Since some religious writers have asserted that psychoanalysts wish to abolish all sense of guilt, it is perhaps worth observing that this is not the case; on the contrary, much of their work is devoted to restoring a proper sense of responsibility and an ability to sympathize with the needs of others. What psychoanalysts do try to remove is the irrational guilt which is out of all Proportion to its cause (often some childish misdemeanour, long expiated and forgotten, sometimes not a misdemeanour at all) and which is repressed from Consciousness only showing its presence by compulsive acts. It is exclusively this irrational unconscious guilt with which I shall be concerned in this book.