The Feeling of Guilt

According to Freud we have to discriminate between two kinds of feelings of guilt. One makes itself known as social fear, fear of outer authority; the other is a fear of inner authority, or pangs of conscience. The feeling of guilt originating from fear of the outer authority coincides with the fear of the loss of love. The fear of the inner authority coincides with the fear of the superego. Freud's derivation of the feeling of guilt is well known. The incorporation of the aggression, that is, the turning of the destructive instincts against the ego originates the feeling of guilt and makes its appearance in the ego as an unconscious need for punishment. For this reason, and in order to make it clearer to the patient the term "feeling of guilt" is often supplanted by the term "need for punishment".

However, the question arises—a question I raised several years ago—whether the concept of the need for punishment always coincides with the concept of the feeling of guilt. Attempts to differentiate between the feeling of guilt and other feelings related to it meet with some difficulty, as often shame, disgust, compassion, feelings of inferiority and fear appear as equivalents or complements to the feeling of guilt. Even our everyday language hints that these feelings belong to a common group, for the words "ugly", "bad", "disgusting", "inferior" are used interchangeably, as often as the words "beautiful", "good", "clean". These relations cannot be discussed here in as much detail as they deserve. It is only to be noted that the feelings of guilt, shame, disgust, etc., have one characteristic in common, that is, the inner perception of the painful condition accompanying the renunciation of an instinctual gratification.

The forms of expression of the feeling of guilt are numerous and differ distinctly in their intensity and quality. The feeling