Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part 4. Guilt and the Fear of Punishment - 2. Disguises of the Fear of Punishment - Fear of Punishment and Repression
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
the only ones, as some popular psychologies would have us
believe. A tendency to repression and dissimulation is to be
found in us whenever our experiences reflect on us adversely.
The fear of punishment is a definite factor in many
repressions, no doubt because it is associated with the expectation of
punishment, or even in some instances with the desire for it,
and is thus linked with the idea that what we have done is
reprehensible.
It is important to notice that fear of punishment, like all other
morbid fears, is derived from our experience of people. It
affects our attitude to ourselves and others because it is our
response to what we conceive their attitude to be towards us.
In this sense, like all neurotic behaviour, it is a description of
the kind of relationship that exists between us and our world—
or rather of the kind of relationship that would exist if people
still were what we supposed them to be in the early formative
years of our lives.
Closely linked with the fear of punishment is, as we have
just said, a desire for punishment. This is, indeed, the simplest
and commonest form of disguise taken by the fear when it is
repressed. This desire is frequently manifested in forms of
behaviour which are self-punitive.
People who drive themselves ruthlessly to work, depriving
themselves of leisure, relaxation and entertainment; people
who are generous in giving but ungracious in receiving; those
who impose upon themselves all kinds of voluntary austerities
and unnecessary self-disciplines; the confirmed pessimists and
wallowers in gloom; and the people who unnecessarily sacrifice
themselves, or, as we say, ‘make doormats of themselves’, to
minister to the arrogance or selfishness of their parents or their
children—all these are usually behaving as they do at the
bidding of a repressed fear of punishment that has been converted
into desire and rationalised as a virtue.
Freud suggests that the need or desire for punishment
sometimes expresses itself in proneness to physical accidents. In
this connection he describes the case of one of his patients, a
married woman with three children who had engineered the
termination of a fourth pregnancy. Some time thereafter she
stumbled and fell when passing a pile of stones and rubble as she
was walking along a street. She injured her face rather severely
144
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
