Guilt
Guilt
is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or
believes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own
standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard, and bears significant
responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of
remorse.
Psychology
Guilt is an
important factor in perpetuating Obsessive–compulsive disorder symptoms. Guilt
and its associated causes, merits, and demerits are common themes in psychology
and psychiatry. Both in specialized and in ordinary language, guilt is an
affective state in which one experiences conflict at having done something that
one believes one should not have done (or conversely, having not done something
one believes one should have done). It gives rise to a feeling which does not go
away easily, driven by 'conscience'. Sigmund Freud described this as the result
of a struggle between the ego and the superego - parental imprinting. Freud
rejected the role of God as punisher in times of illness or rewarder in time of
wellness. While removing one source of guilt from patients, he described
another. This was the unconscious force within the individual that contributed
to illness, Freud in fact coming to consider "the obstacle of an unconscious
sense of guilt...as the most powerful of all obstacles to recovery." For his
later explicator, Lacan, guilt was the inevitable companion of the signifying
subject who acknowledged normality in the form of the Symbolic
order.
Alice Miller
claims that "many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of
guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations....no
argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in
life's earliest period, and from that they derive their intensity This may be
linked to what Les Parrott has called "the disease of false guilt....At the root
of false guilt is the idea that what you feel must be true." If you feel guilty,
you must be guilty!
The
philosopher Martin Buber underlined the difference between the Freudian notion
of guilt, based on internal conflicts, and existential guilt, based on actual
harm done to others.
Guilt is
often associated with anxiety. In mania, according to Otto Fenichel, the patient
succeeds in applying to guilt "the defense mechanism of denial by
overcompensation...re-enacts being a person without guilt
feelings."
In
psychological research, guilt can be measured by using questionnaires, such as
the Differential Emotions Scale (Izard's DES), or the Dutch Guilt Measurement
Instrument.
Defences
Fenichel
points out that "mastery of guilt feelings may become the all-consuming task of
a person's whole life...'counter-guilt.' Various techniques are possible,
including repression. Freud pointed out that "as a rule the ego carries out
repressions in the service and at the behest of its superego; but this is a case
in which it has turned the same weapon against its harsh taskmaster." The
problem, according to Eric Berne, is that because the superego is "a jealous
master whose punishments are difficult to avoid", one may (in a return of the
repressed) "begin to feel guilty many years afterwards and perhaps break
down...under the long-continued reproaches of the
Superego."
Projection
is another defensive tool with wide applications. It may take the form of
blaming the victim: The victim of someone else's accident or bad luck may be
offered criticism, the theory being that the victim may be at fault for having
attracted the other person's hostility. Alternatively, in Fenichel's words, "the
superego is reprojected onto external objects for the purpose of getting rid of
guilt feelings...using external objects as "witnesses" in the fight against the
superego." Here the danger is of creating ideas of
reference.
Another form
of Projection is self-harm or self-blame. "Guilty people punish themselves if
they have no opportunity to compensate the transgression that caused them to
feel guilty. It was found that self-punishment did not occur if people had an
opportunity to compensate the victim of their transgression." Some forms of
self-inflicted punishment are self-denied pleasure, or not allowing oneself to
enjoy opportunities or benefits due to guilty feelings that cannot be resolved
through compensation.
Lack of
guilt in psychopaths
Psychopaths
lack any true sense of guilt or remorse for harm they may have caused to others.
Instead, they rationalize their behavior, blame someone else, or deny it
outright. This is seen by psychologists as part of a lack of moral reasoning (in
comparison with the majority of humans), an inability to evaluate situations in
a moral framework, and an inability to develop emotional bonds with other
people.
Also known
as sociopathy or antisocial personality disorder, this psychopathic lack of
guilt used to be termed 'moral insanity'. However, others suggest that the
psychopath is in fact driven by a very severe but unconscious sense of
guilt.
Causes
(etiology)
Evolutionary
theories
Some
evolutionary psychologists theorize that guilt and shame helped maintain
beneficial relationships, such as reciprocal altruism. If a person feels guilty
when he harms another, or even fails to reciprocate kindness, he is more likely
not to harm others or become too selfish. In this way, he reduces the chances of
retaliation by members of his tribe, and thereby increases his survival
prospects, and those of the tribe or group. As with any other emotion, guilt can
be manipulated to control or influence others. As a highly social animal living
in large groups that are relatively stable, we need ways to deal with conflicts
and events in which we inadvertently or purposefully harm others. If someone
causes harm to another, and then feels guilt and demonstrates regret and sorrow,
the person harmed is likely to forgive. Thus, guilt makes it possible to
forgive, and helps hold the social group together.
Social
psychology theories
When we see
another person suffering, it can also cause us pain. This constitutes our
powerful system of empathy, which leads to our thinking that we should do
something to relieve the suffering of others. If we cannot help another, or fail
in our efforts, we experience feelings of guilt. From the perspective of group
selection, groups that are made up of a high percentage of co-operators outdo
groups with a low percentage of co-operators in between-group competition.
People who are more prone to high levels of empathy-based guilt may be likely to
suffer from anxiety and depression; however, they are also more likely to
cooperate and behave altruistically. This suggests that guilt-proneness may not
always be beneficial at the level of the individual, or within-group
competition, but highly beneficial in between-group
competition.
Other
theories
Another
common notion is that guilt is assigned by social processes, such as a jury
trial (i. e., that it is a strictly legal concept). Thus, the ruling of a jury
that O.J. Simpson or Julius Rosenberg was "guilty" or "not innocent" is taken as
an actual judgment by the whole society that they must act as if they were so.
By corollary, the ruling that such a person is "not guilty" may not be so taken,
due to the asymmetry in the assumption that one is assumed innocent until proven
guilty, and prefers to take the risk of freeing a guilty party over convicting
innocents. Still others—often, but not always, theists of one type or
another—believe that the origin of guilt comes from violating universal
principles of right and wrong. In most instances, people who believe this also
acknowledge that even though there is proper guilt from doing 'wrong' instead of
doing 'right,' people endure all sorts of guilty feelings which do not stem from
violating universal moral principles.
is a cognitive or an emotional experience that occurs when a person realizes or
believes—accurately or not—that he or she has compromised his or her own
standards of conduct or has violated a moral standard, and bears significant
responsibility for that violation. It is closely related to the concept of
remorse.
Psychology
Guilt is an
important factor in perpetuating Obsessive–compulsive disorder symptoms. Guilt
and its associated causes, merits, and demerits are common themes in psychology
and psychiatry. Both in specialized and in ordinary language, guilt is an
affective state in which one experiences conflict at having done something that
one believes one should not have done (or conversely, having not done something
one believes one should have done). It gives rise to a feeling which does not go
away easily, driven by 'conscience'. Sigmund Freud described this as the result
of a struggle between the ego and the superego - parental imprinting. Freud
rejected the role of God as punisher in times of illness or rewarder in time of
wellness. While removing one source of guilt from patients, he described
another. This was the unconscious force within the individual that contributed
to illness, Freud in fact coming to consider "the obstacle of an unconscious
sense of guilt...as the most powerful of all obstacles to recovery." For his
later explicator, Lacan, guilt was the inevitable companion of the signifying
subject who acknowledged normality in the form of the Symbolic
order.
Alice Miller
claims that "many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of
guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations....no
argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in
life's earliest period, and from that they derive their intensity This may be
linked to what Les Parrott has called "the disease of false guilt....At the root
of false guilt is the idea that what you feel must be true." If you feel guilty,
you must be guilty!
The
philosopher Martin Buber underlined the difference between the Freudian notion
of guilt, based on internal conflicts, and existential guilt, based on actual
harm done to others.
Guilt is
often associated with anxiety. In mania, according to Otto Fenichel, the patient
succeeds in applying to guilt "the defense mechanism of denial by
overcompensation...re-enacts being a person without guilt
feelings."
In
psychological research, guilt can be measured by using questionnaires, such as
the Differential Emotions Scale (Izard's DES), or the Dutch Guilt Measurement
Instrument.
Defences
Fenichel
points out that "mastery of guilt feelings may become the all-consuming task of
a person's whole life...'counter-guilt.' Various techniques are possible,
including repression. Freud pointed out that "as a rule the ego carries out
repressions in the service and at the behest of its superego; but this is a case
in which it has turned the same weapon against its harsh taskmaster." The
problem, according to Eric Berne, is that because the superego is "a jealous
master whose punishments are difficult to avoid", one may (in a return of the
repressed) "begin to feel guilty many years afterwards and perhaps break
down...under the long-continued reproaches of the
Superego."
Projection
is another defensive tool with wide applications. It may take the form of
blaming the victim: The victim of someone else's accident or bad luck may be
offered criticism, the theory being that the victim may be at fault for having
attracted the other person's hostility. Alternatively, in Fenichel's words, "the
superego is reprojected onto external objects for the purpose of getting rid of
guilt feelings...using external objects as "witnesses" in the fight against the
superego." Here the danger is of creating ideas of
reference.
Another form
of Projection is self-harm or self-blame. "Guilty people punish themselves if
they have no opportunity to compensate the transgression that caused them to
feel guilty. It was found that self-punishment did not occur if people had an
opportunity to compensate the victim of their transgression." Some forms of
self-inflicted punishment are self-denied pleasure, or not allowing oneself to
enjoy opportunities or benefits due to guilty feelings that cannot be resolved
through compensation.
Lack of
guilt in psychopaths
Psychopaths
lack any true sense of guilt or remorse for harm they may have caused to others.
Instead, they rationalize their behavior, blame someone else, or deny it
outright. This is seen by psychologists as part of a lack of moral reasoning (in
comparison with the majority of humans), an inability to evaluate situations in
a moral framework, and an inability to develop emotional bonds with other
people.
Also known
as sociopathy or antisocial personality disorder, this psychopathic lack of
guilt used to be termed 'moral insanity'. However, others suggest that the
psychopath is in fact driven by a very severe but unconscious sense of
guilt.
Causes
(etiology)
Evolutionary
theories
Some
evolutionary psychologists theorize that guilt and shame helped maintain
beneficial relationships, such as reciprocal altruism. If a person feels guilty
when he harms another, or even fails to reciprocate kindness, he is more likely
not to harm others or become too selfish. In this way, he reduces the chances of
retaliation by members of his tribe, and thereby increases his survival
prospects, and those of the tribe or group. As with any other emotion, guilt can
be manipulated to control or influence others. As a highly social animal living
in large groups that are relatively stable, we need ways to deal with conflicts
and events in which we inadvertently or purposefully harm others. If someone
causes harm to another, and then feels guilt and demonstrates regret and sorrow,
the person harmed is likely to forgive. Thus, guilt makes it possible to
forgive, and helps hold the social group together.
Social
psychology theories
When we see
another person suffering, it can also cause us pain. This constitutes our
powerful system of empathy, which leads to our thinking that we should do
something to relieve the suffering of others. If we cannot help another, or fail
in our efforts, we experience feelings of guilt. From the perspective of group
selection, groups that are made up of a high percentage of co-operators outdo
groups with a low percentage of co-operators in between-group competition.
People who are more prone to high levels of empathy-based guilt may be likely to
suffer from anxiety and depression; however, they are also more likely to
cooperate and behave altruistically. This suggests that guilt-proneness may not
always be beneficial at the level of the individual, or within-group
competition, but highly beneficial in between-group
competition.
Other
theories
Another
common notion is that guilt is assigned by social processes, such as a jury
trial (i. e., that it is a strictly legal concept). Thus, the ruling of a jury
that O.J. Simpson or Julius Rosenberg was "guilty" or "not innocent" is taken as
an actual judgment by the whole society that they must act as if they were so.
By corollary, the ruling that such a person is "not guilty" may not be so taken,
due to the asymmetry in the assumption that one is assumed innocent until proven
guilty, and prefers to take the risk of freeing a guilty party over convicting
innocents. Still others—often, but not always, theists of one type or
another—believe that the origin of guilt comes from violating universal
principles of right and wrong. In most instances, people who believe this also
acknowledge that even though there is proper guilt from doing 'wrong' instead of
doing 'right,' people endure all sorts of guilty feelings which do not stem from
violating universal moral principles.