Abstract

A major contributor to the de-moralizing trend in post-Freudian and post-Kleinian psychoanalysis is Harry Guntrip. The guilt evasion that characterizes certain trends within contemporary psychoanalytic thought and the contemporary culture to which they have adapted mirrors that of Guntrip himself. Despite his background as a Christian minister and his years of analysis with two of the most creative analysts in the field, Guntrip managed by the end (in my hypothesis) only a paranoid understanding of himself as a victim of a murderous mother, rather than a man crippled by a need to punish himself for his disowned murderous wishes toward a brother who died and toward the mother he hated and blamed. In focusing upon the roots of the “schizoid problem” or the “disordered self” in defective early objectrelations, Guntrip obscured entirely the role of guilt and the need for punishment in these conditions and promoted a cure based on reparative reparenting rather than analysis and resolution of inner conflict.