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PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
higher, one lower; one light, one dark. Before his critical
experience of personal guilt he was aware of them and discerned
a contrast between them, but he appears not to have experienced
the contrast as a personal valuation. His knowledge of guilt was
looked at objectively, with detachment, as one might look at an
injured thumb. It provided him with material for psychological
examination, but that seems to have been all.
Similarly one can experience inward conflict as a dissonance
within the personality, but this is quite different from knowledge
of personal guilt as an absolute phenomenon. One can be aware
of lower and higher inclinations and desires within oneself, and
the experience of dissension can make its marks on personality
and affect mental health, without bringing one to the knowledge
of guilt, in the strict sense of the word. A state of moral
indecision or equivocation can be accepted as something inevitable: a
situation one must make the best of. To do this is not to
experience personal guilt. :
When Hans Trüb does experience guilt in the absolute,
personal sense he is utterly changed. Until his guilt is
acknowledged and accepted his awareness of it bewilders and disconcerts
him. But the acknowledgment is not destructive in effect. It
lifts him on to firm ground. He becomes a human being, a self,
a subject. He knows what self-knowledge is, and his whole
existence is transformed by the new awareness. In the very
deepest sense of the word it is an existential experience.
The absolute guilt phenomenon described by Hans Triib is
so radical and personal in its nature that it is unapproachable
by psychological methods of analysis. So, indeed, are all our
deepest experiences of reality. Their reflections on the walls of
the mind can be observed and judged, but the inmost being is
covered in darkness. As Hans Trüb himself noticed, the
psychologist can watch with interest a revolt of sentiment. He can
form conclusions about events he recognises in a turmoil of
disappointments. But all these roads to understanding of
oneself or others reach a dead end when a person undergoes the
kind of experience Hans Triib went through. It would be well
if all psychologists would acknowledge this. The discussion of
the problem of guilt feelings would be raised to a higher level.
As we have earlier remarked, some psychologists see no more
in guilt feelings than a harmful sentiment tension. From the
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