Guilt and Regret
Healthy, useful guilt is the feeling we have when we do something we rationally judge to be morally wrong or unfair. Just having the thought or urge to do something bad can cause guilt. That's good if it keeps us from doing something inconsiderate. Healthy guilt is our reasonable, fair conscience. But there is unhealthy guilt too. That is when we establish unreasonable standards for ourselves, i.e. we expect perfection, we want to accomplish the impossible, we feel responsible for misfortunes in other people's lives, we believe we are "good" only if we faithfully follow all the rules and do more than our duty. The unhealthy guilt does not allow for mistakes; we expect too much from ourselves and others.
There are two uses of the word shame. Some writers use it to denote the pressure we feel from others to act a certain way, i.e. a certain discomfort if we do not have the approval of others. Shame, in this sense, is the feeling of remorse and embarrassment when we believe our actions have brought discredit to ourselves or to others. Of course, peer and family pressure is a powerful motivator, but we can avoid this shame just by concealing our unapproved actions, thoughts, or feelings from others. The more recent use of the word shame has to do with self-disapproval, i.e. considering one's self as being inexcusably inadequate or defective. This is independent of other people's opinions of us and, thus, there is no way (without treatment or self-help) to avoid this destructive negative self-evaluation. Guilt is regretting our actions because we now consider our behavior to be unfair, immoral, or selfish; shame is a negative evaluation of part or all of our self as a person. I try to use shame only in this last sense. Shame is discussed in the next section.
Both guilt and social pressure are vitally important: they are of help in controlling "the beast within"--our greed, anger, and lust. They also help us fulfill our responsibilities--our work, studies, care and concern for others, taxes, show of love, etc. Our guilty conscience is vital in helping us be good.
On the negative side, excessive guilt (and shame) can create terrible suffering, even make life not worth living. Almost 80% of adults attempting suicide had histories of guilt (and/or shame). Among 3 to 14-year-old children who had tried to kill themselves, 25% were seeking to be punished for masturbating or wishing someone were dead (David, 1977). A guilty conscience can change our social lives, dampen our enjoyment of life, cause fears and worries, and create a heavy load to carry emotionally.
Some writers have made a meaningful distinction between "real" guilt and "neurotic" guilt. Real guilt is feeling badly about something you did that was truly morally wrong. Neurotic guilt is when you haven't done anything wrong or what you did doesn't warrant the amount of guilt felt. Real guilt may be expressed through neurotic guilt, however. An example will help. Suppose a depressed 18-year-old becomes obsessed about having stole another girl's underclothes when she was 14. That's neurotic guilt. It seems likely that the real guilt involves something else, not just old underwear. A psychoanalyst would suspect primitive infantile urges were causing the real guilt--e.g. closeness to one parent and resentment of another parent or a sibling. Other therapists would look for the source of guilt in more recently repressed guilt-producing acts or thoughts--e.g. anger at a parent or sexual temptations. Neurotic guilt frequently substitutes for real guilt (it helps hide what we are really guilty about).
Guilt or feeling immoral can result from having "bad" thoughts and wishes (even unconscious ones according to some therapists), not just overt acts. This is a great moral argument. Some people think thoughts and feelings, no matter how inconsiderate or destructive (like killing someone), are not immoral because they hurt no one. Yet, some great religions and thinkers have taught that "the thought is equivalent to the deed." Jesus said, "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-28). Hinduism teaches that one is judged by his/her motives and desires, not just actions. Buddhism says, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought." Similarly, Freud's basic notion was that urges and fantasy, not just actions, shaped our character and determined our fate (Fingarette, 1971). Even recently, the pervasive cognitive movement in current psychology contends that thoughts influence emotions and actions. So perhaps we can't say "thoughts don't matter." But surely immoral thoughts, never acted on, should not generate intense guilt like an immoral act itself. Thinking of hitting you is not the same as hitting you. You will have to decide for yourself if immoral thoughts are okay (if still resisted), inconsequential, or bad (see catharsis in chapter 7).
It would be nice, perhaps, but impossible to be "pure" of heart (emotions) and mind. However, to the extent you use your thoughts and values to resist or diminish your immoral-inconsiderate emotional urges (as defined by you and/or society), you could be considered good and moral. Indeed, there is evidence that a stern conscience which carefully monitors our thoughts and urges is more likely than a weak one to stop us from being immoral (David, 1977). So, maybe evil thoughts and feelings aren't morally bad unless they start to overpower (or slip around) our conscience. Thus, the weaker our immoral impulses and the stronger our healthy guilt (or moral character), the safer we are from "sin" or unhealthy guilt.
Guilt may also come from comparing your living conditions to others and from not living up to our own standards. Many adults feel some guilt for living better than their parents. Some people feel unworthy of their successes. Some men and women in their forties, fifties, and sixties are now experiencing guilt about not serving in the military service in Korea and Vietnam. How can over 50% of us Americans go to fantastic colleges, while millions of children around the world get little or no education at all (one billion people are illiterate), without feeling some guilt underneath the denial and rationalizations? It's healthy and reasonable to have some guilt.
Where did your conscience come from? According to Erikson, in the first year of life you learned to trust or distrust people depending on how well your needs were met. If trust developed with someone in your first year, then during your terrible two's, when you were learning to eat with a spoon, to walk, to talk, to use the bathroom, and so on, you were able to develop an emotional relationship with someone. If from the caretaker you learned that you were capable, that you have limits but you're okay as a person, that you could test the limits, explore, get mad, etc. and still be loved, you acquired healthy shame. On the other hand, if during your 2's and 3's the caretaker was critical, impatient, mean, or humiliating, you would probably doubt your ability and feel defective or shame as a person. The "I'm defective" self-concept learned at such an early age makes it especially hard to handle the subsequent stages of development (see stages of development in chapter 9).
From ages 3 to 5 you were learning to do lots of things: communicate, eat without making a mess, ride a tricycle, throw a ball, ask lots of questions, etc. If you already had experienced love, developed trust and self-acceptance, and were continuing to receive encouragement and praise, your self-confidence and self-concept developed further. But, if you were further ridiculed and told "you can't do anything right," you learned to feel self-critical, guilty, and insecure. Remember, according to Freud and Erikson, at ages 5 or 6 you normally would start to identify more with your same-sexed parent, automatically and unthinkingly incorporating his/her values and moral thinking in the process (see chapter 5).
As your world expands, relatives, siblings, religion, teachers, friends, TV, and books start to influence your morals. If you aren't an unusually "thoughtful" or "questioning" child, much of your guilt may be a result of hand-me-down values, not moral principles you have carefully studied and chosen (see chapter 3). You can hardly be in charge of your own life unless you, as a thinking adolescent and adult, have decided your own goals, purposes, and values.
Although some of the passed-on morals, like honesty and fairness, have stood the test of time and the challenge of intelligent questioning, certainly some of our guilt comes from fallible people or social tradition and religious beliefs which may need to be reviewed occasionally to see if the values are still valid in today's world. For example, in my classes sometimes I ask the students to anonymously write a secret--something they would be afraid to tell us openly--on a piece of paper, knowing it will be read in class. Then the class responds to each "secret," usually with a lot of acceptance, understanding, and empathy. About half of the secrets are about sex: "I've had sex with someone I didn't love," "I've had sex with someone of the same sex," "I masturbate," "I'm attracted to well developed women/men," "I'm not a virgin" and so on. None of these acts are inherently harmful to others but our society has a lot of sexual taboos that produce guilt.
I remember a young and attractive but distressed coed who sought counseling after a date with her new boyfriend who pushed for sex. Neither had a means of birth control so she masturbated him. That seemed a lot wiser to me than having intercourse, but her priest was harshly critical at confession because masturbation is an "unnatural act." Her guilt resulted from the same religious condemnation of sex that had resulted in religious rules in the sixteenth century against married couples having intercourse on more than half of the days of the year (see Taylor, 1954, or Tannahill, 1982, to understand why the church fathers have been so concerned with sex).
Some of our guilt is almost totally irrational. For example, some married couples feel guilty about any sexual caressing that occurs outside the bedroom even though no one can see them. Many young children of divorcing parents feel it is their fault when the children were in fact a binding force, not the cause for friction between the parents. Maybe the child had wished one parent were not around. But, more likely, the child simply misunderstood his/her role in the conflict between his/her parents. Other examples of unreasonable guilt are when a young adult decides to handle sex differently than his/her friends (see the woman who was ashamed of her virginity in chapter 10) or decides to support a different political party or religion than his/her parents follow. Many of our sources of guilt need to be reconsidered. Remember, some of this guilt comes from the 5-year-old inside us with hand-me-down ideas.
mentalhelp.net |
