Understanding Guilt
Overview
I do not think there will be many people who will struggle to understand the concept of guilt.
I do not think there will be many people who will struggle to understand the concept of guilt or to know how to manage it. However, one can benefit from delving deeper into the concept of guilt, understanding its distinct types and what causes it.
However, one can benefit from delving deeper into the concept of guilt, understanding its distinct types and what causes it.
We normally associate guilt with something wrong that we have done and should not have done. It may either be related to harming somebody else or having the intention to harm them. I do not think the idea of harming oneself leads to any guilt. In fact, it may just be the opposite, as wanting to punish oneself can be a way of assuaging one’s guilt. It may also be true that just having guilt is also an act of self-punishment.
Sigmund Freud understood the origins of guilt in one’s childhood when the child gets romantically attracted to the parent of the opposite sex, and subsequently feels guilty about those impulses. Sigmund Freud also thought that women suffer from less guilt compared to men, and their super-egos, which is akin to the inner conscience, were located, although feminists have refused to accept this theory.
Erik Erikson, another developmental psychiatrist, understood guilt differently. According to him a child who is inhibited and does not show playfulness harbors deeper feelings of guilt which stop him from acting out his urges. They are afraid to express themselves with toys because of this fear. A guilty child will not take initiative, and a child who does not take initiative may end up feeling more guilty for not behaving in the right manner. They grow up to become overly inhibited adults as they live in constant fear of doing something unacceptable. It may have its roots in parents being very judgmental. A child who gets conflicting messages from his parents can also live with doubts about what is the right course of action, and after executing an action may end up feeling guilty for not doing what could have been the right action.
The guilt of doing the wrong thing: this is the most usual form of guilt, also described as clinical guilt if it leads to depression, or if depression leads to this guilt.
The guilt of a mother/parent – parents invariably lives with feelings of guilt which may partly be related to their love for the offspring. The definition of love is that one always lives with the feeling that they have not done enough for their loved one.
An over-controlling parent can live with the guilt for not allowing freedom to the child, and permissive parents can also live with the guilt that they have not provided enough supervision and control to the child. A working parent may feel guilty for not spending enough time with her kids, and a homemaker may also feel guilty for not being more enterprising and earning money to better a lot of her family.
Existential Guilt: on the other hand, is about not doing what is the right thing, and not realizing one’s potential to the full.
What are the chances that the job you have just completed could have been done better had you spent more time, effort, attention, energy, and money?
My guess it about 90% of the time things could have been done better. Donald Winnicott a child psychiatrist found that almost all the mothers of children he was seeing were living with the guilt that they were not good mothers. He, therefore, coined the phrase “good enough mother” to reassure them that children do not need perfect parents to grow up as normal adults. It was okay to have some faults and not be able to do the right things for the child.
Rich people suffer from guilt if their earnings are disproportionate to their intelligence and efforts and if they are not able to return to the world what they have taken from it and be selfless at least in some ways. In the same way, poor people also suffer from guilt when they start blaming themselves for their poverty and not doing enough to get out of it, even if they had done their best.
The guilt of doing better than someone else
The guilt of doing better than someone else: having the spare resource, surviving a disaster that had killed others known to you called survivor guilt, being more successful than your family members, all this can result in guilt.
Many ultra-rich people keep looking for ways to spend their not-hard-earned money on unfortunate people who despite being highly intelligent and hardworking reach nowhere.
Watching television news of the Ukraine disaster and seeing the spare case in your account can fill you with guilt if you have not donated the cash for the cause. Last week I was woken up in the middle of the night by the cries of a cat, I was able to ignore it, but the next few nights the same cries appeared in the middle of the night. I was too lazy to get up and find out more about the cat and just prayed for her. But for my conscience that was not enough and the next morning, I was feeling guilty for not getting out of my bed and speaking to the owner if the cat was sick and needed to see a Vet.
Psychoanalysts see guilt as an emotion whereas cognitivism sees guilt starting as a thought that leads to the emotion of guilt. Nietzsche’s concept of guilt is different. He said guilt exists first, even before someone had committed a crime, and committing the crime then makes the guilt understandable.
Sometimes one feels that they have done something wrong or harmed someone when they have not, and it can result in guilt. Some Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients live with the thought that they have harmed someone, even when they have not, and will keep checking repeatedly to make sure they have not, perhaps the guilt pre-existed the thought that they had harmed someone.
If you wish ill on someone and that person experiences setbacks in life, you may think it was your ill will that caused that misfortune, and you end up feeling guilty.
Other types of guilt: At times it is difficult to fit feelings of guilt into neat categories. Mahatma Gandhi felt guilty for being intimate with his wife on the night his father passed away. It was not a wrongdoing for which one should feel guilty, as his actions did not cause his father’s death, and he was not aware that his father was going to die that night, but he still felt guilty.
A client of mine was walking behind a relative of hers who was on his scooter and got killed in a bizarre accident in front of her. She was quite far away but still within her eyesight when the accident happened. She started feeling guilty for not being able to save that relative, even though she did her best to save the boy by running to the spot but could not reach there in time. Even if she had reached the spot, she may not have been able to prevent the accident.
What is shame?
Shame is a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises in relation to the perception of having done something dishonorable, immoral, or improper. It is about the perception of others whereas guilt is about the perception of self.
Western investigators have pointed out that people in developing countries suffer more from shame which can have a corrective influence on their behavior, whereas Westerners have more guilt, not sure if it has to do with the concept of sin in Christianity, that we all have sinned or a different level of psychological sophistication across cultures.
Erik Erikson has described eight stages of development throughout life, the eighth stage is the stage of integrity v despair. This phase starts at the age of sixty-five when one starts looking back with either a sense of integrity or a sense of despair about how one has lived one’s life. He described integrity as – acceptance, a sense of wholeness, a lack of regret, a feeling of peace, a sense of success, and feelings of wisdom.
He defined despair as – bitterness, regret, ruminating over mistakes, feeling that life was wasted, feeling unproductive, depression, and hopelessness.
It is natural for someone to live with regret if they have not been able to help others during their lifetime.
However, doing good and being very polite with others can also be seen as a sign of unconscious guilt one is trying to compensate for. I am not sure if that can be seen as a sign of guilt or a strategy to experience integrity and not despair in one’s old age.
Conclusion
To conclude, guilt is neither a constructive nor a destructive emotion, it can be both depending upon its intensity and context.
Mahatma Gandhi used to induce guilt in himself every night by writing down all the lapses in his awareness and the mistakes he had made during the day. With my clients, as they focus on their wrongdoings all the time, I encourage them to write down in a notebook only the pleasant experiences and all the good things they have done, things that they are proud of, to remind themselves of their virtues before they go to bed at night.
We normally associate guilt with something wrong that we have done and should not have done. It may either be related to harming somebody else or having the intention to harm them. I do not think the idea of harming oneself leads to any guilt. In fact, it may just be the opposite, as wanting to punish oneself can be a way of assuaging one’s guilt. It may also be true that just having guilt is also an act of self-punishment.
Sigmund Freud understood the origins of guilt in one’s childhood when the child gets romantically attracted to the parent of the opposite sex, and subsequently feels guilty about those impulses. Sigmund Freud also thought that women suffer from less guilt compared to men, and their super-egos, which is akin to the inner conscience, were located, although feminists have refused to accept this theory.
Erik Erikson, another developmental psychiatrist, understood guilt differently. According to him a child who is inhibited and does not show playfulness harbors deeper feelings of guilt which stop him from acting out his urges. They are afraid to express themselves with toys because of this fear. A guilty child will not take initiative, and a child who does not take initiative may end up feeling more guilty for not behaving in the right manner. They grow up to become overly inhibited adults as they live in constant fear of doing something unacceptable. It may have its roots in parents being very judgmental. A child who gets conflicting messages from his parents can also live with doubts about what is the right course of action, and after executing an action may end up feeling guilty for not doing what could have been the right action.
The guilt of doing the wrong thing: this is the most usual form of guilt, also described as clinical guilt if it leads to depression, or if depression leads to this guilt.
The guilt of a mother/parent – parents invariably lives with feelings of guilt which may partly be related to their love for the offspring. The definition of love is that one always lives with the feeling that they have not done enough for their loved one.
An over-controlling parent can live with the guilt for not allowing freedom to the child, and permissive parents can also live with the guilt that they have not provided enough supervision and control to the child. A working parent may feel guilty for not spending enough time with her kids, and a homemaker may also feel guilty for not being more enterprising and earning money to better a lot of her family.
Existential Guilt: on the other hand, is about not doing what is the right thing, and not realizing one’s potential to the full.
What are the chances that the job you have just completed could have been done better had you spent more time, effort, attention, energy, and money?
My guess it about 90% of the time things could have been done better. Donald Winnicott a child psychiatrist found that almost all the mothers of children he was seeing were living with the guilt that they were not good mothers. He, therefore, coined the phrase “good enough mother” to reassure them that children do not need perfect parents to grow up as normal adults. It was okay to have some faults and not be able to do the right things for the child.
Rich people suffer from guilt if their earnings are disproportionate to their intelligence and efforts and if they are not able to return to the world what they have taken from it and be selfless at least in some ways. In the same way, poor people also suffer from guilt when they start blaming themselves for their poverty and not doing enough to get out of it, even if they had done their best.
The guilt of doing better than someone else
The guilt of doing better than someone else: having the spare resource, surviving a disaster that had killed others known to you called survivor guilt, being more successful than your family members, all this can result in guilt.
Many ultra-rich people keep looking for ways to spend their not-hard-earned money on unfortunate people who despite being highly intelligent and hardworking reach nowhere.
Watching television news of the Ukraine disaster and seeing the spare case in your account can fill you with guilt if you have not donated the cash for the cause. Last week I was woken up in the middle of the night by the cries of a cat, I was able to ignore it, but the next few nights the same cries appeared in the middle of the night. I was too lazy to get up and find out more about the cat and just prayed for her. But for my conscience that was not enough and the next morning, I was feeling guilty for not getting out of my bed and speaking to the owner if the cat was sick and needed to see a Vet.
Psychoanalysts see guilt as an emotion whereas cognitivism sees guilt starting as a thought that leads to the emotion of guilt. Nietzsche’s concept of guilt is different. He said guilt exists first, even before someone had committed a crime, and committing the crime then makes the guilt understandable.
Sometimes one feels that they have done something wrong or harmed someone when they have not, and it can result in guilt. Some Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients live with the thought that they have harmed someone, even when they have not, and will keep checking repeatedly to make sure they have not, perhaps the guilt pre-existed the thought that they had harmed someone.
If you wish ill on someone and that person experiences setbacks in life, you may think it was your ill will that caused that misfortune, and you end up feeling guilty.
Other types of guilt: At times it is difficult to fit feelings of guilt into neat categories. Mahatma Gandhi felt guilty for being intimate with his wife on the night his father passed away. It was not a wrongdoing for which one should feel guilty, as his actions did not cause his father’s death, and he was not aware that his father was going to die that night, but he still felt guilty.
A client of mine was walking behind a relative of hers who was on his scooter and got killed in a bizarre accident in front of her. She was quite far away but still within her eyesight when the accident happened. She started feeling guilty for not being able to save that relative, even though she did her best to save the boy by running to the spot but could not reach there in time. Even if she had reached the spot, she may not have been able to prevent the accident.
What is shame?
Shame is a feeling of embarrassment or humiliation that arises in relation to the perception of having done something dishonorable, immoral, or improper. It is about the perception of others whereas guilt is about the perception of self.
Western investigators have pointed out that people in developing countries suffer more from shame which can have a corrective influence on their behavior, whereas Westerners have more guilt, not sure if it has to do with the concept of sin in Christianity, that we all have sinned or a different level of psychological sophistication across cultures.
Erik Erikson has described eight stages of development throughout life, the eighth stage is the stage of integrity v despair. This phase starts at the age of sixty-five when one starts looking back with either a sense of integrity or a sense of despair about how one has lived one’s life. He described integrity as – acceptance, a sense of wholeness, a lack of regret, a feeling of peace, a sense of success, and feelings of wisdom.
He defined despair as – bitterness, regret, ruminating over mistakes, feeling that life was wasted, feeling unproductive, depression, and hopelessness.
It is natural for someone to live with regret if they have not been able to help others during their lifetime.
However, doing good and being very polite with others can also be seen as a sign of unconscious guilt one is trying to compensate for. I am not sure if that can be seen as a sign of guilt or a strategy to experience integrity and not despair in one’s old age.
Conclusion
To conclude, guilt is neither a constructive nor a destructive emotion, it can be both depending upon its intensity and context.
Mahatma Gandhi used to induce guilt in himself every night by writing down all the lapses in his awareness and the mistakes he had made during the day. With my clients, as they focus on their wrongdoings all the time, I encourage them to write down in a notebook only the pleasant experiences and all the good things they have done, things that they are proud of, to remind themselves of their virtues before they go to bed at night.
