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Volume 8, Number 1
January - June 2004

La Colpa "presa in prestito" ed il falso Super-Io
('Borrowed' guilt and the false super-ego)
Eva Schmid-Gloor


SUMMARY

Based on her clinical work with some "heterogeneous" patients (D. Quinodoz), the author enquires into a specific aspect of the genesis of the sense of guilt.

She believes that these patients, finding themselves in a well-determined relationship regarding their primary objects, have "borrowed" a sense of guilt from it. This "extraneous guilt" deprives them of their drives.

She then presents a clinical case to demonstrate how this sense of guilt can be "given back" and how, subsequently, it was possible to integrate the drive state and the "authentic" feelings of guilt connected with it. In the theoretical part the enquiry dwells on the concept of "borrowed guilt".