On Conscience

Throughout human history, as laws, crimes, belief systems, and ideas have evolved, that inner voice we call conscience has also silently taken shape… We often think of conscience as a personal moral feeling; however, perhaps conscience is not merely an individual characteristic, but rather the trace of a historical and cultural heritage in the psyche. While we claim that voice speaking within us as “I,” we rarely question how much of its origin belongs to us and how much belongs to a law established before us… So what is conscience? Today, I want to look at the concept of “conscience” from within the psychoanalytic literature.

In everyday language, when we say conscience, we think of an inner voice that distinguishes good from evil, a kind of moral compass that guides a person towards the right path. According to the Turkish Language Association (TDK), conscience is: “the feeling that prompts a person to make a judgment about their own behavior, that enables a person to reflect on their own moral values.” However, for psychoanalysis, the matter is more complex than that. Psychoanalysis treats conscience not as a moral category, but as a structural element of the psychic apparatus, a combination of the id, ego, and superego. The question is: Where does this inner voice come from? Why is it sometimes so harsh? Why can a person experience intense guilt even when no crime has been committed? These questions lead us directly to Freud.

Freud: The Foundations of Conscience Are Being Laid…

From Freud’s perspective, the first mention of the foundations of what we can call conscience in its modern sense can be said to have been made in his work Three Essays on Sexuality, first published in 1905, with the concept he gradually began to develop, which would later be called the Oedipus complex. “During his own self-analysis, Freud realized that in his childhood he felt love for his mother and jealousy for his father, and he associated these conflicting feelings with the Oedipus myth” (Quinodoz, Reading Freud, 2020, p. 77).

In a letter to Wilhelm Fliess dated October 15, 1897, Freud stated: “…these feelings, I believe, are shared by all young children… If this is truly the case… we understand why King Oedipus has such a powerful force” (quoted in: Quinodoz, 2020, p. 77).

From Individual to Mass: Totem and Taboo (1912–1913)

Freud, who had previously studied the psychology of neurotics, later examined ethnological and anthropological sources to try to shed light on some similarities between the psychology of primitive people and the psychology of neurotics (Quinodoz, 2020, p. 136). In 1912 and 1913, he published four articles; later, he compiled these articles into a book titled Totem and Taboo. In this book, Freud discusses the totemism practiced by the Australian Aborigines. In these tribes, where there is a totem, usually an animal, there is also a law: “(…) according to this, people belonging to the same totem cannot have sexual relations with each other, therefore they cannot marry” (p. 15 [200]; cited in Quinodoz, p. 136).

Quinodoz (2020) also; According to Freud, this totem-related fear of incest, seen in savages, is also present as a childlike characteristic in the psyche of neurotics: “…Unconscious incestuous fixations and regressions of the libido play a central role in neurosis; so much so that the incestuous desire towards parents constitutes the ‘core complex of neurosis’” (p. 137).

‘Taboo’ and Ambivalence

Later in the work, Freud examines the concept of taboo and explains that this word in Polynesian language; It states that it has a double meaning, one of which is ‘holy, blessed’ and the other is ‘worrisome’. This discovery is important for Freud. Because he thinks that the similarity between the taboos of obsessive neurotics and primitive societies lies in the ambivalence of emotions.

According to Freud, obsessive neurotics impose restrictions on themselves, just like the taboos of primitive tribes, and ‘these people are internally believed by a cruel conscience that if they violate some incomprehensible prohibitions, something bad will happen. However, this fear associated with the prohibition does not prevent primitive people, as well as neurotics, from feeling a pleasure-desire related to breaking the taboo” (Quinodoz, 2020, p. 137). This is where the ambivalence lies. These taboos and prohibitions are both scary and full of pleasure/desire.

With the understanding of taboos, Freud’s concepts of conscience or a sense of guilt begin to become clear: “Conscience is the internal perception that we reject certain desire stimulations that we feel within ourselves.” (Freud, Totem and Taboo, p. 72).

Conscience and Superego

In Freud’s structural model — id, ego and superego — which he developed over many years, conscience is a function of the superego. So how is the superego formed?

During the oedipal period, the child encounters parental authority. He desires. It competes. He gets jealous. He even feels hostility. These impulses are suppressed. But the suppressed aggression does not disappear. Instead of turning outward, it turns inward. And so the external law becomes an internal law.

At this point, conscience becomes an internalized authority rather than a moral guide…

Freud has an important observation: The stronger the superego, the greater the guilt. So, paradoxically, the subject who tries to be “good” may produce more guilt. Freud especially emphasizes this in The Disquiet of Civilization: Culture is based on the repression of impulses. Repressed aggression turns inward. This produces cultural guilt.

Therefore, conscience is not only an individual but also a cultural structure. The guilt that psychoanalysis deals with often arises not from an actual act but from an unconscious fantasy.

Melanie Klein: The Earlier Origins of Conscience

Freud places conscience in the Oedipal period. Melanie Klein, however, suggests an earlier beginning.

According to Klein, the infant forms internal object representations from the first months of life. There is a distinction between good and bad objects. The infant imagines harming the object it loves due to aggressive fantasies. And this is where guilt emerges.

However, there is an important difference in Klein: Conscience is not only punitive. With the transition to the depressive state, the child develops a desire to repair the object it believes it has harmed. So, conscience here is not law, but responsibility and the capacity for repair.

In Freud, conscience is more associated with prohibition and guilt. In Klein, the capacity to protect the loved object comes to the forefront.

Winnicott and Kohut: The Relational Dimension

In more contemporary approaches, the tone changes slightly. According to Winnicott, a healthy conscience arises from a sufficiently good caregiving experience. It develops on a secure relational ground. If the caregiving experience is fragile, conscience can become overly compliant.

Kohut, on the other hand, associates conscience with self-esteem regulation. Here, shame is more prominent than guilt. A person feels bad not because they have done something wrong, but because they are inadequate.

Final Word

When we consider all these approaches together; in psychoanalysis, conscience is related to law, aggression, desire, and relational experience. It cannot be reduced to a single theory. Sometimes it is punitive, sometimes restorative. And sometimes it functions as an insatiable demand.

Therefore, from a psychoanalytic perspective, conscience is not so much a moral compass as it is the nodal point of the subject’s relationship with law and desire.

Resources

Freud, S. (2021), Totem and Taboo (2nd Ed.), Türkiye İş Bankası Cultural Publications.

Quinodoz, J-M. (2020), Reading Freud, Bağlam Publications (430) Düş — Düşün Series (50).

Freud, S. (2018), Civilization and Its Discontents (6th Ed.), Metis Publications ‘Listening to the Other’ Series.