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Psychoanalytic Points of View Regarding the Juridic Concept of “Guilt.” Dr. GezaDukes.
Psychoanalytic Points of View Regarding the Psychogenesis of Morality, Especially of the Moral Act. Dr. Carl Müller-Braunschweig.
The Development of a Child. MelanieKlein.
The Self. Dr. Geza Roheim. (Continued.)
The Juridic Concept of “Guilt.”—Dukes points out the service which psychoanalysis may be expected to render to the science of jurisprudence. The latter builds its theories of guilt upon the pillars of knowing and willing, that is, it questions whether the intention consisted in the idea of the criminal result or whether this result was actually willed, a distinction considered by some as only apparent. A psychological knowledge of psychic processes brings these two theories closer together. Psychoanalysis, coming upon such knowledge in the unconscious, finds a deeper and surer basis for the determinism of actions and finds also that actions apparently externally determined are really rooted in the psyche. The idea of the psychically accidental becomes an absurdity. Both conceptions of the idea of intention prove themselves psychological errors, the one which expressly postulates the willing, the other which holds the willing unnecessary in presence of the idea of the consequence. The author cites the Hungarian attitude as based upon the recognition of the presence of will wherever the result has been foreseen. This tacitly assumes an unconscious willing. Psychoanalysis goes further than this in its revelations of the nature of the content of the unconscious. It shows that unconsciousness of the motive of an action is not a question of psychic intensity but rather a matter of defense against consciousness of motives. Unconscious motives therefore may differ in nature from those of consciousness.
The practical question is that of responsibility for an action. This concerns not merely actions performed under loss of consciousness and
under evident mental disturb