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[[Ethics ]] concerns mores: [[human ]] [[moral ]] attitudes in general and, more specifically, rules of [[behavior ]] and their justifications. This [[system ]] of rules attributes values to behaviors by judging [[them ]] to be [[good ]] or bad according to their intrinsic moral qualities or their [[concrete ]] [[social ]] consequences. For [[Freud]], ethics takes up where [[totemism ]] and taboos leave off, and constitutes the basis of all [[religion]].

In [[Civilization ]] and Its Discontents (1930a [1929]), Freud noted, "The [[cultural ]] [[super-ego ]] has developed its ideals and set up its [[demands]]. Among the latter, those which deal with the relations of human beings are comprised under the heading of ethics" (p. 142).

As early as the Studies on [[Hysteria ]] (1895a), Freud [[analyzed ]] [[hysterical ]] conversion [[symptoms ]] as the result of a [[conflict ]] between [[patients]]' [[erotic ]] [[thoughts ]] and moral ideals. The adjective "[[ethical]]," ethisch in [[German]], appeared for the first [[time ]] in 1898 in "[[Sexuality ]] in the Aetiology of the [[Neuroses]]." In that essay, Freud raised the question of whether physicians have the [[right ]] to intrude into the [[sexual ]] lives of their patients and whether their "ethical [[duty]]" might not be "to keep away from the [[whole ]] business of sex" (p. 264).

The [[notion ]] of ethics in Freud's [[work ]] refers primarily to those moral ideals in the [[name ]] of which individuals [[renounce ]] any [[instinctual ]] impulses that are [[irreconcilable ]] with the [[narcissistic ]] ideals of the ego. These ideals are based on [[images ]] of loved [[objects ]] and the esteem of the [[superego]]. For Freud, the symptoms of the [[transference ]] neuroses were substitutes for the remains of old [[loves ]] that were [[forbidden ]] by [[morality]].

The reign of "[[civilized ]] morality" begins when the [[drives ]] are renounced. This forms the basis of religion and [[culture]]. Yet when individuals renounce the drives, they are deprived of the sexual and [[aggressive ]] satisfactions demanded by the id, and so run the risk of [[neurosis]].

This traditional conception of ethics is emphasized when the German [[word ]] Ethik is translated as morals or morality. In what Angélo Hesnard calls "the morbid [[universe ]] of [[guilt]]," the [[unconscious ]] [[feelings ]] of guilt that [[cause ]] [[neurotic ]] symptoms do not relate to the [[material ]] [[reality ]] of the [[patient]]'s actions. Neurotic patients are [[guilty ]] only of their [[secret ]] intentions. The [[psychic ]] reality of the forbidden and [[repressed ]] wishes of "the [[child ]] that is in man" (Freud, 1910a [1909], p. 36) is accessible to us by [[dream ]] [[interpretation ]] and is realized in the course of [[analytic ]] [[treatment ]] in the [[love]]/hate [[relationship ]] of the transference. And yet, by reawakening the demons banished by morality, does not [[psychoanalysis ]] run the risk of destroying the very foundations of culture, which always demands sacrifices of the [[individual]]?

This question leads to [[another ]] conception of ethics, one that is specific to psychoanalysis. The [[ethics of psychoanalysis ]] is a consequence of how its [[practice ]] implements its method and rules. Psychoanalysis does not aim to make the individual adapted to his or her [[environment]]. In [[other ]] [[words]], it does not serve the good; rather, it seeks the [[truth]]. When Freud recommended that physicians not give in to the amorous advances of their patients, he was giving [[voice ]] less to traditional morality than to a [[psychoanalytic ]] ethics conceived in [[terms ]] of the requirements of a praxis founded on a method. The patient, by engaging in [[transference love]], aggravated by a [[resistance ]] to [[remembering]], aims to reduce the [[analyst ]] to a lover. The analyst is ethically bound not to respond, because he does not mistake the transference for [[true ]] love. He wants to [[frustrate ]] the [[analysand]]'s love so that it can be analyzed. Otherwise, the analyst would become allied with the resistance. Here moral motives converge with psychoanalytic [[technique]].

This psychoanalytic notion of ethics serves [[philosophical]], [[religious]], and moral causes. In [[Moses ]] and [[Monotheism ]] (1939a), Freud showed that ethics originates in "a [[sense ]] of guilt felt on account of a suppressed hostility to God" (p. 134). Using [[Judaism]], he returned to the [[myth ]] of the [[murder ]] of the [[father ]] that he developed in [[Totem ]] and [[Taboo ]] (1912-1913a). Freud argued that [[people ]] have always known that at one time they had a [[primitive ]] father (which in religion becomes the godhead) and that they put him to [[death]]. The resulting "[[nostalgia ]] for the father" reflected an [[insatiable ]] [[need ]] to appease a [[sense of guilt ]] by changing the father's prohibitions into ethical obligations. When sons ingest the [[dead ]] father's [[body]], they come to [[identify ]] with someone whom they simultaneously love and [[hate]]. Thus, the dead father becomes the superego, demanding [[self]]-sacrifice. When the [[subject ]] obeys the superego and renounces his sexual and aggressive impulses, he can both hate and love the parental [[authority ]] within himself.

Freud revealed the [[role ]] that [[masochism ]] and [[narcissism ]] play when the drives are reined in by ethics. A subject who suffers by sacrificing his or her desires to the supposed demands of the Other feels loved and chosen by this Other while [[unconsciously ]] reproaching the Other for [[sadism]].

Jacques [[Lacan ]] discussed how the death [[drive ]] functions in the [[dialectic ]] between the [[pleasure ]] [[principle ]] and the [[reality principle]]. He began by declaring the [[prohibition ]] of [[incest ]] to be the only [[universal ]] law. All other rules of morality are merely historical and cultural variations of this law. [[Desire ]] for the [[mother ]] can never be [[satisfied]], even after the murder of the deterring father, because [[acting out ]] incest would cause the social [[order ]] to collapse. For this [[reason]], the "naturalist liberation" of pleasure fails (Lacan, p. 4), [[jouissance ]] remains forbidden, and the prohibition is reinforced by the work of [[mourning]]. The [[human condition ]] is [[tragic ]] because the more the subject renounces pleasure, the more his superego demands greater sacrifices. Nevertheless, the superego is necessary to produce the [[economy ]] of pleasure and to introduce desire into the [[world ]] of [[symbolic ]] mediation.

In the [[character ]] of [[Antigone]], Lacan found an incarnation of a "pure and simple desire for death" (p. 282). This "raw," "inflexible" "kid" (pp. 250, 263) opposes the ethics of the good, represented by Creon. With her sacrifice, Antigone becomes the pure and simple relation between [[being ]] human and "the break introduced by the [[presence ]] of [[language ]] in the human [[life]]" (p. 279). The result is that "when an [[analysis ]] is carried through to its end the subject will [[encounter ]] the [[limit ]] in which the problematic of desire is raised" (p. 300).

[[Jacques Lacan ]] emphasized the human subject's debt to language in becoming human and thus proposed a psychoanalytic [[ethic ]] that did not concern itself with [[happiness ]] and the good. The [[idealization ]] of the [[figure ]] of Antigone produced a [[Hegelian ]] imperative to "pure [[action]]" that could conceivably be added to or substituted for traditional ethico-religious ideals. What Patrick Guyomard refers to as "the [[enjoyment ]] of the tragic" must give way to the specific requirements of psychoanalytic work, a [[work of mourning ]] that, according to Conrad Stein, leads to a "crossing of the tragic." Thus the ethics of psychoanalysis is a consequence of its specific method.

See also: [[Boundary violations]]; Criminology and psychoanalysis; Judgment of condemnation; [[Kantianism ]] and psychoanalysis; [[Seminar]], Lacan's; [[Transgression]]; Truth.[[Bibliography]]