Page 137 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 10

Comment to

„The coming of faith:

law, conscience, and moral Mar Alvarez-Segura

sensitivity of the human Child and Ado-
lescent Psychiatrist,
soul“ PhD in Psychology.
Professor at Abat
Oliba University,
Barcelona (Spain).
I felt very hopeful reading about conscience in
Sara Groen-Colyn’s article because it highlights
how conscience is always an interesting topic
in secular psychology, although it has someti-
mes been covered by different concepts such as
narcissism, self, intersubjectivity, shame…At which Christian theologians reinforced the no-
the end all these terms lies the question of how tion that the relationship to God gives consci-
we should act and based on what. The author of ence its very dignity and authority. The Scho-
this article starts by pointing out that modern lastics distinguished between synderesis as ‘an
psychology has not considered real or ontologi- innate nondeliberative inclination to the moral
cal guilt, viewing them as opposites of neurotic good’ and conscientia as ‘an act of judgment
guilt. She reveals along the article the crucial based in practical reason.’
differences between ontological and neurotic
conscience. Under the development approach, there are two
crucial periods for the development of consci-
Based on this idea, she makes a description of ence: the first is the nine months when the ex-
different conceptions of conscience, starting perience of unconditional love will be the base
with the Judeo-Christian tradition, continu- of what eventually will become a mature Chri-
ing with the developmental approach, with the stian conscience. The second crucial period is
concept of super-ego and the ‘evil conscience’, from 6 to 12 years old; during this period the
and ending with the conscience in union with greatest moral need is to know God’s merciful
Christ. love and infinite tenderness. This approach re-
minds us that we cannot separate our consci-
In the Biblical tradition there was no a word for ence from the quality of early childhood expe-
‘conscience’, but there was a Hebrew word used riences, although conscience cannot be fixated
for the whole sense of the inner life, which in- on that period.
cludes the features that we call conscientia; it is
lêb. In the New Testament Paul brings the word The author continues the analysis of the diffe-
syneidēsis, a term used by both secular Greek rence between conscience and super-ego. She
and Hellenistic Jewish writers. It was transla- states with slim intuition that current psycho-
ted by Roman writers to conscientia. The big logy, as medieval thinkers did with conscience
step in the Gospel approach was that the pain from synderesis, differentiate conscience from
felt regarding bad actions was not only based the superego. The latter was understood as a
on critical self-reflection or ability to judge the psychological structure engaged in moral acti-
actions of others. It disclosed the foundation of vity and developed through internalizations of
the guilt, which was a break in the relationship attitudes of the parents. Based on Frank Lake’s
with God. It is the consciousness of this separa- contribution, the author underlines a key point
tion which caused the pain of the soul that we of the article when she equates the super-ego
know as guilt. with neurotic conscience. After this clarifica-
This idea arrived in the Scholastic period in tion she explains how the neurotic conscience,

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