From the psychiatric evidence, it seems that a child of the age that Coleridge was when his father died suffers the worst consequences from the bereavement, if the loss is poorly handled by the surviving adults. At this age the child possesses both a concept of death as such, but at the same time is liable to regress to an earlier stage of infant thought in which his hostility to the parent appears to have caused the death, an act for which he will receive equivalent punishment. Coleridge's exile to Christ's Hospital was the first stage of punishment for his inadequate love for his father. It was a punishment which was to be lifelong.

Coleridge's grief at his father's death was thus likely to have been attended by a dread so powerful that all memory of grief was repressed. But the dread was invoked on every other occasion in Coleridge's life involving the demands of love, including his love for Sara Hutchinson (who eventually fled from Coleridge's anxieties and paranoia). And the dread was, most notably, attached to the symbol of the Albatross when Coleridge came to write his poem. As the dread had no cause in Coleridge's conscious understanding, no motive could be assigned to the shooting of the Albatross; it is an act fraught with the most terrible consequences, but lacking any adequate rationale. That it involves some horrifying compulsion is suggested by the Wedding Guest's response at this point in the verse:

"God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus! --
Why look'st thou so?" -- With my cross bow
I shot the Albatross. (79-82)

Coleridge's guilt alighted on such causes as presented themselves. The story of the Albatross seems to have acted like a lightning conductor, locating the guilt on an exterior symbol and temporarily freeing Coleridge for his major feat of creative energy. As Freud noticed, speaking of criminals in the context of the power of the super-ego (which is largely unconscious), a crime may be the result of guilt rather than its cause. "It is as if it was a relief to be able to fasten this unconscious sense of guilt on to something real and immediate" (Freud, The Ego and the Id).