A Dark Trace: Sigmund Freud on the Sense of Guilt. By Herman Westerink. Leuven, Belgium:  Leuven University Press, 2009,  329 pp.

Herman Westerink, a Dutch theologian and student of Freudian psychoanalysis, has written an important treatise explicating the presence and power of the sense of guilt in Freudian theory. He writes, “My thesis is that sense of guilt is not a secondary theme which occurs primarily in Freud's later work but that in fact it plays a fundamental role in his earlier psychoanalytic work” (p. x). Westerink states that there is no recent study addressing feelings of guilt in Freudian theory and that his study fills that void in the psychoanalytic literature; he observes, “It is thus high time that this subject was examined in detail” (p. x).

Westerink succeeds in demonstrating that the feeling of guilt is a fundamental theme existent in all of Freud's psychoanalytic works. Not only will a study of A Dark Trace dispel any doubt about its presence in all of Freud's work, but it will lead to a greater appreciation of its power and influence. As Westerink states, “It is via the analysis of sense of guilt that: he [Freud] came to understand the importance of repressed wishes and desires; it is via the analysis of guilt that he discovered the Oedipus complex and the meaning of the ambivalence of love and hate; it is via feelings of guilt that he was also able to inquire after the origin of morality in both its individual and cultural guises” (p. x).

On the back cover of A Dark Trace, the meaning of the book's title is presented:

Sigmund Freud, in his search for the origins of the sense of guilt in individual life and culture, regularly speaks of ‘reading a dark trace,’ thus referring to the Oedipus myth as a myth about the problem of human guilt. In Freud's view, this feeling of guilt is a trace, a path that leads deep into the individual's mental state, into childhood memories, and into the prehistory of culture and religion ….

True to his word, Westerink has written a comprehensive history of the impact of the sense of guilt of Freud's psychoanalytic edifice. This is accomplished by