What Psychoanalysis Can and Cannot Tell Us About Morality

Psychoanalysis and Moral Values (1960) was Hartmann’s attempt to clarify what psychoanalysis can and cannot contribute to our understanding of morality. Its central thesis is that psychoanalysis gives us a psychological account of moral behavior (how moral values and the superego develop), but cannot by itself tell us what is morally right or wrong. Hartmann is also wary of equating “health” with “goodness.” This conclusion remains persuasive, understood today as a specific application of the “is-ought problem.” More intriguing is his claim that psychoanalysis can explain the ontogenesis of moral values, since subsequent research has largely displaced psychoanalysis as the central explanatory framework. Yet core insights remain alive within moral psychology: the internalization of moral values from relationships with caregivers, the influence of unconscious conflicts, the opacity of moral motivations, and moral behaviors as reaction formations. Undergoing intensive analytic work can improve the psychological conditions under which moral judgments are made, but the aim of psychoanalysis is psychological health, not morality.