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It seems that a lot of people 'blank' out Frodo's behaviour at the Sammath Naur, & jump mentally from him entering to the destruction of the Ring, or they decide he wasn't really aware of what he was doing, like some tacky SF movie where the hero seems to do something bad, but it turns out to have been his 'evil' twin, or a clone or a robot.
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Although I wouldn't phrase it like that, it does look like the Frodo who claimed the Ring was not the exact same person as the Frodo who started on the quest. He was so changed by all the pains he had undergone, by the Ring most of all that we can call him 'a shadow of his former self'. This expression implies more than just his being 'thinned' by pain, it implies a change in personality: the shadow is the hidden side, the evil side that resides in us all an waits to be awakened. The parallel that Helen made with a prisoner in a war camp is believable. The doom that comes with the gift of free will leaves our mind to be a battlefield between the devil and the angel in us. Maybe this is a tad dramatic, but I think this describes adequately what happens to Frodo. The Ring is the great deceiver. When one is wielding it, you feel at your strongest, but in reality you've never been more vulnerable. The illusion of strength and control is by definition evil because it opposes the desired state of 'humility' and modesty.
So, to come more to the point - I believe that when Frodo claimed the Ring - the angel in him colapsed under the burden, so his control was relinquished. His goodness, his core, everything that defined him as the Frodo we knew and loved, fell in the line of duty. Can he not be held responsible then? In Tolkien's view, no, he is to be forgiven, because the burden was too great for any to have withstood it: it is not necessary to succeed, all we have to do is try our best; and then the Writer of the Story will take care of us. Frodo's good nature came back to life, only to face the bitter responsability of his inevitable failure.
So why can't Frodo forgive himself? he can't grasp his alter ego's motivation. he never can. In the words of Faust: "Two souls, alas, are kept within my breast." (translation not entirely accurate). There are two opposite forces that still coexist within him: the one who wishes to be a hero, and the one who still desires the Ring. the first cannot understand why he had failed at the last moment, the second feels bitter pain that the quest had eventually succeded. Feeling himself so torn between the two, between holding himself responsible for an act that he felt not to be his own and bitterly regreting his last moment salvation must be a horrible torture.