Normative Sacrifice as a Basis for Morals and Justice Within the Context of Psychosocial Human Development (From Perspectives on Deviance: Dominance, Degradation and Denigration, P 15-29, 1991, Robert J Kelly and Donal E J MacNamara, eds. - See NCJ-126249)

• NCJ Number: 126251
• Author(s): S G Shoham
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 15 pages
• Sale Source: Anderson Publishing Co
• Publication Type: Survey
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The essay shows how developmental pressures associated with the human acquisition of norms may be linked to the genesis of morality and the legitimation of justice.

Abstract

Both the Oedipal guilt complex and Isaac Syndrome are discussed as well as the two opposing core vectors in human development, participation, and separation. Participation means identification of the ego with a person or persons, an object, or outside symbolic construct and the attempt to lose one's separate identity by fusion with this other object or symbol. The separation process is the crystallization of an individual ego by the molding of the "ego boundary." The Oedipal guilt complex initiated deprivational pressures from the father towards the son and is meant to effect the normative separation of the adolescent from the family fold into the loneliness of social responsibility. The Isaac Syndrome also involves the pressures to expel the growing child from the family. These pressures are initiated by covert dynamics within the family and are related to the process of norm-sending and norm-reception. Oedipal guilt makes for the legitimation of a causal chain of just deserts, Isaac Syndrome's sacrificial rites of passage legitimize the duties and social responsibility of the young, and both Oedipal pressures and the Isaac Syndrome link morals to justice within the wider context of human sociopsychological development. 28 notes.