Psycho-Analysis and the Sense of Guilt1 (1958)

In this lecture I shall reach to no more profound statement than that of Burke, who wrote two hundred years ago that guilt resides in the intention. The intuitive flashes of the great, however, and even the elaborate constructs of poets and philosophers, are lacking in clinical applicability; psycho-analysis has already made available for sociology and for individual therapy much that was previously locked up in remarks like this one of Burke.

A psycho-analyst comes to the subject of guilt as one who is in the habit of thinking in terms of growth, in terms of the evolution of the human individual, the individual as a person, and in relation to the environment. The study of the sense of guilt implies for the analyst a study of individual emotional growth. Ordinarily, guilt-feeling is thought of as something that results from religious or moral teaching. Here I shall attempt to study guilt-feeling, not as a thing to be inculcated, but as an aspect of the development of the human individual. Cultural influences are of course important, vitally important; but these cultural influences can themselves be studied as an overlap of innumerable personal patterns. In other words, the clue to social and group psychology is the psychology of the individual. Those who hold the view that morality needs to be inculcated teach small children accordingly, and they forgo the pleasure of watching morality develop naturally in their children, who are thriving in a good setting that is provided in a personal and individual way.

I shall not need to examine variations in constitution. We have indeed no clear evidence that any individual who is not mentally defective is constitutionally incapable of developing a moral sense. On the other hand, we do find all degrees of success and failure in the development of a moral sense. I shall attempt to explain these variations. Undoubtedly there are children and adults with a defective guilt-sense, and such defect is not specifically linked with intel