Developmental Aspects of Morality as a Part of Functions of Control

Abstract

What is typical for the development of professional psychotherapy during the last two decades is the grounding of a new profession in scientific research, forming new knowledge by interrelating the data from different scientific disciplines, developing new models of understanding the human mind and transcending the level of basic theories and approaches. Therefore the understanding of human moral development can not be equated with Freud's theory of a man's mind, with his structural theory and development of the superego. Kernberg (1976) offers a heuristic frame for understanding the progressive evolutionary changes of the human mind in the conditions of reciprocal interactions and influences. If we observe the processes of internalization, formation and reformation of internal mental representation, we can trace much more than the exchange between the subject and environment. We face the process of mentalization, dependent on mental organization. The basic schemas of mentalization are relative – internalized and organized in primary object relations, hand in hand with the child’s maturation of so- called reflective functions. A two-year-old infant is surprisingly capable to integrate the experience from symbiotic relations, steps of separation-individuation, attachment style and the capacity of reading the mind and emotions of others. By means of social learning the infant forms early social mental schemas - the basis of interacting in new relationships. These processes influence the forming of a certain style of mentalization. Mentalization, connected to social interactions, is the most important factor of moral development, that is of character formation. The developed mentalization style may be adaptive or maladaptive, even manipulative. After the reflective functions together with the mentalization style become integrated in a personality structure together with moral feelings, they represent constant representations of social situations. Psychotherapists should take into account that their patients as well as their own representations of social situations may be the key factors of the therapeutic relation.