The Concept of Bad Consciousness in Nietzsche's Philosophy versus the Concept of Superego in Freud's Metapsychology

Abstract

This paper aims to compare the reasoning that led to the coining of two close concepts: Bad Consciousness, as described in Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality; and Sigmund Freud's Superego, taking into account his work Civilization and Its Discontents (Culture). One of the elements of approximation between the two authors is the following reasoning: on account of an instance outside himself, man would develop an inner tendency toward self-restraint and self-flagellation. This tendency would be a sickening property, which Nietzsche and Freud repel. In Nietzsche, this self-censorship is the bad conscience: a sense of guilt that comes upon men because they want to exert their strength. Instinctual, animalistic, human pleasure, once gagged by the laws of the community, by responsibility, ends up in bad conscience. In Freud, the subject must, by virtue of the benefit of community life, moderate his ambitions for the enjoyment of pleasure. That is, a restraint that was initially external and social, is internalized and becomes part of the mind structure of the subject in question.