Guilt (emotion)
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Guilt is a moral emotion that occurs when a person believes or realizes—accurately or not—that they have compromised their own standards of conduct or have violated universal moral standards and bear significant responsibility for that violation.[1] Guilt is closely related to the concept of remorse, regret, as well as shame.
Guilt is an important factor in perpetuating obsessive–compulsive disorder symptoms.[2]
Etymology
The etymology of the word is obscure, and developed its modern spelling from the O.E. form gylt "crime, sin, fault, fine, debt", which is possibly derived from O.E. gieldan "to pay for, debt". Because it was used in the Lord's Prayer as the translation for the Latin debitum and also in Matthew xviii. 27, and gyltiȝ is used to render debet in Matthew xxiii. 18, it has been inferred to have had the primary sense of ‘debt’, though there is no real evidence for this.
Its development into a "sense of guilt" is first recorded in 1690 as a misuse of its original meaning. "Guilt by association" is first recorded in 1941.
"Guilty" is similarly from O.E. gyltig, itself from gylt.
Psychology
Guilt and its associated causes, advantages, and disadvantages are common themes in
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."[5] 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."[6]
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.[7]
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."[8]
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.[9]
Defenses
According to psychoanalytic theory, defenses against feeling guilt can become an overriding aspect of one's personality.[10] The methods that can be used to avoid guilt are multiple. They include:
- ideas of reference).[14]
- Sharing a feeling of guilt, and thereby being less alone with it, is a motive force in both art and joke-telling; while it is also possible to "borrow" a sense of guilt from someone who is seen as in the wrong, and thereby assuage one's own.[15]
- Self-harm may be used as an alternative to compensating the object of one's transgression – perhaps in the form of not allowing oneself to enjoy opportunities open to one, or benefits due, as a result of uncompensated guilt feelings.[16]
Behavioral responses
Guilt proneness is reliably associated with moral character.
Lack of guilt in psychopaths
Individuals high in
One study on psychopaths found that, under certain circumstances, they could willfully empathize with others, and that their empathic reaction initiated the same way it does for controls. Psychopathic criminals were brain-scanned while watching videos of a person harming another individual. The psychopaths' empathic reaction initiated the same way it did for controls when they were instructed to empathize with the harmed individual, and the area of the brain relating to pain was activated when the psychopaths were asked to imagine how the harmed individual felt. The research suggests psychopaths can switch empathy on at will, which would enable them to be both callous and charming. The team who conducted the study say they do not know how to transform this willful empathy into the spontaneous empathy most people have, though they propose it might be possible to rehabilitate psychopaths by helping them to activate their "empathy switch". Others suggested that it remains unclear whether psychopaths' experience of empathy was the same as that of controls, and also questioned the possibility of devising therapeutic interventions that would make the empathic reactions more automatic.[24][25]
Neuroscientist
Causes
Evolutionary theories
Some
Collective guilt
Collective guilt (or group guilt) is the unpleasant and often emotional reaction that results among a group of individuals when it is perceived that the group illegitimately harmed members of another group. It is often the result of "sharing a social identity with others whose actions represent a threat to the positivity of that identity". For an individual to experience collective guilt, he must identify himself as a part of the in-group. "This produces a perceptual shift from thinking of oneself in terms of 'I' and 'me' to 'us' or 'we'.”[30]
Comparison with shame
Guilt and shame are two closely related concepts, but they have key differences that should not be overlooked.[31] Cultural Anthropologist Ruth Benedict describes shame as the result of a violation of cultural or social values, while guilt is conjured up internally when one's personal morals are violated. To put it more simply, the primary difference between shame and guilt is the source that creates the emotion. Shame arises from a real or imagined negative perception coming from others and guilt arises from a negative perception of one's own thoughts or actions.[32]
Psychoanalyst Helen Block Lewis stated that, "The experience of shame is directly about the self, which is the focus of evaluation. In guilt, the self is not the central object of negative evaluation, but rather the thing done is the focus."[33] An individual can still possess a positive perception of themselves while also feeling guilt for certain actions or thoughts they took part in. Contrary to guilt, Shame has a more inclusive focus on the individual as a whole. Fossum and Mason's ideas clearly outline this idea in their book Facing Shame. They state that "While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one's actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person".[34]
Shame can almost be described as looking at yourself unfavorably through the eyes of others. Psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman portrays this idea by stating that "Shame is an acutely self-conscious state in which the self is 'split,' imagining the self in the eyes of the other; by contrast, in guilt the self is unified".[35] Both shame and guilt are directly related to self-perception, only shame causes the individual to account for the cultural and social beliefs of others.
Paul Gilbert talks about the powerful hold that shame can take over someone in his article Evolution, Social Roles, and the Differences in Shame and Guilt. He says that "The fear of shame and ridicule can be so strong that people will risk serious physical injury or even death to avoid it. One of the reasons for this is because shame can indicate serious damage to social acceptance and a breakdown in a variety of social relationships. The evolutionary root of shame is in a self-focused, social threat system related to competitive behavior and the need to prove oneself acceptable/desirable to others"[36] Guilt on the other hand evolved from a place of Care-Giving and avoidance of any act that harms others.
Cultural views
Traditional
This may lead to more of a focus on
In literature
Guilt is a main theme in
Guilt is a major theme in many works by
In Epicurean Philosophy
In his Kyriai Doxai (Principal Doctrines) 17 and 35, Epicurus teaches that we may identify and diagnose guilt by its signs and perturbations.[43] Within his ethical system based on pleasure and pain, guilt manifests as constant fear of detection that emerges from "secretly doing something contrary to an agreement to not harm one another or be harmed".
Since Epicurus rejects supernatural claims, the easiest way to avoid this perturbation is to avoid the antisocial behavior in order to continue enjoying ataraxia (the state of no-perturbation). However, once guilt is unavoidable, Epicurean Guides recommended confession of one's offenses as a practice that helps to purge the character from its evil tendencies and reform the character. According to Norman DeWitt, author of "St Paul and Epicurus", confession was one of the Epicurean practices that was later appropriated by the early Christian communities.[44]
In the Christian Bible
Guilt in the Christian Bible is not merely an emotional state; it is also a legal state of deserving punishment. The Hebrew Bible does not have a unique word for guilt, but uses a single word to signify: "sin, the guilt of it, the punishment due unto it, and a sacrifice for it."[45] The Greek New Testament uses a word for guilt that means "standing exposed to judgment for sin" (e. g., Romans 3:19). In what Christians call the "Old Testament", Christians believe the Bible teaches that, through sacrifice, one's sins can be forgiven (Judaism categorically rejects this idea, holding that forgiveness of sin is exclusively through repentance, and the role of sacrifices was for atonement of sins committed by accident or ignorance [46]).
The New Testament says that forgiveness is given as written in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4: "3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, for that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures." In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, salvation is granted based on God's grace and forgiveness (Gen 6:8; 19:19; Exo 33:12–17; 34:6–7).
The New Testament says that, in
The Bible agrees with pagan cultures that guilt creates a cost that someone must pay (Heb 9:22). (This assumption was expressed in the previous section, "Defences": "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.") Unlike pagan deities who demanded that debts for sin be paid by humans, God, according to the Bible, loved humanity enough to pay it Himself (Mat 5:45).
See also
- Emotional blackmail
- Consciousness of guilt
- Criminals from a sense of guilt
- Embarrassment
- Georges Bataille
- Guilt by association
- Collective guilt
- Survivor guilt
- White guilt
- Guilt culture
- Guilt trip
- Guiltive
- Guilty pleasure
- Measures of guilt and shame
- Mens rea
- Nietzsche
- Postponement of guilt
- Self-blame (psychology)
References
- ^ Compare: "Guilt: Encyclopedia of Psychology". Archived from the original on 2 May 2008. Retrieved 1 January 2008. "In psychology, what is "guilt," and what are the stages of guilt development?". eNotes.com. 2006. 31 December 2007: 'Let's begin with a working definition of guilt. Guilt is "an emotional state produced by thoughts that we have not lived up to our ideal self and could have done otherwise".' Retrieved 2017-12-03.
- PMID 21318197. Archived from the originalon 1 December 2012. Retrieved 27 November 2012 – via Aacp.com.
- ISBN 978-0140138016.
- ISBN 978-0748633012.
- ISBN 978-1860491016.
- ^ Parrott, pp. 158–9
- PMID 13441838.
- ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) pp. 409–10
- S2CID 34898552.
- ^ Otto Fenichel The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 496
- ^ Sigmund Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11)p. 393
- ^ Eric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Penguin 1976) p. 191
- ^ The Pursuit of Health, June Bingham & Norman Tamarkin, M.D., Walker Press
- ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 165 and p. 293
- ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) pp. 165–6 and p. 496
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- PMID 16768590.
- ^ Hogenboom M (July 25, 2013). "Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch". BBC News. Archived from the original on July 27, 2013. Retrieved July 28, 2013.
- ^ Lewis T (24 July 2013). "Cold-hearted Psychopaths Feel Empathy Too". Live Science.
- ^ Vedantam S (May 28, 2007). "If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural". The Washington Post. Retrieved April 23, 2010.
- PMID 26903649.
- S2CID 52183009.
- S2CID 23493449.
- ISBN 0-521-52083-5.)
{{cite book}}
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- ^ Bill Brugger, China, Liberation and Transformation (1981) pp. 18–19
- ^ Quoted in M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus (1967) p. 136
- ^ Almond, Philip C. "In spite of their differences, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God". The Conversation. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
- ^ "Definition of MEA CULPA". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
- ^ Robert Fagles trans., The Oresteia (Penguin 1981) p. 92
- ^ "Nathaniel Hawthorne". americanliterature.com. Retrieved 13 October 2020.
- ^ "Kyriai Doxai". Principal Doctrines.com. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
- ^ "St. Paul and Epicurus". archive.org. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
- ^ Owen, J. (1850). "Chapter 8". The Doctrine of Justification by Faith. London: Johnstone and Hunter. p. 197.
- ^ "S.C.J. FAQ: Section 11.8.2. Sacrifices: What replaced animal sacrifices in Jewish practice?". Archived from the original on 3 July 2010.
Further reading
- Nina Coltart, 'Sin and the Super-ego', in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1992)
- Adam Phillips, 'Guilt', in On Flirtation (1994) pp. 138–147
External links
- Tangney, June Price; Miller, Rowland S.; Flicker, Laura; Barlow, Deborah Hill (1996). "Are shame, guilt, and embarrassment distinct emotions?". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 70 (6): 1256–1269. PMID 8667166.
- Guilt, unconscious sense of
- Michael Eigen, 'Guilt in an Age of Psychopathy'
- Guilt, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Stephen Mulhall, Miranda Fricker & Oliver Davies (In Our Time, 1 Nov. 2007)