Guilt | Harsh, Punitive Self-Concept

Guilt is one of the most common emotional experiences psychotherapy patients attempt to address. Guilt is commonly viewed as the feeling that emerges when you have done something wrong, when you have made a mistake or not acted as you would have hoped, or when you have violated your own moral values.

It might be surprising to learn, however, that this perspective on guilt captures a rather limited range of actual guilt experiences.

According to Freud, guilt evolved and emerged as the outcome of mental experience in which our innate drives for pleasure, aggression, and tension relief came into conflict with moral principles drawn from cultural and religious values; one’s family of origin, teachers and mentors; and the social mores of the time. Guilt is mainly generated in the part of the mind Freud called the “superego.” When primitive states and desires — what Freud called the “id” and subsequently the “id derivatives” — arise, they come into contact with superego restrictions. Mental conflict involves the ongoing oppositional dynamics between id and superego, between desire and moral/religious restriction, between the devil and the angel.

When guilt occurs, it rarely functions in a moderate and realistic way, i.e., generating an appropriate amount of guilt for the situation at hand. For most people, their superego is either too lackadaisical (not intense enough) or too heightened (too intense).

In the first instance, not enough guilt is generated for what a situation warrants. The lack or unusually low level of guilt is a core feature of sociopaths and many persons with narcissistic personality tendencies. For these individuals, the superego is under-developed or may not even exist at all. This is the reason why sociopaths experience very little, if any, remorse for the victims of their crimes; it is also linked to sociopaths’ notable lack of physiological reactivity when in situations that would be profoundly stressful and traumatic for the average person.

In the second category, guilt generated by the superego about a particular situation is greater than that which the situation reasonably warrants; there is too much of a feeling of wrongness. For these individuals, their superegos, often based on experiences in early childhood, have been overly developed. Consequently, guilt is generated to an intensity that far surpasses what is reasonable to expect or emerges in situations for which a person may not even be accountable. In fact, individuals like this often take on the guilt that others should feel. This is a very common phenomenon among victims of child abuse and other forms of trauma in which the victim may harbor profound guilt due to the belief that, in one way or another, they were responsible for prompting their perpetrator to act.

For individuals whose superegos are primed to generate guilt in excess and/or at times when it is not warranted, life can be very painful. The ongoing experience of guilt can activate numerous psychiatric conditions including anxiety and depression, as well as disturbances in self-esteem.

What I have found in my psychotherapy practice is that once patients begin to understand the dynamics of guilt, and their own hyper-intensively developed superego, they can begin to react to, and use, guilt more effectively. Once the emotional experience of guilt is moderated and the superego becomes more aligned with the reality of situations, the patient’s view of him- or herself becomes clearer, less punitive, and more balanced

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