Concept
Unconscious sense of guilt
A sense of guilt that the subject does not feel as such, expressed instead in failure, self-damaging behaviour, illness that will not yield, or crime committed in order to be punished. Freud described it in Das Ich und das Es (1923) as the tension between ego and super-ego behind the negative therapeutic reaction, and in 1924 equated it, somewhat loosely, with a need for punishment, the core of moral masochism. Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (1930) makes the growing sense of guilt the price of civilisation.
Development
1907
introduced by Sigmund Freud
Freud first spoke of an unconscious consciousness of guilt in his 1907 paper on obsessive actions and religious practices. In Das Ich und das Es (1923) he made it a central clinical problem, behind the negative therapeutic reaction; in 1924 he linked it with a need for punishment, and in 1930 with the discontents of civilisation.
In The Ego and the Id (1923);The Economic Problem of Masochism (1924);Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
Relations
- 1907 introduced by Sigmund Freud
Freud first spoke of an unconscious consciousness of guilt in his 1907 paper on obsessive actions and religious practices. In Das Ich und das Es (1923) he made it a central clinical problem, behind the negative therapeutic reaction; in 1924 he linked it with a need for punishment, and in 1930 with the discontents of civilisation.
- 1924 gave rise to Moral masochism
Freud explains moral masochism by the unconscious sense of guilt, which he reformulates as a need for punishment at the hands of a parental power, and distinguishes the super-ego's heightened sadism from the ego's own masochism, which seeks the punishment.
Works
- 1923
The book in which Freud sets out his structural model of the mind. Since much of the ego is itself unconscious, the division conscious/unconscious is not enough. Freud distinguishes the id, a term he takes from Georg Groddeck, as the reservoir of the drives; the ego, the part of the id modified by the influence of the external world, first and foremost a bodily ego; and the super-ego or ego ideal, formed by identification with the parents as the heir of the Oedipus complex. He restates the dualism of life drives and death drives, discusses fusion and defusion of the drives, the unconscious sense of guilt and the negative therapeutic reaction, and ends with the ego as a poor creature serving three masters: the external world, the libido of the id and the severity of the super-ego.
- 1924
The Economic Problem of Masochism
Freud's 1924 paper asks how masochism can exist at all if mental life is ruled by the pleasure principle: if pain and unpleasure can become aims rather than warnings, the guardian of mental life seems paralysed. He first revises the position of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which had equated the pleasure principle with the Nirvana principle, the tendency, after Fechner and in Barbara Low's term, to reduce excitation to zero. Because there are pleasurable tensions and unpleasurable relaxations, pleasure and unpleasure cannot depend on the quantity of tension alone but on some qualitative factor, perhaps rhythm. He therefore sets out a series: the Nirvana principle expresses the death drive, the pleasure principle is its modification by the libido, and the reality principle a further modification due to the external world. Freud then distinguishes three forms of masochism. Erotogenic masochism, pleasure in pain, underlies the other two. Feminine masochism, described from the fantasies of masochistic men, casts the subject as a helpless, naughty child and, more deeply, in characteristically female situations: being castrated, copulated with or giving birth. Moral masochism is a norm of conduct. Erotogenic masochism rests on libidinal co-excitation and on the fate of the death drive: the libido diverts much of it outward as the destructive drive, part of which serves sexuality as sadism, while the portion that stays inside, libidinally bound, is primary masochism; sadism turned back on the self adds a secondary masochism. Erotogenic masochism takes on the guise of each libidinal phase, from the fear of being eaten to the wish to be beaten by the father. Moral masochism has loosened its tie to sexuality: the suffering itself matters, not who inflicts it. Freud finds it in the negative therapeutic reaction and the unconscious sense of guilt, which he proposes to call a need for punishment. He distinguishes the heightened sadism of the super-ego, usually conscious, from the masochism of the ego, which stays hidden and seeks punishment from the super-ego or from fate. Since the super-ego arose through the desexualisation of the Oedipus complex, moral masochism resexualises morality and revives the complex, tempting the subject to act against their own interests. Freud closes by observing that the cultural suppression of aggression strengthens conscience, and that even self-destruction does not take place without libidinal satisfaction.
- 1930
Civilization and Its Discontents
Freud’s essay on the conflict between the individual and civilisation. It opens with Romain Rolland’s “oceanic feeling”, which Freud traces to the infant’s early ego-feeling rather than to a source of religion. People seek happiness by many methods, yet civilisation, which protects them against nature and regulates their relations, demands that they renounce sexual and, above all, aggressive drives. The aggression this restrains is turned back against the ego as the super-ego, and its tension with the ego is felt as a sense of guilt, much of it unconscious, that grows with civilisation. Freud presents the history of civilisation as the struggle between Eros and the death drive, and ends by asking whether Eros will prevail.
See also
People
References
- The Ego and the Id1923Evidence for a relation
- The Economic Problem of Masochism1924Evidence for a relation
- Civilization and Its Discontents1930Evidence for a relation