Leslie H. Farber, Robert Jay Lifton, and others
QUESTIONS OF GUILT
EDITORS' NOTE:
The views expressed by Leslie H. Farber and
Robert Jay Lifton were presented at a
PR
evening this spring,
one of a series called
Conversations and Confrontations
the
magazine's been running at the Manhattan Theatre Club
in
New York. The questions and answers that follow are from
the transcript of portions of the discussion.
ROBERT
JAY
LIFTON:
I want to start with a distinction be–
tween an external arrangement of guilt and an internal, or subjective,
one. It's a very simple distinction, but useful, I think, as a be?;inning.
For if one speaks of guilt in a legal or moral sense, one is then speaking
of a kind of culpability which is externally judged. We decide some–
body is guilty because he is, in a sense, responsible. But when we
speak of a "sense of guilt," we' re talking of a subjectiye experience
which has something to do with an awareness of \Hon?;doing. Trans–
gression is a core idea here: one goes beyond some limit that's accept–
able, and one experiences some sort of self-dissatisfaction or self- con'
demnation - often, as you know, with an expectation or anticipation
of punishment or retaliation.
Of course, the distinction is ne\'er that precise. Most experientes of
guilt overlap. Take, for example, religious guilt in the Judeo-Christian
tradition. Obviously it includes both kinds of experience. In Freud's
famous concept of an unconscious sense of guilt, the guilt is internal.
but often it depends upon an external jud?;ment, \,·hich mayor may
not be brought out by various analytic or other methods. And the same
will be true of a kind of numbed guilt that I'll refer to in connection
with work I've been doing.
Now let's turn to America and our situation now, and ask
from
these definitions: is there a shared moral or criminal culpability of a
large number of Americans, say, in relationship to the Vietnam war?
One would also ask that second question: is there a shared sense of
wrongdoing, of transgTession with expectation of retaliation or punish–
ment, among a significant number of the population? Let me start out
without being able to prove it - and in the end, of course, there is no
