Page 115 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

92 Communication and Evolution of Society

judgments, below the threshold of his interactive competence.
There thus occurs a shifting between the stage of his normal
role behavior and the stage at which he works through moral
conflicts. Because it places the acting subject under an imperative
for consciously working out conflicts, moral consciousness is an
indicator of the degree of stability of general interactive compe-
tence.
The connection between conscious conflict resolution and mo-
rality becomes clear in extreme situations that do not admit an
unequivocal moral solution, situations that make a rule violation
(an offense) unavoidable. An action that nevertheless stands
under conditions of morality in such situations ts called “tragic.”
The concept of the tragic includes the intentional assumption of
punishment or guilt, that is, the fulfillment of the moral postu-
Jate of consciousness even in the face of a morally insoluble di-
lemma. This throws some light on the meaning of moral action
in general; we qualify as morally good those persons who maintain
the interactive competence they have mastered for (largely con-
flict-free) normal situations even under stress, that is, in morally
relevant conflicts of action, instead of unconsciously defending
against conflict.
As ego psychology shows, the ego devises mechanisms for
situations in which it would like to avoid conscious conflict
resolution. These ingenious strategies for avoiding conflict con-
tribute to a reaction to danger that is similar to flight; dangers are
screened out of consciousness as the ego hides itself, as it were,
from them. External reality and instinctual impulses are not
the only sources of danger; the sanctions of the superego also
represent a threat. We have anxiety if we act in moral conflicts
otherwise than we believe by clear judgment that we have to
act. In defending against these anxieties (which signal the re-
currence of infantile anxieties) we conceal at the same time the
discrepancy between our ability to judge and our willingness to
act. The theory of defense mechanisms has, however, not been
significantly improved since the first provisional attempt at
systematization by Anna Freud.” Interestingly, several more re-
cent investigations suggest that a developmental-logical ordering