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I come to praise this honourable piece of scholarship by Professor Roberto Speziale-Bagliacca (hereafter referred to as RSB). RSB gives a splendid account of Freud's theory and the post-Freudian theories of guilt and goes on to propose a new inflection of Freudian theory in terms of his idea of ‘tragic responsibility’. He discusses its theoretical and therapeutic implications, but what truly distinguishes his approach is that he keeps in mind how therapists might fail not only as practitioners but also as human beings and citizens: ‘Many people die without ever having really faced up to guilt’ (RSB, p. 75). No doubt he would include therapists among the many. To which I would only add that most adults are rubbish at explaining how the concept of guilt connects to the other concepts in the matrix in which it is inextricably embedded: even though some behave as if they understand the connections intuitively.
His opening statements - ‘Our entire civilization has indeed been built on the ethos of guilt and responsibility. Judgement and criticism are incompatible with the desire to understand and to heal’ (RSB, p. 3) - typically carry great compassion and a deep desire to alleviate distress. So when I am tempted to respond with the question - what else could a community of nonomnipotents base their civilization upon, and surely judgement might usefully precede criticism and both precede a compassionate desire to understand and heal? - I wonder if I have missed an inflection in his use of these common words. As he rightly observes in his ‘Appendix: A Note on Terms’, when using such words we are ‘forced to negotiate a busy crossroads teeming with words [from many different fields and languages]’ (p. 192).
It is true, as he says, that before Freud, guilt was dealt with through legal and moral categories - legal and moral ‘laws’. I believe also that most