| Abstract
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The author, reviewing a book on Jung’s moral psychology by the psychoanalyst Dan Merkur, concludes that Jung’s idea of a divergence in aim between conscious and unconscious creates in the psyche a conflict of duties, toward the ego and its persona, on the one hand, and toward the self and its soul, on the other. An individual mind can reconcile this conflict only by ethical position-taking, which is arrived at through moral effort that fosters a growth of consciousness but is never without ambivalence and uncertainty as to the principles that have informed it. Jung’s idea that the unconscious is there to compensate for any ethical position taken by the conscious mind is echoed by contemporary psychoanalytic notions of collaboration between superego and ego in producing moral stances. Merkur is praised for recognizing Jung’s priority at countering Freud’s position that the unconscious cannot think about the ethical conflicts that are experienced by the ego. The author, reviewing a book on Jung’s moral psychology by the psychoanalyst Dan Merkur, concludes that Jung’s idea of a divergence in aim between conscious and unconscious creates in the psyche a conflict of duties, toward the ego and its persona, on the one hand, and toward the self and its soul, on the other. An individual mind can reconcile this conflict only by ethical position-taking, which is arrived at through moral effort that fosters a growth of consciousness but is never without ambivalence and uncertainty as to the principles that have informed it. Jung’s idea that the unconscious is there to compensate for any ethical position taken by the conscious mind is echoed by contemporary psychoanalytic notions of collaboration between superego and ego in producing moral stances. Merkur is praised for recognizing Jung’s priority at countering Freud’s position that the unconscious cannot think about the ethical conflicts that are experienced by the ego.
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