is to be looked upon as typically healthy also, the current human standards of whose influence it is a product must necessarily be accepted as qualified to call forth the best in the developing mind they mould. Writers of the psycho-analytic school seem in general to make some such assumption as this.
III
The conception of mental conflict is the central feature of the Freudian system. Of its importance and validity there can be no doubt. In a general way the idea is familiar and even commonplace, but Freud had developed it and shown how deeply the principle penetrates the structure and development of the mind from the earliest period and to an extent quite unsuspected by earlier psychologists.
From an early period of life the child finds the gratification of its instinctive impulses checked or even prevented by the pressure of its environment. Conflict is thus set up between the two forces of instinctive pressure within and social pressure from without. Instinctive impulses which thus come into conflict with the repressing force are not destroyed but are