In Freud’s language guilt, Schuld, means debt, owing. I am guilty means I owe, I am indebted. There is free and unfree debt. For example, I owe you a speech for today’s meeting. I owe to converse with guilt. This is my topic. It might be successful, and this would make me richer, calmer in the way I encounter guilt, both in my everyday life and during psychotherapy. The conversation with guilt might fail. But, this too can make me richer. It might reconcile me with my fleetingness and transience, with the randomness of time, which, as Pindar says, will come, striking unexpectedly, and give one thing beyond all expectation, and withhold another. This would be an example of free guilt.

In unfree guilt, preparing today’s speech would be like preparing for exams, if not for the firing squad. You would be my judges. And your judgement of conviction would be hanging over my trembling head like the sword of Damocles. And why owing today’s speech would be unfree? Because in this case, it wouldn’t open me, it would shrink me. The unfree debt would shrink me because I would assign to you a matter of my own, in this case my conversation with guilt. The beginning and the end would lie in your judgment, your grade. I would have lost myself in your image of me. I would see the image of myself in the mirror of your eyes. Myself would be like a city conquered by you, the occupying power. Freud uses this metaphor when he mentions the Superego. His mistake lies in conceptualizing it as an intrapsychic dimension. But, as I write, you are here, not within me but in front of me, and you are judging me. Freud cannot follow this because he doesn’t recognize a presence which is not sensually perceptible at present, for example your phantasmal presence as I am writing.

But let's go back to me as I speak to you, as I take exams in front of you, and to you, my judges, who are listening to me. Interestingly enough, even if you give me a good grade at the end of my speech, nothing would change in my eyes. I might even say that I fooled you, that you didn’t notice my inadequacy. I will definitely continue to perceive people as judges, and myself on the ropes. This is a particular climate, the climate of my place, which has already engraved my ways of perception and reaction, ways that do not change based on one, two or more incidents. In this case, I do not learn from experience, e.g. that some people stand before me as judges, but others not. Or even, that my apologetic, and perhaps even supplicant, and perhaps even macho tone would drive the Other in the position of being a judge which he might not necessarily have taken on his own. I am a priori wrong, inadequate, unworthy. For this reason, psychoanalysis in this case, does not engage in unnecessary advice, and deceitful support and encouragement, but looks forward to what old doctors recommended: a change of climate. Only this doesn’t usually happen by going “to another country, go to another shore” because “the city will pursue you”.

Speaking of psychoanalysis, I will highlight a guilt, a debt, an obligation the therapist often takes upon himself, what Freud called "therapeutic zeal". Therapeutic zeal, as good as it seems at first sight, belongs to the unfree guilt because it drives the therapist to take over the client's matter, e.g. to believe he knows what is best for him, to offer advice, to point a particular direction to him etc.

Often though the therapeutic zeal also concerns the relation of a person to himself. It becomes self-therapeutic zeal. The very emergence of Psychology raises the claim of someone taking his fate in his own hands. How many times, when a relationship deteriorates, when my kids turn out wrong, when I fail in my professional life, even when I get sick by a so called "psychosomatic" illness, even when I get cancer, how many times won't I ask "What am I doing wrong?" "What did I do wrong?" Today man is the manager of himself. He manages his life according to Barack Obama's pre-election slogan: Yes we can! "I can" has become the relentless standard for the solution to each problem. If you don’t meet it, you are solely responsible. Today's guilt doesn't primarily refer to the Other, but myself. So I spend time in the improvement and maintenance of my physical and mental condition, in prevention and therapy, in gyms, in relations, marriage and children's counsellors, in nutritionists, in the glorification of medicine.

I spoke earlier of climate. If “I can” is a factor of my place’s climate, then obviously the Other is also someone who “can”. I am expecting that the Other “can”. The word which describes today’s accusation is not “mistake” but “failure”. Is there really any mother who read Winnicott and didn’t think in awe whether she is a "good enough" mother?

Therefore today, one primarily owes to himself. And a relation has more the characteristics of a joint venture. Teamwork. Sartre uses rowing as an example of Co-being (Mitsein). Certainly this is not Heidegger. Nonetheless, Sartre’s example pictures today’s interpersonal relationships: The boat floats well when each one does his job successfully. It’s interesting that in this case no one can take upon himself the Other’s matter. I can’t simultaneously paddle for him. I can’t help him and he can’t help me. Each one has to help himself. And, in the name of achievement, to loot himself, to exhaust himself. Remembering Freud’s metaphor, the occupying forces are not sent by the Other. I am the one who has conquered myself, bled myself, overwhelmed myself. Am I a good enough son, student, worker, lover, husband, father? “You can do more!”. Till you drop dead. Current depression, in the era of “Yes, we can”, has the form of exhaustion: “I can’t can”.

Nevertheless, culturally we live, more or less emphatically, in various eras, e.g. and in that of Freud's in which society was one of discipline and prohibition. In this case Ethics rule, and Ethics dictate how I must live, and this Must stems from a higher authority, e.g. from the parents, the school , the church. Their word is law. I am asked to be "a good boy" and every sign which shows that I am a bad boy too is followed by guilt. An action of mine is justified if it is in accordance with the laws of society's and family's ethics. When my action doesn't have such a "sufficient reason", I am condemned by others and myself. I am "bad" and nothing can change that. The "principle of sufficient reason" determines me as being the cause, states that it's up to me whether I will disappoint, or upset my parents, even if they will die because of me, it depends on me if a relationship will go well or not, if my children turn out "right", "what would people say" etc. Phenomena such as that of betrayal, forgiveness, revenge should be seen in the cultural context of power relationships.

In this respect, power relationships are always relationships of guilt, debt, and obligation. In the microcosm of a family they are usually hidden under what is called "love". That's when we speak of a "bonded" family. The bonds become chains because each one has transferred his matters, i.e his freedom, to the other and respectively has appropriated the matters of the other, i.e. the other person's freedom. They are all shriveled as each one feeds on the expectations of the Other, the fulfillment of which would complete them, obligations to the Other, responding to which would complete them. They are shriveled as the creditor and the indebted are, as the creditor has given some of his money and the indebted must pay him back some of his money, leading everyone to a limited living in terms of their financial ability, and usury, in it's actual and broader sense, is part of this limitation.

Sometimes freedom from debt and owing, the redemption from guilt is scary. The guilt, the bond with the Other through "I owe you" / "you owe me", is a microcosm in which you get comfortable, even if it's miserable, where the world begins and ends in your little room.

When I speak of "redemption from guilt", I don't mean the so-called "remorseless" people, those whom psychopathology described as "psychopaths", because, as it was said, they lacked "Superego". These people, among which many offenders of the criminal law, as well as many people in all kinds of positions of power, owe, not their freedom but their unrestrained behavior to the fact that they are so closed in themselves that the Other is just a subsidiary or an obtrusive object. Here we have to mention the selectively psychopaths, who become so when they leave e.g their home. Since the Other as Other is missing from their field of vision, any reference to him is also missing, e.g. guilt. In relation to the possibility of a true freedom from debt and owing, a redemption from guilt which opens the world, I will talk later.

Sometime guilt exceeds the critical point. The imminent disaster is here. The inevitable has happened and is no longer reversible. Then, remorse comes. Forcefully. It comes, as the poet Manolis Anagnostakis writes, with "the rush of a sudden storm". I made a mistake. I did a bad thing. I committed a crime. As the words are spoken, they strike you, hit you straight on the head. There is anguish, despair, suffering to the point of insanity. It happened, for example to a Swiss banker in his fifties because he had cheated on a school exam. And to a woman from a Greek island, who had buried some kittens alive when she was little. What is so excruciating here? The definitive and the irreversible. The time which cannot turn back. Hitting the wall of "no more". In guilt, time strikes. Or better, time strikes when you want to turn it back and of course it denies you to do so. Time's No hits you mercilessly. There is also the possibility of rebellion against time. The attack against it seeks redemption. For the victim is revenge demanding to get even. For the perpetrator is longing for a punishment that will make up for what he did. Both feed on the expectation that in this way they will be relieved by the stigma of the past, that the open wound will finally close. But it doesn't. Remorse, which in German literally means "bite of consciousness" is, as Nietzsche writes, "as a dog biting a stone, a folly". One, I say, tragic folly.

In guilt, one has unfinished business. Sometimes we even speak of open wounds. The reason for this, as I said, is that it's not an isolated incident but the climate of the place in which the guilt-prone one lives. Where it rains all the time, the one time he will go out with an umbrella doesn't relieve him of next day's rain. The one who pretends to be a "good boy" one time, has to confirm it next time too. If I see you today as judges, or as the firing squad, this will be repeated for as long as I live. If I loot myself today in the arena of "can", this, certainly along with the defense against the nightmare of failure, will sting me for life.

Now, let's take a closer look at the bleeding of guilt. I spoke of unfree guilt in the era of a society of discipline and prohibition, in which Freud also belongs, whose motto is Must. Its place is the courtroom. In today’s era, the era of achievement, the motto is Can. Its place is the sports field. The key word in the first case is conflict and its outcome, for the second case is competition and achievement. Bleeding is their common component. “Must” bleeds me, seeking to eliminate me completely, walks all over me. “Can" bleeds me, because it follows the logic of achievement to surpass itself constantly.

And why is the order of Must and Can endless? Why does it never quiet down? Because I am like the sea, and the sea, as an ancient and a contemporary one say, who could exhaust it? If it could be exhausted, if I could become completely Must, become completely Can, there will no longer be a debt and a guilt. Guilt, remorse, depression are the signs of the inexhaustible, that which cannot get comfortable neither in Must nor in Can. And a picture by Giorgos Seferis: “Gods! what a struggle it is for life to keep going, as though it were a swollen river passing through the eye of a needle.” I’ve heard during supervision of a woman who had spent her life taking care of others. One day, coca-cola was spilled on the table. The woman, for the first time in her life, didn’t budge. The doctors diagnosed depression.

I spoke earlier of climate. Must and Can are places of residence, courtroom and sports field each with its own suffocating atmosphere which every time feeds its own particular guilt. I also spoke of the old doctors who recommended a change of climate. Such a change, the possibility of such a change is offered in psychoanalysis. In psychoanalysis, with the basic rule of the so-called “free association” for the patient and “free-floating attention” for the analyst, comes the possibility of a freedom, which when presented to the guilt-prone one, he gets scared and cringes in his little room of guilt chains, and sets a toll gate at the eye of the needle to channel the swollen river of life. Because in the climate of psychoanalysis, Must and Can are dealt with a belle indifference, yet in this case not as a symptom of hysteria but as a kind and accepting indifference which doesn’t acknowledge any prestige of Must and Can, no priority, but accepts them as another wave of that inexhaustible sea. To the extent that with time the patient shifts, moves to the place of that climate and lives behind him the place of the courtroom (Must) and the place of the sports field and achievement (Can), to that extent guilt, remorse, depression will stay behind.

But now that we are here, at the mountain, under the open sky and the shade of the trees, it’s more suitable to talk to you about this translocation in indirect ways. With fairy tales. I will read to you an excerpt of the book by the Swiss writer Gerold Späth, Commedia. In the first part, a large number of people speak, who are asked to write something, anything they want. One of them, Wolf Holland, invites to such a translocation:

Yes, Gerold, I must tell you that I always found life lived more invigorating than life narrated. I wonder and I ask you too how can you stand all those people around you, where I once lived too and you continue to live and where there is no proper way for a proper life. In the civilized world everything has been done and overdone, everywhere in the same old disk the same old ditch, everything repeated, filtered wastewater. We must all become savages again, otherwise even under the best circumstances everything has only a programmed future, but no prospect in view anymore, no life. And all these are not enough at all, even doing something against them is not enough, you only have to look around you for the outcomes, and everything full of disappointed and exhausted people without love and without perspective. The entire so-called modern world is full of dead people who sell out their obedience and their soul and their lives and they think that in this way they can buy life. They can’t, it can’t be done. A small blonde beer is their great freedom. They have a phone and a car and plastics and crayons and coca-cola and TV and all the colored bullshit. It’s not necessary. For months I chopped wood in Alaska, I was a worker for twelve hours a day and a bad husband for Marie-Therese, like every man who has to get crippled. But it’s not the twelve-hour job that annoys you. What annoys you is the thought that every living tree you chop, you kill it so that those in Chicago and New York have enough paper for the five hundred pages of their newspaper, filled with yesterday’s printed shit of Times of the New World which is of no benefit to no one. That's the reason you tear down live forests, and this annoys you so much that for a long time after you feel hatred for yourself, your wife, everything. You can't even tell those self-castrated monkeys to go fuck themselves. The odds are so much against you that you should stop. The wine is vinegar, spill it. Do not multiply the whoreness of the so-called culture. If you are strong enough do something against it, but one should be terribly strong, otherwise you will get lost unnecessarily. I gave up. I need this free space and the bears, and the deers, and the elks in the forests, and the rivers full of salmons, I make sixty cents for half a kilo of them at the market and I make a living with these and no one needs more than a warm lively wife, and children, and light, and air.

You know where to find me, Gerold. Everything is so full of life here that you can’t even die. Even the dead here continue to live for a long time, deep in the ground and yet here always, death has its place and it’s not something bad. You don’t need to have almost any stress, this is the wonderful about it.

Pack your things before they crush you and come here with your wife and children. There is need for someone to write down what life really is. You must feel and sense this crazy temptation. As long as you feel it, they haven’t got grip of you completely. If you don’t sense it, it’s over with you, the wonderful hot life would be calling you in vain since you wouldn’t respond anymore. It would be a shame, Gerold.

Your Wolf.

And of the other place, through the other place, a fisherman speaks, Samuel Corrado Beck:

They will not believe me, and the fishermen certainly not. Once, a beautiful rainbow trout, a fish of three and a half whole kilos, I threw it back in the lake.

Another time a first rate swordfish, at least sixteen kilos, and exactly nine years ago, autumn, on the 11th of November, early in the morning, the lake still in low grey fog and the gulf and shore as though elevated, as though hanging, and I struggling to lift a sheatfish aboard. A huge sheatfish and already for years in the lake a very rare species. Definitely an over 25 kilos heavy animal. But even this fish I gave it back to the lake.

Nevertheless I am a fisherman, this is my job. I catch a lot. I catch enough. As many as the lake can give with regular fishing. I know where the fish is, when and how deep, which gets hooked and which leaves, the quantity it gives. But each time I felt that keeping the fish would bring me unhappiness. Like the fisherman in the fairy tale. I have never talked about this till today. But it would have been a heavy sin to put this exquisite fish in the fish basket. I am sure that sometimes other fishermen let a swordfish or some other good fish go. You shouldn’t take from the fish the kings or queens, the princes or the princesses, otherwise the riverbed will no longer give anything. One should have a measure and a sense of the currents and the streams under the keel. A lot happens there. We have no idea. One should know that life is short to want to garnish with the first catch of fish and spoil it with bragging.

Translation: Maria Soupou, Psychotherapist