8. Unsatisfied Wishes and Sublimation - Square Circles Publishing

SOURCE 8: THE MIND AT MISCHIEF
This is clearly shown by the fact that in
the dream-life the most conscientious and
upright individual will permit himself to
indulge the libido instincts to their fullest
extent, without a dream-blush of shame.
Clearly, conscience is not at home in the
libido realms of the subconscious.
The criticizing function of the Ego-ideal
may be unconsciously performed, so that
a patient may suffer from an intense sense
of guilt without being able to say what he
is guilty of;
8:4.6 We often find cases in which this
developing conscience, this psychic
censorship of our feelings and emotions,
is carried to the extent that an individual
becomes possessed of some generalized
feeling of guilt. He just simply feels
guilty of something.
This state of mind is often associated with
the inferiority complex.
and further, the sense of guilt may itself
be unconscious, so that the patient does
not feel guilty, but ill (M 92-93).
We have, indeed, a series of oppositions
which have successively been brought to
light in the development of psychoanalytic
theory; primary system versus
secondary system, pleasure principle
versus reality principle, unconscious
system versus preconscious system; and
there would seem to be some factor
common to them all which perhaps finds
its fullest expression in the formula:
Libido versus Ego (M 81).
[See Chap. 7.]
In other cases, instead of an indefinite
feeling of guilt, the individual becomes
possessed of a strange feeling of illness.
8:4.7 When we undertake to reduce the
actual warfare and the sham battles of the
psychic nature to the lowest possible
terms, we visualize the conflict as
occurring between
the libido—the sex emotions, the domain
of race preservation—and the ego—the
nonsexual emotions,
or those which we have otherwise
classified as the life urge, the power urge,
the worship urge, and the social urge.
26