
Guilt
Bullets of Guilt
Guilt emerges at the point where the symbolic law intersects with desire. In the Lacanian sense, the subject is constituted through the prohibition of jouissance—pleasure beyond the symbolic - which sets the stage for neurotic structures. This text explores the psychic architecture of guilt, sexuality, and the weakening grip of traditional symbolic orders
Integration of the law, leading to a neurotic structure, integrates guilt, and the prohibition goes straight through our being. It is a painful experience, that cannot leave your body, and only understanding the pathways of these issues allows "understanding" to ease the pain. Minor transgressions swell into psychic catastrophes under the superego's radar, storms within the mind, loud judgmental voices, shouting straight at you, without much explanation, an embodiment of pure judgment. An army of evil soldiers, standing around you, watching everything you do and say, judging your moves and thoughts, loaded with bullets of guilt, bullets forged by the Name-of-the-Father, carrying inscriptions of prohibition, ready to attack at the slightest perceptual mistake. A dark, divine comedy, happening within, invisible to the outside world, a fight that could not be won. Gradually reshaping itself into a new way of attack, still loaded with bullets of guilt but in the possession of different weapons, a curse of a neurotic mind, an open-ended conversation with the devil himself. Who will win, that is the question... With the slow development of our civilisation and collective thought, the symbolic rules and laws are gradually losing their ground and the ground rules are slowly changing. Not so long ago, matters of sexuality such as homosexuality were classed as psychosis within the psychoanalytic discourse, and people would get labelled psychotic for many other types of behaviours, that in today's day and age would be considered to be normal. Our slow, gradual, collective realisation of these matters of repression and the constraint of the law might be our chance to collectively step out of the wheel of guilt and karma. But, a new type of problem should emerge, problems that are associated with the complete meaninglessness of meaning because the terminology that had meaning because of the presence of the law, now, is losing its ground. Sadness, that appeared because the law compressed our being, might change places with the sadness of freedom of meaninglessness, infinite freedom, that took the chains off our backs and in that way left us homeless, unatached to the paternal rules of authority. As the paternal law fades and new sexual and symbolic coordinates emerge, we are no longer anchored by repression, but haunted by the weightlessness of infinite choice. The fall of the Father does not guarantee liberation—it may give rise to an anxiety of formlessness, of identity without anchor
Homosexuality and Transgederism could be classed as ways out of the symbolic maze of oppression because these ways of being in the world, are not confined within the symbolic, lawful, normally accepted way of existence, which is represented by a heterosexual Christian ideology. A growing variety of sexual identities, which is highly visible today, because of social media, could be seen as humanity's way of taking off the clothing of the law. The garments we collectively wore for ages are weighing too heavily on the new generations of individuals, who are appearing in the world. Queerness and trans-embodiments may not simply be deviations but propositions—new symbolic coordinates emerging from the Real. These are not just identities but disruptions, cracks in the inherited law through which a different desire can speak.
This makes you ask yourself, can we create a free world? A humanitarian utopian dream, with free energy and the freedom to exist without being constrained by symbolic rules of law, without being confined in the particular boxes of identity?
The only way out of it (out of the trap of the law, the trap of heterosexual neurosis) seems to be available only for sexual identities that are not within the symbolic confines of heterosexuality. Masculine, heterosexual identity is based on the impossible masculine ideal, which is impossible only to an extent; the more impossible it is, the more persistent action you will need, as an individual, in order to reach it, while it is unreachable, the more unreachable it is, the better. Neurotic, guilt-based nations, that were deeply integrated within the symbolic law, do not appreciate such ideas which deviate from the symbolic law of power and heterosexuality, while more westernised nations, which do not believe in God anymore, as Nietschze said a long time ago "God is dead", accept such ideas and fight for those who want to participate in different games of sexuality.
Guilt, as the particularising mechanism and the tool of the prohibitory function, was installed into subjectivity as the reaction to the outside force, the third, which concretised and split the dual relationship between the mother and the child, the Father. The intervention of the father, as the third, within the duality between the mother and the child, stopped the insatiable enjoyment, the fusion, between the mother and the baby. The neuroticising intervention, literally, prohibited enjoyment and the dynamics of enjoyment changed, from the insatiable fusion and the uncontrollable and inexpressible pleasure, into the seeking of power, into the seeking of the symbolic position which allowed the father to prohibit enjoyment, the symbolic seat of the ideal authority. Because of these prohibitory dynamics, further sexual relationships might be affected because the original sexual relationship, between the mother and the child was cut off by the father. Lots of problems within the game of sexuality in later life could be associated with the prohibitions received in childhood, such as the inability to reach orgasm, erectile dysfunction, vaginismus, female sexual interest/arousal disorders and many other issues. The desire to have sex is associated with guilt because of the incest taboo, which is our fantasmatic desire, while the real desire is repressed because of the social norms and prohibitions, to make love to our parents, before we even know what making love is. And the essence of it is not that we are "perverts who want to fuck our parents", but, sexuality itself, which drives us forward via fantasmatic function. The incestuous phantasm shields the subject from the unbearable truth of desire’s aimlessness. We do not desire our parents per se; we desire the impossible enjoyment they once embodied. The guilt, then, is not merely moral—it is structural, a product of desire's entanglement with prohibition. Sexual arousal and sexual desire, unconsciously, were prohibited, since we became "Neurotic" and down the line, sexual desire and arousal come together, with an original prohibition. A perfect example is that a lot of people report feelings of guilt after an orgasm, a true expression of a guilty pleasure. Being neurotic means living in a world of guilty pleasures, a reality where pleasures are associated with guilt because of the structural basis of guilt and pleasure.
If guilt defined us under the Father’s gaze, what defines us now? When the bullets of guilt are spent, what remains? In the silence that follows the superego’s scream, perhaps something other than freedom - perhaps the Real.
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Manners and the Symbolic
Manners are like a repressed symbolic code; there are certain things we can do and certain things we cannot do. Good manners would mean well-integrated law within the unconscious, an active repressive system. Depending on the culture, there might be certain differences between the symbolic codes by which manners function, but, the essence of it, stays the same, we acknowledge people in a polite manner because we want people to feel valued and appreciated, we say "thank you" to show appreciation, we say "hello", "good morning" or "good evening" depending on what time of the day it is or depending on the situation, it is another symbolic expression of appreciation, such simple things are the law of human culture. Guilt functions as the emotional trace left by the repression of desire. When symbolic manners are breached—when one forgets to say “thank you,” ignores a greeting, or uses inappropriate language—it is not merely a social faux pas, but an internal rupture. The neurotic feels this rupture as guilt, even if the other has not voiced disapproval. This guilt is not the product of empathy but of repression; it emerges not from compassion, but from the law lodged within the unconscious. It is the superego, not the other, who delivers the punishment. While guilt is the product of the internalised law—the superego's silent judgment—shame arises in the field of the Imaginary, in the gaze of the Other. One feels shame when exposed, when one's image is tarnished before others. But guilt needs no witness; it is the invisible sentence passed by the symbolic order itself. Despite cultural differences in the form manners take, the function remains constant: to bind the subject to the symbolic and to regulate the expression of desire. Whether bowing, shaking hands, or offering a verbal greeting, these rituals mark the threshold where the subject enters the field of the Other and agrees to be seen, judged, and contained.
Psychoanalytically, the law as language is the diagnostic territory; the further away from the rationally understandable perimeter of the law the person in question is, the further away from the neurotic subjectivity they exist, which splits to either completely non-integrated psychotic subjectivity or a partially integrated perverse subjectivity. From early childhood, we are taught to say “please” and “thank you”—not merely to be polite, but to initiate the child into the symbolic. These rituals do not serve practical functions; rather, they bind the subject to the law. The discomfort felt when these rituals are disrupted is not shame alone, but guilt—the signal that the law has been broken, and desire has escaped its symbolic leash. If we follow this line of thinking, then a psychoanalytic, diagnostic process would be a process of understanding the perimeter of the cage in which the subject lives, the cage, which is made from the materiality of the law. If the cage is perfectly placed, the subject is trapped within the shackles of guilt and desire, desiring things and feeling guilt for desiring them, the subject is limited to a narrow pathway of the law, towards the prohibitory/symbolic authority, within the neurotic subjectivity. On the contrary, psychotic subjectivity would show the opposite effects based on the non-integrative structurality of the cage; desire might flow differently, in comparison to the narrow, neurotic path, psychotic desire might flow and overflow, stepping over the limits of rationality and meaning. The containment which holds the neurotic does not hold the psychotically structured subject.
In a world where traditional manners dissolve and symbolic coordinates blur, one must ask: what becomes of guilt? Do we drift toward a post-symbolic subjectivity, or do new laws emerge under new names—etiquette, inclusivity, correctness—bearing the same repressive weight beneath a different face?
In this way, the symbolic rituals of “please” and “thank you” may vanish in form, but their structural function persists. Even as new codes emerge, manners—whether traditional or rebranded—continue to index our submission to law, our repression of desire, and the guilt that follows us like a shadow.