On Blaming

Abstract

In this paper I have considered acts of blaming as an approach to a psychoanalytic contribution to a theory of moral values--a search for a way of thinking about the mental processes mediating values and valuations. Many modern philosophers do not believe their own discipline will be able to develop complete, valid, acceptable, and workable nondeistic ethical understandings alone. Psychoanalysts cannot either, but psychoanalysis can contribute necessary components in its unique understandings of mental operations. The study of blaming as a part of a larger system of values can also be an avenue to the study of intrapsychic-interactional theoretical propositions. The stability or lack of stability of the "worlds" in which we live has influences on all of us, especially those who are most vulnerable to "external" influences. Empirically, in addition to responses to immediate threats from the outside world, an internal world of blaming always remains. The self may be blamed for its failure to live up to its own standards and rules. Often this internal blaming and acceptance of the blame--thus guilt--operate unrealistically. Nevertheless, some such operations continue in even the most mature people, but in mature people it is possible to transform blaming systems into responsibility systems. Along with other transformations that accompany sublimations, the wholeness of personality can be restored in part. One of the faces of a responsibility system is turned toward inner, passionate, often contradictory animal needs which remain in us all. Unless "owned," channeled, restrained, some wishes would be externally disastrous if converted directly into behavior and personally disastrous if totally repressed instead of channeled. Not only this, their disguised expressions can again become externally harmful to oneself and others when projected outward in the form of blame. The other face is turned toward the ways the individuals' motives join (or rejoin) the affairs of the collective "other"--some of which have to do with the most transcendent qualities in man.