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PARTISAN REVIEW
The sense of guilt is "the most important problem in the evolution
of culture." Its origins lie in the perennial revolt against the mythical
father and in the establishment of the first tabus in the primitive
society of the brother clan. This mythical prototype of the origin of
civilization served Freud as the basis for the crucial assertion that
"that which began in relation to the father ends in relation to the
community." In other words, all cultural systems reflect "the conflict
of ambivalence, the eternal struggle between Eros and the destructive
instinct," originally felt toward the mythical father image. Culture has
devised a precarious resolution of this ambivalence. It checks the de–
structive impulse by turning it inward where it is then discharged, as
a sense of guilt or moral anxiety, against the individual himself. As the
libidinal ties were extended "from the group of the family to the group
of humanity," a process for which the impossible moral command,
"Love thy neighbor as thyself," is the most conspicuous symbol in West–
ern culture, the cycle of repression, guilt, and anxiety was repeated
through countless generations. And "the feelings of guilt ... were rein–
forced" by each successive resolution of the original conflict, or by
the increasing
netd
to internalize aggressive and destructive tendencies
in the form of a vigilant conscience. Thus the super-ego is
progre~sively
strengthened in the course of history; and the destructive elements, in
man and society, gain at the expense of Eros.
Culture, then, is both a blessing and a curse; and it is both through–
out the history ot civilized man. Human history is a record of this
ambiguity: a repetitive cycle of progress and regression, revolt and
repression, achievement and failure, stability and upheaval, security and
insecurity, liberation and enslavement. And unless we bring the uncon–
scious "ambivalence" behind the cultural process into full consciousness
and design apprcpriate precautionary measures to deal with it ade–
quately, Freud was inclined to think-this is his pessimistic, tragic view
of life-that man's fate was likely to be sealed by the "immortal ad–
versary" of Eros.
Culture occupied so dominant a place in Freud's mind that he
not only assigned to it-all "cultural" dissenters to the contrary-a
crucial part in the causal analysis of neuroses, but even compared it
(like Plato) to an "organic process" of its own, independent of all the
factors contributing to it. Along these lines, he envisaged the ideal of
a "true social science" which would "show in detail how these different
factors-the general human instinctual disposition, its racial variations,
and its cultural modifications-behave under the influence of varying
social organization, professional activities and methods of subsistence"
(New Introductory Lectures).
Moreover, he raised the interesting ques-
