ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. Marked as the preoccupation with guilt is in modern literature, the effect of guilt-feelings is seen at its worst in mental illness, and in psychosomatic disease. A central feature in Freud's treatment of morals is his emphasis upon the sense of guilt. He expounds a doctrine analogous to the theological doctrine of original sin. The meaning and significance of guilt is crucial for the lawyer. He is concerned not with the feelings of guilt, but with the objective behaviour which he deems guilty. There is no discipline to which the concept of guilt is more relevant than theology. Its great doctrines of Atonement, Reconcilation, Justification by Faith, and the forgiveness of sin through which both subjective and objective guilt are done away with, can scarcely have meaning without its doctrine of sin and its correlative guilt.
