Essay
To what extent is Freud’s psychological approach to conscience the most helpful approach?
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This was written in year 13, achieving an A* grade and discussing Freud's approach to conscience
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To what extent is Freud’s psychological approach to conscience the most helpful approach?Sigmund Freud and Thomas Aquinas each offer contrasting approaches to the concept of conscience.
Aquinas’ approach is theological, linking conscience to the God-given gift of ratio and synderesis,
whereas Freud’s approach is psychological and believes the conscience comprises the id, superego,
and the ego. Whilst both approaches have limitations, as will be discussed throughout this essay, much
of Freud’s thinking has now been challenged or rejected in the fields of psychiatry and
psychoanalysis, in part due to a lack of evidence to support his notions. With such strong opposition,
this essay will therefore demonstrate how Freud’s psychological approach to conscience is far from
being the most helpful approach, rather Thomas Aquinas’ theory poses more strengths. By no-means
is Aquinas’ approach to conscience faultless, though he is able to offer an all-encompassing, detailed,
and ultimately a more compelling notion of the conscience which Freud is unable to match. Moreover,
this line of argument will include a variety of scholarly opinions to both corroborate and challenge
this stream of thought.
According to Freud, conscience is not based on rational decision making, but rather it is a product of
psychological factors that influence human beings. Through this logic, Freud developed the theory of
psychosexual development, which takes place in a series of fixed stages. Each stage is associated with
a particular part of the body as the libido focuses on that part of the body as a source of pleasure,
frustration, or both. Freud proposed that moral feelings derive from the superego, the part of his
psychic apparatus that develops as a result of the Oedipus complex. Freud pinpoints the Oedipus
complex to occur during the phallic stage of psychosexual development, between 3 and 6 years old.
The Oedipus Complex involves the child’s feelings of attraction towards the opposite sex parent;
Freud contends that boys are in love with their mother’s and girls have penis envy. However, because
the boy fears that his father will castrate him and the girl fears that she will lose her mother’s love,
both end up identifying with their same-sex parent. For Freud, identification involves internalising all
the same sex parents’ moral behaviour and the superego is therefore an ‘inner parent’ as such,
rewarding good actions and punishing bad ones. Freud asserts that girls have weaker superegos than
men because her identification with her mother is less complete. His evidence for this assertion is due
to the fact that girls rely more on external authority figures throughout their childhood and therefore
have to be more compliant. Fisher and Greenberg corroborate Freud’s approach to conscience, and
more specifically, his theory of psychosexual development. The scholars argue that children have to
cope with erotic feelings towards the parent of the opposite sex and experience feelings of hostility
towards the parent of the same sex, thus greatly endorsing Freud’s view. They further reported that
fear of castration is typical among men and is intensided when they are exposed to erotic heterosexual
stimulation. Whilst Fisher and Greenberg therefore greatly corroborate Freuds’ psychological
approach to conscience, his theory of psychosexual development also encounters several flaws.
Arguably the biggest weakness of Freud’s approach is that it does not apply to all cultures and
historical periods. In the Trobriand Islands, for example, it is the mothers brother, not the child’s
father, who acts as the authority figure. This is therefore incompatible with Freud’s thinking of sexual
jealousy when the father in this case, is not directly involved. Moreover, many feminists regard
Freud’s account as ‘phallocentric’. Karen Horney and Clara Thompson both elucidate that what girls
and women envy is not the penis but rather the superior status that men enjoy in our society. Both
scholars argue a more probable and compelling line of argument than Freud, diminishing the value of
his psychological approach to conscience. Finally, Freud’s claim that males have stronger consciences
than females because they identify out of a stronger motive has been contested by Hoffman. The
scholar reports that females are slightly more able to resist temptation than males and therefore Freud
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