ABSTRACT
To reach right decisions in accordance with the rules and principles of one's conscience requires deliberation; one has to learn how to weigh up a question, to sort out the issues involved, to balance one moral requirement against another. As a child grows he is trained, in our society, to refer to his conscience; he is taught that his conscience has an official authority and validity. A young child first has to learn to recognize that the different parts of his body are distinct from one another and from other objects, and that all belong to a single whole, communicating sensations to a single centre, 'himself'. An essential component in this frame of interpretation is the idea that the cause of the suffering lies within oneself rather than in something external, such as a malicious human being, a demon, bad luck, or hostile circumstances; that is, in technical terms, the individual is 'intro-punitive' rather than 'extra-punitive'.
