of its own unresolved value irrationalities. We get the frank verdict of a sick society schizoid in terms of professing conflicting values, with no clear indication of priority and no radical effort to resolve the self-contradictions.
It is enlightening to particularize some of these unresolved conflicts. Contemporary society, much as it may dislike the diagnosis of sickness and schizoid tendencies, cannot escape it when it so patently, for example simultaneously professes war and the Christian doctrine of peace, when it tolerates a selfish secular ethics of business competition and exploitation and professes social security Christian charity and ethical altruism, nationalism and internationalism, racism and the brotherhood of man. It is of course, not these tendencies as counter-trends both in human interests and their reflection in human society. It is the confusion resulting from simultaneous profession and practise of irreconcilables. The new science of social analysis that is beginning for the first time to point this out with clarity and inescapable logic, brings with it a realistic promise of drastic and practical steps toward social sanity. While offering no panacea, undoubtedly objective analysis of the unconscious unstated assumptions of various societies and cultures, and of our own particularly, offers the first realistic step in the solution of such conflict dilemmas. The same techniques doubtless have great pertinence to the various sub-groups in a given society. As elsewhere our first scientific insights must come from a realistic accounting of the pathological conditions, working over into clearer understanding of the normal factors of operation and then to the final development of scientific controls. The mere possibility of any such insight and potential control of social group morality is thrilling. Even to become aware of the situation as so conditioned is an achievement. For the new perspective immediately establishes a demand for realistic explanation and disestablishes the old illusions of inevitability and self-righteousness. What has been man or history-made can certainly be more rationally considered both as needing explanation and as subject to possible change.
In this new field, it is striking how analogies worked over from the Freudian schematics of individual psychology seem to fit effectively into the analysis of cultures, nations and sub-groups such as minorities and classes. There has been the inevitable hasty projection in some cases, but more often, these have led to enlightening clues and useful interpretations. Out of the systematic analysis of social irrationalism, norms and procedures are emerging, at least in the training of children, calculated to minimize the hold over of the irrationalisms of prejudice, fear and suspicion of difference, lack of confidence and of cooperative attitudes, and the like. There is no royal or easy road to the social sanity that is the end objective of such procedures, but certainly an encouraging conviction that steps on the way are practicable and teachable. Social group dynamics, progressively understood, do seem to offer prospects of the techniques of social control so urgently but until recently so unhopefully needed.
Without being able to go into the more technical professional details, in which I hasten to confess myself merely an amateur, I hope sufficient has been said to convince you of the new dimension in moral understanding and control which has issued from the psychological unorthodoxies of Freud. They proved fruitful innovations in providing for the first time a realistic dynamics of character, human personality and behavior, and with them brought what I have outlined warrantably and as a new scientific morality. Whose implications can no longer be set aside as immoral or ignored under the equally damning faint praise of amorality.