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In his second discussion, Dr. Milrod emphasizes “that fear of punishment is not the distinguishing feature of moral functioning prior to superego formation.” He states that the Kris Study Group was therefore incorrect to study differences between fear of punishment and guilt because there is no distinction between the two affect states. Rather, Dr. Milrod asserts that one can observe a distinction between the preoedipal and postoedipal child when one evaluates “the source of punishment, whether it comes from external authority or internal authority.” He says that “morality exists before and after superego formation as does fear of punishment. But the important distinctions exist before and after superego formation and these depend on where the feared punishment comes from. …” It seems to me that this formulation simply removes the problem one step. The central question is whether, via the analytic method, one can observe a strict differentiation between an “autonomous depersonalized agency” without reference to external objects and “personified” fears of punishment when one analyzes a patient's fantasies: that is, the internal images.
Dr. Milrod dismisses the group's conclusion which states that it could not find preoedipal contributions to superego issues independent of oedipal factors. Since Dr. Milrod expresses grave concern that the group was attempting to discard “an enormously valuable theory” “begun by Freud and since elaborated by important contributors to ego psychology,” I would stress that this idea — that it is very difficult to sort out preoedipal from oedipal contributions — is not novel, it dates back to Freud. As I state in the report, “Freud stresses that the preoedipal period is particularly difficult to understand because it is