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The Still Small Voice: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Guilt and Conscience

Author(s) : Donald L. Carveth

Reviews and Endorsements

'Carveth's book is a powerful challenge to rethink the ethical basis of psychoanalysis. He wants to add conscience to Freud's typology of id, ego and superego, none of which can be thought of as reified bounded entities but as dynamic dimensions of a single complex self. He sees conscience as the realm of morality, especially the requirement to love one another, something Freud himself seemed to recognize with his late conception of eros in the dichotomy between eros and thanatos. Carveth's book is not only relevant to the psychoanalytic community, which surely needs it, but to the wider public in providing a deeper context for the great insights of Freud and his followers.'
- Professor Robert N. Bellah, Elliot Professor of Sociology, Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Religion in Human Evolution

‘What will be our moral purpose? And, how may we exceed the confines of rationality in learning to live with others? With these questions Donald Carveth’s superb study integrates social theory with the history of psychoanalytic thought. With deep sensitivity to the nuances of mental life and the dilemmas theory inherits, the study proposes the psychoanalytic project as one of listening to the voice of conscience. Carveth provides insightful readings of the moral significance of guilt from a number of perspectives and argues for a shift from the superego to that of conscience. Questions of theology are placed between the cultural and clinical realms and readers encounter the modern dilemmas of tolerating mental pain as the human condition.’
- Deborah Britzman, Distinguished Research Professor, York University, and author of Freud and Education

‘I would like to make Dr Carveth’s book required reading for all psychoanalytic therapists (and recommended reading for their patients) who are working every day on issues of guilt and shame. It represents a truly extraordinary contribution to human knowledge, a contribution that deserves and will reward the reader’s undivided attention.‘
- From the Foreword by Elio Frattaroli, MD, psychoanalyst and author of Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain