It should be recalled that one of the reasons for highlighting Freud’s speculation regarding an unconscious sense of guilt in his relatively early essay “Obsessive Actions and Religious Practices” is to debunk the narrative according to which he ventures this speculation only in the wake of the shift from the first to the second topography. Admittedly, it isn’t until 1923, in The Ego and the Id, that Freud engages in a sustained discussion of guilt as an unconscious affect (a discussion that I will scrutinize shortly). But, apart from the mention of it in 1907 commented on in the preceding paragraphs, he again, also prior to The Ego and the Id, alludes to guilt in the same vein in “Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work” (1916). Specifically, the third and final section of this paper, devoted to “Criminals from a Sense of Guilt,” contains a reference to what is described as an “obscure sense of guilt” (dunkle Schuldgefühl).7 This guilt-in-search-of-a-crime is depicted by Freud in this text as a self-consciously felt feeling of culpability minus a comprehension of why this feeling is felt. But, on the basis of the preceding reflections, it might legitimately be asked whether, at least phenomenologically, there are differences between, on the one hand, the experience of this guilt as “obscure” and, on the other hand, the experience of this “same” guilt if and when its obscured (i.e., repressed) origins are uncovered and appropriated by the guilty subject. Additionally, when, in The Ego and the Id, Freud again mentions criminals whose guilt is the cause rather than the effect of their criminality, he describes this affective cause as an “unconscious sense of guilt” (unbewußte Schuldgefühl).8
The Ego and the Id is a momentously important work in the context of Freud’s whole oeuvre. As is common knowledge, it constitutes the first comprehensive, systematic elaboration of the metapsychological foundations of the new second topography, a topography centered on the triad of id (Es [It]), ego (Ich [I]), and superego (Über-Ich [Over-I]), instead of, as in the first topography, the triad of conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. For Freud, this compact book consolidates a number of ideas and discoveries that he had only recently had as well as paves the way for further insights and developments in the years to come.
Freud’s elaborations in 1923 of the role and workings of the superego in the psyche are of special interest in relation to the present discussion. As I previously observed (in the last chapter), the Freudian superego isn’t simply mere psychoanalytic jargon synonymous with the quotidian word “conscience,” because, unlike traditional notions of conscience, significant parts of the superego operate below the threshold of explicit, self-conscious awareness; for Freudian psychoanalysis, not all conscience is conscious.9 Moreover, as with the superego, so also with the ego: there are unconscious portions of it too.10 And, insofar as the superego is “a grade in the ego, a differentiation within the ego,”11 these claims about the ego and the superego go hand in hand: if who one is (i.e., one’s ego) partly is shaped by who one wants to become (i.e., one’s “ego ideal” or “superego”)12 and if some of these ideals and facets of conscience are unconscious, then certain aspects of who one is (i.e., one’s ego-level identity) are going to be unconscious as well.
Taking all of this into account as regards the superego’s relationship with the ego, four basic structural dynamics of interaction are possible in principle: (1) conscious superego relating to conscious ego; (2) conscious superego relating to unconscious ego; (3) unconscious superego relating to conscious ego; and (4) unconscious superego relating to unconscious ego. The first possibility is easiest to understand, since it corresponds to the everyday sense of conscience in which one consciously hears one’s self-evaluations (i.e., in which conscience is conscious, with the voice of conscience being audible in and to self-consciousness, part of its soliloquy). The third could be said to encompass instances of unanchored, seemingly irrational guilt so familiar in the psychoanalytic clinic of the neuroses (i.e., circumstances in which the ego consciously feels some sort of nebulous guilt without know why, in ignorance of its infractions vis-à-vis unknown laws and rules enforced by the unconscious side of the superego). However, the second and fourth possibilities are opaque and perplexing, with Freud apparently not mentioning the second (i.e., conscious superego relating to unconscious ego) but considering the fourth. (As will be seen soon, this fourth possibility [i.e., unconscious superego relating to unconscious ego] is exemplified by what Freud terms “moral masochism” in the essay “The Economic Problem of Masochism.”) If guilt is an affective consequence of the superego acting on the ego, then, if (as per the fourth possibility) the unconscious portion of the superego can relate directly to the unconscious portion of the ego, perhaps the result of this fourth possible superego-to-ego structural dynamic is something that indeed could be called “unconscious guilt.”
In The Ego and the Id, Freud introduces the topic of an unconscious sense of guilt at the end of the second chapter (“The Ego and the Id”). He leads up to this topic thus:
Accustomed as we are to taking our social or ethical scale of values along with us wherever we go, we feel no surprise at hearing that the scene of the activities of the lower passions is in the unconscious; we expect, moreover, that the higher any mental function ranks in our scale of values the more easily it will find access to consciousness assured to it. Here, however, psycho-analytic experience disappoints us. On the one hand, we have evidence that even subtle and difficult intellectual operations which ordinarily require strenuous reflection can equally be carried out preconsciously and without coming into consciousness. Instances of this are quite incontestable; they may occur, for example, during the state of sleep, as is shown when someone finds, immediately after waking, that he knows the solution to a difficult mathematical or other problem with which he had been wrestling in vain the day before.13
These remarks aim at demolishing the presumptions and biases leading people to assume that complex, elaborate mental machinations (including those involved with personal identity and conscience) must be conscious. In the paragraphs that follow, Freud proceeds to mention unconscious guilt:
There is another phenomenon, however, which is far stranger. In our analyses we discover that there are people in whom the faculties of self-criticism and conscience—mental activities, that is, that rank as extremely high ones—are unconscious and unconsciously produce effects of the greatest importance; the example of resistance remaining unconscious during analysis is therefore by no means unique. But this new discovery, which compels us, in spite of our better critical judgment, to speak of an “unconscious sense of guilt” [unbewußten Schuldgefühl], bewilders us far more than the other and sets us fresh problems, especially when we gradually come to see that in a great number of neuroses an unconscious sense of guilt of this kind plays a decisive economic part and puts the most powerful obstacles in the way of recovery. If we come back once more to our scale of values, we shall have to say that not only what is lowest but also what is highest in the ego can be unconscious.14
Freud obviously is conflicted here, as elsewhere, about his hypothesis to the effect that guilt sometimes can be an unconscious affect: he is “compelled” to posit this despite his “better critical judgment” as a metapsychologist for whom affects, unlike Vorstellungen, cannot be unconscious (a few pages subsequently in the next chapter of The Ego and the Id, a hesitant “perhaps” qualifies reference to “an unconscious sense of guilt”).15 He nonetheless immediately puts this uneasy hypothesis to work, assigning it an explanatory function in relation to both the neuroses in general (“in a great number of neuroses an unconscious sense of guilt of this kind plays a decisive economic part”) and the more specific intratherapeutic occurrence of what comes to be dubbed “negative therapeutic reaction” (“the most powerful obstacles in the way of recovery”).
Early on in the fifth chapter of The Ego and the Id, Freud paints a succinct-yet-thorough portrait of what he calls the “negative therapeutic reaction.” (This is mentioned subsequently in such texts as The Question of Lay Ana
lysis [1926] in connection with which reference is made yet again to the “unconscious sense of guilt” [unbewußte Schuldgefühl],16 and the lecture on “Anxiety and Instinctual Life” from the New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis [1933].)17 He movingly depicts the sad situation of those neurotic sufferers who cling to their illnesses, whose symptoms get worse rather than better in the face of gains made in the progress of their analyses.18 Freud’s explanation is that these analysands are driven to wallow in their pain and anguish by guilt; on a certain level, they are convinced that they should be miserable, that they don’t deserve to be, as it were, relatively happy and healthy. Yet, Freud is careful to stipulate that the guilt underlying cases of negative therapeutic reaction is of a special sort: “But as far as the patient is concerned this sense of guilt is dumb; it does not tell him he is guilty; he does not feel guilty, he feels ill” (Aber dies Schuldgefühl ist für den Kranken stumm, es sagt ihm nicht, daß er schuldig ist, er fühlt sich nicht schuldig, sondern krank).19 One again could argue that this remark lends support to the thesis that unconscious affects, in Freudian metapsychology, are misfelt feelings. In this case, the physical and psychological indicators of a guilty feeling-state consciously are registered and self-interpreted in the guises of the recurring unpleasurable experiences (such as somatic ailments) marking neurotic psychopathologies, for which neurotics frequently don’t feel fully and explicitly guilty in a way that makes them also feel culpable or responsible; instead, a much-bemoaned destiny, fate, or bad luck usually bears the brunt of the misplaced blame.
Before proceeding from the particular problem of guilt as an unconscious affect in Freud’s work to the larger frame of his overarching metapsychology of affects, those elaborations after 1923 directly tied to the unconscious sense of guilt ought to be touched upon here. These elaborations are contained primarily in two texts: the paper “The Economic Problem of Masochism” (1924) and the volume Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). Masochism, construed in a very general fashion, designates a cluster of phenomena that play a major part in pushing Freud to take his step “beyond the pleasure principle” in 1920. In his paper “On Narcissism” (1924), Freud pays attention to how what he then labels “conscience” coerces the ego, through (the threat of) guilt, to maintain an orientation and proximity to the norms and values enshrined within the psychical apparatus in the form of the “ego ideal”; if the ego strays too far away from the horizon defined by the teleological vanishing points embodied in the ego ideal, then conscience inflicts a penalty consisting of unpleasurable negative affect (i.e., guilt, remorse, shame, humiliation, and the like).20 Earlier versions of the thesis that appears before 1920 according to which the pleasure principle is the dominant law of psychical life are somewhat undercut by the undeniable everyday occurrence of conscience-induced guilt as pain spontaneously inflicted by the psyche upon itself. Ten years later, Freud brings into view an “economic problem” exhibited by what he christens “moral masochism” (an affliction that can manifest itself in such a masochist as excessively brutal self-criticism, inflexibly intolerant perfectionism, and unconsciously arranged setbacks and misfortunes invariably snatching defeat from the jaws of victory). For example, sometimes, when the ego manages to get very close to instantiating the ego ideal, conscience (now, in 1924, identified as the superego) becomes even harsher and more punitive, instead of, as one would expect, rewarding the conscious ego with such pleasures of narcissistic self-satisfaction as senses of confidence, contentment, dignity, and pride (an expectation Freud previously articulates in “On Narcissism”). This unexpected twist occurs in cases of moral masochism, cases in which the internal superego is far more vicious and unforgiving than any external authority figure.21 (The multitude of psychoanalytic reasons for this superegoistic cruelty—which have to do with the pleasure principle, the death drive [Todestrieb], and external reality, among other factors—are too numerous and nuanced to spell out amid the current lines of exegesis and argumentation.)
When first referring to moral masochism as one of three standard varieties of masochism in “The Economic Problem of Masochism” (the other two being “erotogenic” and “feminine” masochism), Freud equates it with “a sense of guilt which is mostly unconscious” (meist unbewußtes Schuldgefühl).22 But, strangely, he qualifies such guilt as “only recently … recognized by psycho-analysis.”23 (This is strange insofar as he takes note of the notion of unconscious guilt as early as 1907.) Freud goes on to remind readers of the connection he maintains between the unconscious sense of guilt and the negative therapeutic reaction manifested by particular sorts of neurotic patients in analysis.24 Then, with respect to this class of analysands, Freud observes:
Patients do not easily believe us when we tell them about the unconscious sense of guilt [unbewußte Schuldgefühl]. They know only too well by what torments—the pangs of conscience—a conscious sense of guilt, a consciousness of guilt [ein bewußtes Schuldgefühl, Schuldbewußtsein], expresses itself, and they therefore cannot admit that they could harbour exactly analogous impulses in themselves without being in the least aware of them. We may, I think, to some extent meet their objection if we give up the term “unconscious sense of guilt” [unbewußtes Schuldgefühl], which is in any case psychologically incorrect, and speak instead of a “need for punishment” [Strafbedürfnis], which covers the observed state of affairs just as aptly. We cannot, however, restrain ourselves from judging and localizing this unconscious sense of guilt in the same way as we do the conscious kind.25
Apropos the vexing issue of unconscious affect, it’s difficult to know exactly what to make of this passage. On the one hand, Freud appears to appeal to his patients’ conscious experiences—what they feel doesn’t feel to them (more specifically, to the conscious part of their egos) like guilt—as justification for jettisoning the tension-ridden notion-phrase “unconscious guilt” as “psychologically incorrect” in favor of the supposedly less problematic concept of a “need for punishment.” (The concept is less problematic for Freud’s metapsychology to the extent that it doesn’t require positing a feeling that isn’t felt as such—however, one might wonder whether “need” [Bedürfnis] is any less problematic for the exact same reasons.) But, on the other hand, he indicates that there’s something unavoidable in the purportedly erroneous idea of guilt as an unconscious affect.
Freud proceeds to complicate his analysis of masochism, further refining his description of moral masochism in particular. He distinguishes between moral masochism per se and another variety that he admits to confusing and conflating with moral masochism proper in his preceding reflections on observations derived from the clinical consulting room: In the former (i.e., moral masochism per se), there is a pronounced need for punishment that can be satisfied by either the internal superego or the external world (with this need being misrecognized by the masochist’s self-awareness but testified to by the repeated defeats and miseries that this type of individual unknowingly but predictably visits upon him-/herself). In the latter (i.e., that which seems like, but is to be distinguished from, moral masochism in the strict sense), a sadistic superego, operating below the threshold of consciousness, is invariably the unconscious source of consciously registered suffering (perhaps as a mysterious, perplexing feeling of excessive guilt). Real moral masochists don’t necessarily experience a haunting sense of consciously inexplicable guilt-without-a-cause, whereas those previously lumped under this same diagnostic heading are perturbed by guilt-like negative affects arising from the action of unconscious aspects of the superego upon the conscious ego. As Freud puts it, moral masochism per se is centered on the (masochistic) ego’s need for punishment (from whoever or whatever, by the superego within or reality without), while that which resembles moral masochism is a suffering generated specifically by the unconscious superego punishing the conscious ego, namely, a suffering driven by the superego’s sadism more than the ego’s masochism.26
The eighth and final chapter of Civilization and Its Disconten
ts contains extensive elaborations of Freud’s musings about guilt, which I have already glossed. At the start of this chapter, Freud, in response to what he imagines to be his readers’ impression that his drawn-out discussions of guilt are a digression in relation to the rest of this book, claims that “the sense of guilt” (Schuldgefühl)27 is “the most important problem in the development of civilization.”28 (Later on in this same chapter, he makes it central to clinical analysis too, surmising that “perhaps every neurosis conceals a quota of unconscious sense of guilt [unbewußtem Schuldgefühl], which in its turn fortifies the symptoms by making use of them as a punishment.”)29 Through the development of the superego (a feature of the psychical Innenwelt in whose production the historical Umwelt of culture and society plays a significant part) and the sense of guilt that the superego makes possible—Freud argues that one can’t feel guilty per se unless and until one ontogenetically acquires this psychical structure or agency30—the id-level aggressive and sexual impulses of human beings are tamed and domesticated. In fact, the superego represents what one might risk characterizing in roughly Hegelian terms as a symptom of the cunning of civilization’s reason, an especially efficacious sublimation in which aggression—which Freud identifies as the gravest threat to the integrity of human collectivities31—is “turned inward,” away from extraneous others, and discharged through the superego’s sadism vis-à-vis the ego.32 Such a superego-mediated inward discharge is not only innocuous with respect to the concerns of civilization for its own cohesion; such aggression-sublimating self-policing via “conscience” is essential insofar as there will never be anywhere close to enough external policing mechanisms to monitor and control individuals’ behaviors (an impossibility involving a potentially infinite regression signaled by the question “who will police the police?”). Matters central to ethics and politics, the two main branches of practical philosophy, are at stake in Freud’s handling of guilt; hence, his being at pains to protest that sustained scrutiny of this affect is of the utmost urgent importance in reconsidering arrangements of human collective existence.
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