GUILT: A Psychoanalytic Perspective, Part 1, Theory

The Blues Grief, Mourning, Despair, Living on

Correction: not a one-way progression from knowing to being but a dialectical integration of knowing and being. Although my technique has always been relational (vs. still face, cold fish, abstinence, neutrality, non-self-revealing), Freudian and Kleinian work on enhancing self-understanding remains essential, as does the conscientious critique of the superego. In liberating conscience one is emancipating the true self.

First as a Freudian, then a Kleinian, the technique was "enlightening." With Winnicott, Kohut and Bion it shifted from knowing to being.

What is the difference?

In his 1905 essay on psychotherapy Freud elaborates the distinction between painting (pouring on) and sculpture (chipping away). Classical defense and resistance analysis seeks to emancipate the true self.

While Freud, Klein and Kohut speak of internalizing good objects, Winnicott speaks of the "going-on-being" of the true self that should not be impinged upon or abandoned.

Guilt evasion. Types of guilt. Conscious/unconscious, Persecutory/reparative, Justified/unjustified, Survivor or success guilt, Collective guilt, etc.

Just as Klein and Grinberg distinguished two kinds of guilt, J. Rejd Meloy distinguished two kinds of pstychopathy,, primary and secondary; amd Sidney J. Blatt distinguished introjective and anaclitic depression; so we need to distinguish persecutory and reparative shame.