Two Kinds of Guilt—their Relations with Normal and Pathological Aspects of Mourning1

León Grinberg; BUENOS AIRESOrigin and Nature of the Sense of Guilt The importance of guilt in the aetiology of neuroses and psychoses is well known. In my opinion, however, the question of guilt, of its origin, nature, and different ways of participation in the individual's mental development, is still one of the problems in the field of psycho-analytic research that has not yet been fully elucidated.

In some psycho-analytic circles different groups of therapists have developed varying trends of thought which differ mainly—among other things—in the way they handle guilt in their respective techniques. One of these trends centres interpretation around the necessity of liberating the patient from a guilt which, according to them, is of a negative and pathological nature, to which he is bound in a masochistic manner. Other analysts, on the other hand, seem to follow an utterly opposed theoretical-technical criterion in regard to this problem. For them, the core of any neurotic conflict is, in fact, centred on the denial of guilt experienced by the individual on account of aggressive fantasies directed towards the objects. In my opinion this controversy results from the mistake of dealing with two different kinds of guilt under the assumption that they are one and the same.

One of the classic starting-points established by Freud is that guilt, proceeding from tensions between the ego and the superego, appears as a need for punishment. Freud (1913), when studying the oedipal conflict in primitive societies, shows how out of the sense of guilt sprang the two main taboos of totemism: parricide and incest. After the sons had killed the father of the horde, remorse and guilt appeared. Totemism, according to Freud, is the earliest form of religion in the history of mankind. Under the influence of guilt the ego submits itself to the demands of the superego, fearing to lose its love and protection.

On the other hand, Freud (1916) showed that guilt arises to a much greater degree from unconscious fantasies than from actual deeds. The actual crime is frequently not the real motive for guilt but rather its consequence.

According to Freud's later work (1930) the guilt belongs to the realm of aggressive instincts, aggression being turned towards the ego as a punishing force, acting through the superego.

Klein (1935) also believes that guilt is linked with the emergence of the superego, though she places it at an earlier period, that is, during the stage in which the infant's sadism plays a dominant role. She points out that the first feelings of guilt arise from the child's oral-sadistic desires to devour the mother, especially the breast (Abraham).

Two Kinds of Guilt: Persecutory and Depressive Klein (1935) has described the existence of guilt which is under the influence of the 'depressive position', and which presupposes the existence of an ego sufficiently integrated to experience it and utilize it for reparative purposes.

After Klein, probably Winnicott (1958) more than anyone else has stressed that guilt, although unconscious and apparently irrational, involves a certain amount of emotional maturity, hope, and health on the part of the ego.

In my opinion, however, there is still another kind of guilt which appears at an earlier period with a weak and immature ego. This guilt increases in intensity parallel with the anxieties of the paranoid-schizoid phase, or in case of frustrations or failures during the evolution towards the depressive phase. Although this guilt begins very early in life, it is my belief that it has a far-reaching effect in later development and appears in such symptoms as inhibitions or masochistic behaviour. It was this kind of guilt with its paranoid undertone that Freud had in mind when he spoke of the formation of the superego.

Money-Kyrle (1955) has described, in relation to guilt, the existence of two different kinds of consciousness which would appear to be combined in different proportions according as the parental image is felt as a good or an evil one. That is, he described a 'qualitative change' in guilt, pointing out its 'at least' two different components. These would be: 'grief and remorse' [which] 'constitute the other element in guilt which we may describe as depressive as distinct from persecutory'. Money-Kyrle has not explained the origin of these two kinds of guilt. He has neither studied them in a

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systematic way, nor related them to normal and pathological mourning, as I have endeavoured to do in this and in previous (1962) papers.

I have reached conclusions somewhat similar to Money-Kyrle's. I believe in the existence of two distinct kinds of guilt, which I also have named persecutory and depressive. This provides us with a better understanding of the dynamics of guilt, with a broader picture of the contents and nature of the object relationship, and in connexion with our problem should increase our understanding of the likelihood of developing normal or pathological mourning. It also appears to me important to study these two kinds of guilt in connexion with the experiences of loss of parts of the self, which I shall develop below.

Klein (1957) 2 has referred to guilt which emerges precociously. This might be thought to be in contradiction with her statement that guilt arises during the depressive position as the result of the integration of part objects into whole objects. I think that this contradiction can be accounted for by assuming the existence of two kinds of guilt. This concept is quite clear in her views on this problem, though she does not refer to it explicitly. But I still find it necessary to add that I think that there is a close relationship between persecutory guilt and the death instinct, and between depressive guilt and the life instinct.

I believe that the concept of instinctual duality plays a fundamental role in the origin and nature of the different mechanisms and feelings, determining whether they will be healthy or pathological. Freud (1924) 3 connected the feeling of guilt with the death instinct. When he studied the superego of melancholia (1923), he ascribed to sadism the extraordinary intensity of the feeling of guilt and suggested that the destructive element, 'a pure culture of the death instinct', abides in the superego and turns against the ego. This I believe to be persecutory guilt.

Among the different situations that contribute to the emergence and intensification of this kind of guilt (birth trauma, a bad relationship with the breast and with the mother, predominance of frustrations, etc.) experiences of loss are highly important. In my opinion, every loss implies a certain degree of guilt, due to the feeling of privation (Isaacs, 1929) 4 and impoverishment of the self. Klein (1955) refers specifically to this when she speaks of 'the guilt due to having neglected and abandoned the precious contents of the self'.

It is my view that one of the main affects involved in the experience of persecutory guilt is resentment. Now resentment may be felt towards something or someone previously loved, whom the subject considers responsible for a frustration, loss, or aggression. Spitefulness, as a consequence of the weaning trauma, would be one of its forms. Resentment, however, is not only experienced against objects; it may also be directed against the ego itself. Thus, for instance, one can be resentful against oneself for having exposed oneself to experiences of loss, for not having allowed oneself enough instinctual gratification, or for any other kind of ill-treatment of oneself. A resentment is also felt towards the dead object for having by its death taken with it certain parts of the self. The greater the resentment, the greater in turn will be the guilt and persecution, and in consequence the elaboration of the corresponding mourning will be disturbed.

Hypochondriacal reactions or psychosomatic disorders so frequently found in pathological mourning are often due to persecutory guilt.5 In such cases the object is not actually experienced as dead, but it is felt unconsciously as malignantly alive, introjected in the sick organ and threatening and punishing the ego. This is also felt, sometimes, as an attack upon the ego's identity, as I shall show later.

On the other hand, as resentment is mitigated, persecutory guilt will consequently lessen, grief and sorrow for the loss will increase, and depression, concern, and responsibility (depressive guilt) will be intensified, all of which will ultimately lead to reparation.

It is frequently observed in psycho-analysis that when the patient is under the influence of persecutory guilt, he tends to act out in a repetitive compulsive manner and will show marked masochistic attitudes, whereas the progressive and systematic appearance of recollections, subjective experiences and emotions show the gradual transformation of persecutory guilt into depressive guilt.

The proportionally increased participation of the life instinct, as occurs during normal development, determines a real transformation of guilt, its persecuting elements being replaced by depressive elements with the characteristics described by Klein as corresponding to depressive guilt.

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However, there always remain elements of persecutory guilt which, under traumatic circumstances—and every loss is in fact a trauma—are intensified.6

To synthesize: In persecutory guilt the main elements are: resentment, despair, fear, pain, self-reproaches, etc. Its extreme manifestation is melancholia (pathological mourning). In depressive guilt the dominant elements are sorrow, concern for the object and the self, nostalgia, and responsibility. This is what we ordinarily see in normal mourning, in which we find sublimatory activities, discrimination, and reparation.

Mourning for Loss of the Object and for Loss of Parts of the Self In dealing with this particular problem I do not intend to describe or explain in detail the well-known factors involved in the process of mourning for the loss of an object, but rather specifically to point out that in every object loss there occurs simultaneously a loss of parts of the self, which leads to its corresponding process of mourning.

I shall refer in the first instance to the famous example given by Freud (1920), i.e. the one-and-a-half-year-old child who used to play with a reel when his mother was away. The child, according to Freud, consoled himself for his mother's absence by controlling in a displaced manner the appearance and disappearance of the mother.

The child discovered that he could make his own image disappear and reappear in a mirror. By thus controlling his own image he felt that he was controlling his mother's disappearance by identification. In this way he attempted to overcome the anxiety and depression caused by her absence. But this also means that the sensation of transient and permanent loss of an object awakens in the individual the feeling of having lost entirely something that was actually his. I believe that in the unconscious fantasy of this child the mother, the reel, and his reflection were different aspects of a unit which the child considered as his own possession. In other words, when an object-loss occurs, the individual 'runs to the mirror' to observe what has happened to his own image.

Throughout this paper I have pointed out that depression plays a fundamental role in the normal evolution of mourning. The feelings of pain and guilt—whether persecutory or depressive—brought about by the loss of parts of the self, if they become overwhelmingly strong, can impair the work of mourning

To begin with, they may represent one of the answers to the question raised by Freud (1914) when he says that: '… Why this compromise by which the command of reality is carried out piecemeal should be so extraordinarily painful is not at all easy to explain in terms of economics. It is remarkable that this painful unpleasure is taken as a matter of course by us .' (My italics). In my opinion 'painful' refers actually to the trauma inflicted on the ego.

I believe that if pain appears in any mourning situation owing to object-loss, it is because it reproduces an experience that in the unconscious fantasy meant an attack upon the ego (in particular upon the body ego, which brings back the birth trauma situation) which provokes physical pain and which has been in turn incorporated as psychical pain.7

Living means, necessarily, to suffer a series of mournings: the very fact of growing up, of passing from one stage to another, involves the abandonment of certain attitudes and relationships which, although replaced by more progressive ones, impinge upon the ego as experiences of loss, and provoke mourning processes which cannot always be sufficiently elaborated. We often find that the very defence mechanisms employed by the ego against anxiety turn against the ego's own structure and integrity and thus weaken it. Klein (1959) 8 has pointed this out, particularly in connexion with processes of dissociation, splitting, projective identification, negation, etc.

Any concern about the ego means, in general, concern about the feeling of identity. To give a fully satisfactory definition of the concept of identity is not an easy task (Erikson, 1956).9 It is not the aim of this paper to discuss this concept exhaustively. All the same, it should be taken into account in order to reach a better and more adequate understanding of the value attributed by the ego to the feeling of identity. In my opinion, this feeling refers to the notion of an ego that is built up upon the continuity and similarity of the unconscious fantasies connected primarily with bodily sensations, with the anxieties and emotions experienced by the ego since birth, the tendencies and affects in relation to objects of the inner and outer world, to the superego and the corresponding anxieties, to the specific operation, both in quality and in intensity, of the defence mechanisms, and to the particular type of the assimilated identifications resulting from the processes of projection and introjection.

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The specific and permanent interaction of all these elements will endow the ego with a certain cohesion. This cohesion, on which identity is based, is maintained within certain limitations, being subjected in certain circumstances to alterations or experiences of loss. Change and loss must occur during the process of development; under normal conditions, however, it will give the ego sufficient time to elaborate the loss and recover from the transient and tolerable identity troubles which may, in most cases, pass unnoticed. In pathological cases, owing to the failure to elaborate these mournings, serious troubles of identity (psychoses) may appear (cf. Grinberg, 1961).

Any attack against the body (somatic illnesses, physical trauma, hypochondriac sensations) is felt unconsciously as an attack against the ego and its identity, with a fully persecutory content. On another level there is, however, a concern of depressive nature about the condition in which the self has been left as a consequence of such attacks.

The anxiety experienced by the menacing loss of certain aspects of the self may assume different forms. In many individuals it may appear in the form of an inhibition from accomplishing various activities. In fact, what they at depth fear is being exposed to a danger and a threat to the integrity of identity of the self. Such persons exhibit in general stiff personalities, developed in order to avoid change. This is in general observed in cases of repetition compulsion, the origin of which would be, among other things, the necessity to maintain at all costs (even neurosis) aspects or modes of the self which the individual cannot or does not want to risk losing. This fear of change may become at times one of the main causes of a negative therapeutic reaction. In consequence, we can easily understand the paradoxical situation of being unable to bear changes which involve progress. This happens because the change means an alteration of the already known ego (identity), and although the alteration might mean a better development and integration, the result will be a new and different ego.

I shall now give a clinical example to show a patient's response when confronted with the problem of depressive ego feelings.

A female patient of mine had to undergo a rather serious operation, a hysterectomy, shortly after the death of an older, close friend who for various reasons embodied for her a maternal image. During the sessions following the operation she brought up a number of associations which distinctly revealed the existence of two kinds of mourning—one for the loss of the object, and the other for the loss of the removed bodily organ. Both losses were linked in her unconscious. She wavered between a massive identification with the dead maternal image, reinforced by the death of her friend (she saw herself as a mother who could not bear any more children), and the feeling of being a newly born infant (birth trauma). In the transference I appeared split as a persecutory mother who exposed her to the surgical castration and death, as well as a saving mother who put life into her, helping her to pull through the operation. In one of the sessions she brought the following dream: 'I had a dream without people. I just saw my old flat, the one I have recently sold; it looked larger. It had an extra bedroom and an extra bathroom. Also the garden seemed to be larger with a cottage in it. I wondered whether it was the same flat. I was sorry that I had sold it so cheaply.' Then she mentioned the following associations: a few days before, when going up to her new flat in the lift, as she was carrying several parcels she forgot a suitcase there. She was puzzled to realize that when she could not remember where she had left it she had given up all hope of finding it. This dream was an attempt to elaborate the loss of such an important organ as the uterus. I have already pointed out that on one level she had felt the operation to be the consequence of a destructive attack coming from persecutory guilt, at times driving her to markedly masochistic attitudes. But she also felt persecutory guilt towards her own self for having neglected it and failed to defend it. That is why on another level she felt the operation to be a violence done to herself. These aspects of self-neglect and self-reproach were clearly expressed in her associations when she remarked that she found it strange to consider her suitcase lost, and also in the dream in which she regretted having sold her flat. Simultaneously, depressive feelings had arisen making her feel a deep sorrow for herself and an awakening of the need to work through the mourning for her self as a reparative attempt. These feelings belong to depressive guilt.

The fact that the flat looked larger and even had extra rooms shows her attempt to deny her lost organ by means of a manic compensation. And we must consider that her identity feelings had undergone a temporary alteration as a result of the serious damage experienced to her body ego. But the same dream and the resultant associations also showed that there was an attempt to restore her damaged self by new enriching ego-activities. Actually this patient had at the time, in real life, several constructive experiences. The imagery of the dream which included a larger flat and also a

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larger garden with a cottage corresponded to the restoration of her inner world and body, but also to the world of the damaged object (her dead friend).

I should like to stress the fact that these depressive feelings for the self are much more frequent than it is usually admitted. Their existence can be recognized in the form of slight depressive states, as part of the phenomena of the psychopathology of daily life. I consider that, if we take into account the appearance of such microdepressions or micromournings for the self, we shall have a better understanding of the origin of many states of mind which we cannot consider as real depressions, but which are usually perceived as ill-temper, apathy, weariness, boredom, irritability, etc. A certain purpose not fulfilled, a dream forgotten, an aim not accomplished, an appointment missed, a trip, a move, are some of the many factors which provoke daily depressive microreactions, and at the same time fleeting threats to one's identity. According to how the corresponding depressions of the first stages of life were overcome, they will be favourably solved as minor disorders or turn into deep and serious depressions.

Psycho-analysis gives the patient the possibility of recovering the excluded parts of the self as well as the possibility of giving up those aspects which must inevitably be lost in the process of development, and which he has omnipotently tried to hold on to.

When constitutional and acquired conditions are good enough to allow the ego an adequate elaboration of the self's depression and mourning, the ego will exhibit reparative and constructive tendencies towards itself, which will permit it to become stronger and better balanced. This process will be parallel to the possibility of experiencing reparative drives towards objects (which were first felt as representing lost aspects of the self). I believe that in this way we shall be able to understand more fully the simultaneous process of integration which occurs in the sphere of the object as well as in that of the ego. Finally, this process of integration of the ego due to the successful elaboration of mourning for the self as well as for its objects, will bring about a progressive strengthening of identity.

Footnotes 1 Presented at the 23rd International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Stockholm, July–August 1963.

2 She writes: 'It appears that one of the consequences of excessive envy is an early onset of guilt. If premature guilt is experienced by an ego not yet capable of bearing it, guilt is felt as persecution and the object that rouses guilt is turned into a persecutor.' … 'The fact that in the earliest stage (i.e. during the paranoid-schizoid position) premature guilt increases persecution and disintegration, brings the consequence that the working through of the depressive position also fails.'

3 Freud points out that 'the third, in some respects the most important, form assumed by masochism has only recently been recognized by psycho-analysis as a sense of guilt which is mostly unconscious'. This, in my opinion, makes part of the 'persecutory guilt'. He adds furthermore that 'Thus moral masochism becomes a classical piece of evidence for the existence of fusion of instinct. Its danger lies in the fact that it originates from the death instinct and corresponds to the part of that instinct which has escaped being turned outwards as an instinct of destruction.'

4 Isaacs here intends to determine, particularly, the process leading from deprivation towards guilt and the emergence of the superego and expresses the view that the first elements of guilt belong to the most undifferentiated levels of experience.

5 I would like to comment briefly on Wisdom's ideas concerning the avoidance of guilt in psycho-somatic disorders (Wisdom, 1959). In his paper he says that: 'Clinically, psycho-somatic disorders are sometimes taken to be ways of avoiding guilt. …' This clinical finding, however, is susceptible of two different constructions: one is that a psychosomatic disorder is developed in order to avoid guilt, the guilt of a purely psychological disorder. The other—implied by the present hypothesis—is that a patient develops a psychosomatic disorder because he is unable to experience guilt. Following the ideas I have developed in the present paper I consider that a patient develops a psychosomatic disorder (for instance after the loss of a loved object) because he is unable to experience depressive guilt, and instead of this he experiences persecutory guilt which he perceives unconsciously as a threat and punishment arising from the persecutory object introjected in the sick organ.

6 Jones (1929) says that these feelings (fear, guilt, and hate) are in fact stratified, since any of them may act as a defence against either of the two others. He even points out that a secondary guilt might develop in order to be able to face the two other attitudes. On the basis of this concept we might explain the alternating character of the two types of guilt I have described. It might happen that,

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the depressive guilt being unbearable, it was replaced in a regressive way by persecutory guilt which would act, in this case, as a defence mechanism.

7 Freud (1915) himself admitted this when referring to the death or danger of death of loved persons he said: '… these loved ones are … an inner possession, components of our own ego.'

8 Klein (1959) defines loneliness not as the mere fact of being devoid of external companionship, but essentially as the 'permanent longing for a perfect and unattainable condition'.

9 Erikson (1956) points out that the feeling of identity is the feeling which permits us to experience ourselves as something endowed with continuity and uniformity, and allowing us to act accordingly.

REFERENCES 1 ERIKSON, E. H. 1956 'The Problem of Ego Identity.' J. Am. Psychoanal. Assoc. 4 (APA.004.0056A)

2 FREUD, S. 1913 Totem and Taboo. S.E. 13 (SE.013.R0007A)

3 FREUD, S. 1914 'Mourning and Melancholia.' S.E. 14 (SE.014.0000A)

4 FREUD, S. 1915 'Thoughts for the Times on War and Death.' S.E. 14 (SE.014.0000A)

5 FREUD, S. 1916 'Some Character-Types met with in Psycho-Analytic Work.' S.E. 14 (SE.014.0261A)

6 FREUD, S. 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle. S.E. 18 (SE.018.0001A)

7 FREUD, S. 1923 The Ego and the Id. S.E. 19 (SE.019.0000A)

8 FREUD, S. 1924 'The Economic Problems of Masochism.' S.E. 19 (SE.019.0000A)

9 FREUD, S. 1930 Civilization and its Discontents. S.E. 21 (SE.021.0057A)

10 GRINBERG, L. 1961 'Feeling of Identity and Mourning for the Self.' Read at the Symposium on Melanie Klein's Work, Argentine Psychoanal. Assoc., June 1961

11 GRINBERG, L. 1962 'Normal and Pathological Aspects of Mourning.' Read at the Fourth Latin-American Psychoanal. Congress, Rio de Janeiro, July 1962

12 ISAACS, S. 1929 'Privation and Guilt.' Int. J. Psychoanal. 10 (IJP.010.0335A)

13 JONES, E. 1929 'Fear, Guilt and Hate.' In:Papers on Psycho-Analysis (London: Baillière.)

14 KLEIN, M. 1935 'A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States.' In:Contributions to Psycho-Analysis (London: Hogarth, 1948 )

15 KLEIN, M. 1955 'On Identification.' In:New Directions in Psycho-Analysis (London: Tavistock.)

16 KLEIN, M. 1957 Envy and Gratitude (London: Tavistock.) (IPL.104.0001)

17 KLEIN, M. 1959 'On Loneliness.' In:Our Adult World and Other Essays (London: Heinemann, 1963 .)

18 MONEY-KYRLE, R. E. 1955 'Psycho-Analysis and Ethics.' In:New Directions in Psycho-Analysis ed. Klein et al. (London: Tavistock.)

19 WINNICOTT, D. W. 1958 'Psycho-Analysis and the Sense of Guilt.' In:Psycho-Analysis and Contemporary Thought ed. J. D. Sutherland. (London: Hogarth.)

20 WISDOM, J. O. 1959 'On a Differentiating Mechanism of Psychosomatic Disorder.' Int. J. Psychoanal. 40 (IJP.040.0134A)

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