There are two sources of guilt: 1) fear of authority and 2) fear of the super-ego. Whole peoples have behaved this way: the Jews interpreted their misfortune as the consequence of their own sinfulness and created a set of overly strict commandments in reaction to their fate. External frustration also enhances the power of conscience to reproach and impose punishment on the ego. Those who have carried saintliness to an extreme are paradoxically the most likely to feel sinful. Because it is internalized, the super-ego omnisciently regulates both our thoughts and deeds, whereas prior to its installation, individuals only had to submit themselves to a higher authority for punishment (such as parents) in the case of fully accomplished acts. With the establishment of the super-ego comes a sense of bad conscience. In children, this fear is acute and involves losing parents in adults, the community takes the place of the parental figure. For Freud, the only thing 'bad' in this sense is the threat of the loss of love. What is considered bad often feels good or is otherwise desirable to the ego.

Freud goes further, however, in rejecting the existence of a 'natural' capacity to distinguish between good and bad.

The super-ego regulates the actions of the ego in the form of a 'conscience' and consequently imposes a sense of guilt and need for self-punishment on the individual.įreud attempts to account for the root cause of guilt, concluding that it arises from doing something or intending to do something 'bad.' Whether or not the action or intention is bad in absolute moral terms is irrelevant it is sufficient for the ego to deem it as such. Freud speculates that the individual, once forbidden from expressing this desire externally, subdues excess aggression by redirecting it towards his own ego. It achieves this goal by installing within the individual a sort of watchdog, which Freud calls the 'super-ego,' to master our desire for aggression. One of the primary functions of society is to restrain our aggressive impulses.

Freud culture and its discontents