ABSTRACT
Super-ego education results in an inelastic, but under normal conditions stable, communal life which is easily directed; it requires only little individual responsibility, but considerably restricts the possible ways to individual happiness. The 'free', 'natural' method claims that it has abandoned all arbitrary restrictions and directions, and uses as its only method of discipline the direct influence of reality. All these rules have to be taught, and after training become more or less automatic, though they are neither absolutely rigid nor do they cause much guilt feeling if they are broken. The new teachers, on the other hand, are usually hesitant, full of problems and worries. In a primitive phase, discipline and rules are complied with so long as the external force behind them is actively felt. Discipline, therefore, is always artificial; the more civilised the community the more artificial must the discipline be, the more must it be taught by using reality substitutes.
