INFANTILE GUILT
"All upbringing is a cultivation of the sense of guilt on an intensive scale," writes Tournier ( 1977, 10 ). According to Freud (1996), guilt begins in our childhood when as infants and young children we are completely dependent on our parents and other adults for our well-being. Since our survival depends on pleasing our caretakers, when they scold or become angry with us, we fear that we will be abandoned or neglected. Along with that fundamental fear, comes guilt at not having pleased the parent or caretaker.
Freud used the term infantile guilt to describe guilt you felt as a child when you were reprimanded or rejected by your parents or other caretakers for not pleasing them. This type of guilt motivated you to change your behavior in order to avoid parental scolding or neglect. Through direct teaching as well as parental admonitions, you probably learned the morale and rules of your household and society. In Freudian terms, you internalized the parent’s or caretaker’s value system and expectations and automatically felt guilty when you violated parental or societal norms. Even when your parents or caretakers weren’t around to scold you, you probably scolded yourself for disobeying their rules. For example studies of two year olds have shown that even when their mothers were not around, they called themselves "naughty" and "bad" for having violated a household rule (Aronfreed et. al. 1971 ).
Freud coined the term superego to refer to internalized parental and societal expectations and morals. He theorized that if people developed a healthy superego, as they became older, they would not require their parents or other adults to make them feel guilty for violating a family or societal rule or moral. Their superego would remind them of their transgressions and they could make themselves feel guilty all by ourselves.
Freud further postulated that as people grew older they could transfer their infantile guilt from their parents and caretakers to other authority figures, such as teachers, clergy persons, work supervisors or superiors, political figures or others with religious, political, economical, or vocational status or power. Hence even a sixty-year old man could feel guilty about not meeting the expectations of someone in an authority position, for example, his work supervisor. Psychologically, the man feels as if his supervisor has the power not only to harm his professional standing, but to obliterate him. This fear not only of being scolded or shamed in pubic by an authority figure for not meeting a certain standard but of being annihilated by that person stems back to infancy and childhood. At that time being judged as deficient in some way could have lead to being rejected and neglected, which could have lead to death itself. On another psychological level, parental, caretaker, or teacher rejection and condemnation can severely stunt or damage a child’s self-esteem, since children rarely have sources of validation other than the adults who take care of them.
Infantile guilt involves fear of losing the esteem and love of other people (Tournier 1977, 89) and evokes a fear of physically dying or being psychologically obliterated as the result of displeasing others. An adult whose life is organized around avoiding the criticism of others, especially authority figures, can be seen as suffering from infantile guilt. In more popular terms, infantile guilt can be seen as "people-pleasing," which refers to putting aside one’s own needs and desires in order to give precedence to the needs and desires of others.
When infantile guilt, or fear of condemnation from others, guides people’s lives, they may have difficulty recognizing their own needs or talents and discovering their own convictions. On the other hand, children who fail to develop a healthy superego may need constant supervision in order not to be destructive to themselves or others and can grow up to become criminals, socio-paths, and other menaces to society.
Infantile guilt can compound survivor guilt in instances where an individual’s failure to obey or please an authority figure resulted in the death or injury of another. For example, Tyrone was raised to believe that children were supposed to obey their parents. In the military, he learned to obey commanding officers. However in one instance, Tyrone balked when his commanding officer ordered him to fire at a group of supposed enemy soldiers in the distance. Based on reliable sources, including information from other soldiers, Tyrone thought the soldiers were Americans not the enemy.
Tyrone refused to fire, only to discover the commanding officer had been right: the soldiers in the distance were indeed armed enemy troops. During the resulting firefight, some of Tyrone’s comrades were killed. Tyrone’s guilt for having stayed alive was compounded by his infantile guilt at disobeying an authority figure, his commanding officer.