Aquinas and Freud on Guilt

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Aquinas and Freud on Guilt

Similarities

  • Guilt can be disruptive for humanity
  • They both see a link between guilt and human desires for pleasures

Differences

  • Aquinas saw guilt in terms of feelings of being to blame for moral wrong doing
  • Freud saw guilt in terms of internal conflict between personality aspects. Guilt is created from id/superego conflict
  • Freud equates guilt to conscience
  • For Aquinas, guilt (alongside shame and desire) are not a phenomena to be explained but rather facts about how we are. Conscience isn't like these - it isn't a feeling - rather the process of reasoning

Overall comparison

Freud link the idea of conscience more closely to guilt than Aquinas. He believed they were one in the same thing and the aspects that made up your conscience, specifically the id and superego, led to guilt. Aquinas links conscience more closely to rational rather than a feeling which is why he doesn't connect it as closely to guilt. However, he recognised that a feeling of guilt was there and is linked with going against our conscience.

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