The Psychology of Guilt: Freud, Twain, Dostoyevsky (Patreon)

We're applying Freud's chapter on guilt from Civilisation and Its Discontents to Crime and Punishment.

Scorned though Freud often is, we do see a sense of consistency regarding his ideas of conscience, sin, and morality when we read Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche.

How much do you agree with Freud here? 

Timestamps:

• 0:00 how does society render aggression harmless?
• 1:20 aggression introjected and internalised
• 1:45 super ego = conscience 
• 2:00 tension between super-ego & ego = sense go guilt 
• 2:10 sense of guilt = need for punishment
• 2:40 the value of Freud 
• 5:30 Freud on guilt as sin (and recognising evil)
• 6:00 why is intention equated with the deed?
• 8:40 motives for submitting to external influences
• 9:30 loss of love as external punishment
• 10:00 wider human community as parental replacement
• 11:00 nothing can be hidden from our internal authority
• 12:30 penance and punishing oneself 
• 13:10 fate replacing parental authority 
• 13:20 Mark Twain's theoretical vs practical morals 
• 16:30 how I tried to find comfort and wisdom in the Bible
• 19:30 how to really understand the Great Books (experience and suffering)
• 20:00 what it means if you prefer Dostoyevsky to Tolstoy
• 23:00 the Mandarin Paradox 
• 23:50 the two origins of the sense of guilt 
• 23:40 post-deed guilt and remorse

Happy psychologising!