may be repressed. But there is another reason why the intensity of the guilt may not correspond to the intensity of
the anxiety.
The lowest level of guilt appears to be experienced by those persons who—although they have failed to do the
thinking and achieve the psycho-epistemological clarity their life requires—have not knowingly violated their
moral convictions, have not attempted to cheat reality and get away with the irrational.
A heavier guilt is suffered by those who do act against their moral convictions—and the severity of the guilt usually
reflects the severity of the breach and/or the degree of harm that results from their actions. But, here, a major
distinction must be made.
There are the people who do achieve and maintain a substantial degree of independence in their value-judgments; if
they violate their own principles, they experience guilt as well as anxiety, but they do not, in effect, "feel guilty all
the way down." Their guilt is localized and delimited; they do not feel worthless. They are protected by their own
psychological sovereignty—by the fact that their moral concern is authentic and first-hand. If a man feels, in effect,
"It was unworthy of me to fail my own standards in this manner"—he is still preserving a major hold on self-
esteem.
Then there are the persons who are basically lacking in intellectual sovereignty. The worst guilt is reserved for this
psychological type, i.e., those whose approach to moral judgments is authoritarian. In such cases, the force of their
moral beliefs derives, not from rational understanding, but from the say-so of "significant others." And when the
authorities' rules are breached, there is no healthy core of inner sovereignty to protect the transgressors from
feelings of metaphysical worthlessness. To themselves, they are nothing but their bad actions. This is one of the
reasons why pathological anxiety is so often experienced as fear of the disapproval of others. "Others" are
perceived as the voice of objective reality—calling them to judgment. It is among such persons that guilt is most
often a conscious part of the anxiety experience. Also, it is among such persons that the anxiety itself is likely to be
most severe.
Anxiety and Depression
One of the worst consequences of pathological anxiety is its destructive impact on the objectivity and clarity of a
man's thinking. This is one of the ways in which harmful psycho-epistemological prac-