Seneca, Freud and Conscience

The main purpose of these reflections is to show the surprising coincidence of insights that occurs between Seneca and Freud regarding the concept of conscience and, more exactly, the question of the sense of guilt. . Indeed, both the Roman Stoic and the inventor of psychoanalysis fathomed and explored with an insuperable acuity the dynamics that animates the inner nature of man concerning the way he represents the so-called bad actions. It means that every difference between the desire to commit a bad action and the materialization of it is annulled. In other words, the intention and the act are equivalent, since the individual has already desired to execute it. According to Freud, the sense of guilt originates from the internalization of the authority or of the super-ego, which is the instance of censure or reprobation. Therefore, the individual becomes henceforward his own tribunal, his own torturer.