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1977 Introductory Note - Only dead sciences fail to develop. But in a vital science, such as psycho-analysis, the theoretical substructure tends to develop fairly rapidly. The following paper, written in 1928, was based on theories which have largely been modified or replaced since then. I would have written it quite differently today, but have left it in for the benefit of those who might be interested in comparing it with the different way I have tried to deal with similar subjects in later papers - and in particular after the Second War by which time I had had an analysis with Mrs Klein.
Moreover, if the title seems pretentious now, the notion that such a mythical being as a ‘perfectly analysed man’ could exist and be free from ‘inhibitions’, the notion that he might also be free from morals could then have seemed well worth investigating.
Religion has been defined as: ‘un ensemble de scrupules qui font obstacle au libre exercice de nos facultés.’1 But definitions that are epigrammatically expressed seldom cover more than half the common connotation of the concepts to which they are applied. And this is no exception; for the totality of a man's inhibitions does not, as a rule, exhaust his religion. I suggest, however, that such a description is adequate to delineate the scope of morals.
It may be objected that there are inhibitions that are not moral and morals that are not inhibitions, and that the proposed definition neither is covered by, nor covers, the common