ABSTRACT
Defined legally, guilt is the state of having violated a law; defined morally, it is the state of having transgressed a moral norm. Legal or metaphysical guilt and psychological or experiential guilt need not correspond. It is not rare for people judged to be guilty not to feel guilty. And sometimes people feel guilty though no one has so judged them. There is no necessary coincidence between legal or moral guilt and psychological guilt. Such discrepancies may arise from varying circumstances. Sometimes people are conscious of feeling guilt but unaware of its grounds. At other times, they are unaware that they are feeling guilty, feeling something else instead. Freud taught that unconscious guilt is often expressed in guilt-substitutes, painful symptoms of many types, and patterns of self-torment and self-sabotage operating in people’s lives without any accompanying consciousness of guilt.
