Guilt and Internal Object Relationships

In a recent paper on the vicissitudes of guilt (Sandler & Sandler, 1987), Anne-Marie Sandler and I pointed out that we all tend to associate conscious or unconscious guilt feelings with an internal psychic situation in which one part of the mind is thought of as directing an attack towards another part. The point was made that

This represents an idea which has been central to psychoanalysis from the beginning. The notion of conscience has always figured prominently in psychoanalytic writings, but came into clearer focus when Freud differentiated the ‘ego ideal’ from the conscience in his ‘narcissism’ paper in 1914. With time Freud amalgamated the two into the single concept of the ego ideal, which in 1923, in ‘the ego and the id’, became transformed into the superego of the structural theory. It is worth recalling that Freud introduced his new theory by reference to the negative therapeutic reaction, which he linked with an unconscious sense of guilt arising from conflict between ego and superego. By now Freud was placing increasing emphasis on the role of the aggressive and destructive forces in mental life, and the superego was seen as a consistently critical agency within the mind, through which much of the individual's aggression and destructiveness were directed against himself. (p. 332)

The superego, as Freud conceived it, has remained a theoretical and clinical concept of the greatest importance to us, yet at the same time the concept has been subject to modification during the fifty years since Freud's death. One line of development has been based on the strong influence of Melanie Klein, who emphasized the role of primitive internal persecuting objects in superego development.

Placing great emphasis on the notion of the death drive, Klein and her followers have paid special attention to the vicissitudes of early aggressive-destructive forces and fantasies in superego formation. And certainly none of us can any longer regard the superego as a psychic institutio