Guilt

Enns reflects on the meaning of guilt and responsibility in the context of Indigenous struggles in Canada. While rarely uncomplicated, the question of who is to blame poses a unique challenge in the case of historical atrocities with enduring legacies. When those guilty of the original violations are long dead, yet leave behind institutions that perpetuate the conditions for oppression and privilege, it is tempting to assign collective guilt. With the help of Hannah Arendt and Karl Jaspers, who argued in the aftermath of the second world war for a robust understanding of collective responsibility, distinct from individual guilt, Enns navigates the effects of oversimplifying these concepts. Central to her discussion is the dramatic shift in contemporary scholarly and public discourses on victimhood and identity—on victimhood as identity—since Arendt famously wrote: “Where all are guilty, no one is.” With reference to the parallel ways in which victimhood is assumed as a permanent state and granted moral authority in North American Indigenous and anti-Black racism struggles, Enns notes the limits of an identity-based politics, and argues for a richer understanding of collective responsibility—one that will create a future world with a better inheritance.

ABSTRACT: Since the eighteenth century, the feeling of guilt has been as tied to motherhood as the ideals of dedication and love. Recently, discussions concerning motherhood have increased, including on social networking sites. These debates seek, among other goals, to rethink values traditionally associated with maternal activity. The article explores the historical and subjective changes that allowed women to talk about an intimate issue (motherhood) in a shared environment. To reach such goal, the paper analyzes some comments made by mothers on the social network site Facebook reporting their maternal experiences, based on the concepts of Nietzsche’s rumination (19th century) and Freud’s guilt (20th century). By triggering two of the most influential modern thinkers to reflect on contemporary manifestations, it is perceived that the speeches produced by the mothers stray from the feeling of maternal guilt in a process that approaches what Nietzsche classifies as a rumination of experiences.

RESUMO: Desde o século XVIII, o sentimento de culpa esteve tão atrelado à maternidade quanto os ideais de dedicação e amor. Recentemente, discussões sobre ela têm aumentado, sobretudo nos sites de redes sociais. São debates que buscam, entre outros objetivos, repensar valores tradicionalmente associados à atividade materna. O artigo explora as modificações históricas e subjetivas que permitiram que mulheres falassem sobre uma questão íntima (a maternidade) em um ambiente compartilhado. Para isso, analisa alguns comentários feitos por mães no site de rede social Facebook sobre suas vivências maternas, tomando por base os conceitos de ruminação de Nietzsche (século XIX) e de culpa de Freud (século XX). Ao acionar dois dos mais influentes pensadores modernos para refletir sobre manifestações contemporâneas, percebe-se que os discursos produzidos pelas mães procuram se afastar do sentimento de culpa materna, em um processo que se aproxima do que Nietzsche classifica como ruminação das experiências.

The psychoanalytic literature on shame is critically reviewed. A vagueness and incompleteness in formulations is noted which appears to be related to an adherence to the structural and topographical models. Shame is shown to have a clearly defined place in object-relations theory, in particular within the theory of narcissism as developed elsewhere by the author. It is the signal, affective and cognitive, that a move from 'self-narcissism' to 'object-narcissism' is about to occur. The phenomenology of the shame experience as emphasized by other workers is collated and shown to be capable of coherent and consistent integration within this model. Aspects of shame which have been previously neglected are discussed including the unconscious sense of shame and specific mechanisms for dealing with shame.

SynopsisWhakama is a psychosocial and behavioural construct in the New Zealand Maori which does not have any exact equivalent in Western societies although shame, self-abasement, feeling inferior, inadequate and with self-doubt, shyness, excessive modesty and withdrawal describe some aspects of the concept. It is an important construct in order to understand the interaction of the Maori with each other and with the Caucasian New Zealander, the behaviour of the Maori in cross-cultural settings, and the clinical presentations of some Maori patients. This paper examines some of the meanings of Whakama, its various behavioural manifestations and its possible causes. The clinical relevance to psychiatry is emphasized.Waiho ma te whakama e patu!‘ Leave him alone he is punished by whakama ’ (Maori saying)

In conflicts with reciprocal violence, individuals belong to a group that has been both perpetrator
and victim. In a field experiment in Liberia, West Africa, we led participants (N = 146) to focus
on their group as either perpetrator or victim in order to investigate its effect on orientation
toward inter-group reconciliation or revenge. Compared to a perpetrator focus, a victim focus led
to slightly more revenge orientation and moderately less reconciliation orientation. The effect of
the focus manipulation on revenge orientation was fully mediated, and reconciliation orientation
partly mediated, by viewing the in-group’s social-image as at risk. Independent of perpetrator or
victim focus, shame (but not guilt) was a distinct explanation of moderately more reconciliation
orientation. This is consistent with a growing body of work demonstrating the pro-social
potential of shame. Taken together, results suggest how groups in reciprocal conflict might be
encouraged toward reconciliation and away from revenge by feeling shame for their wrongdoing
and viewing their social-image as less at risk.
Key message: As victims and perpetrators are widely thought to have different orientations to
inter-group reconciliation and revenge, we suggest that work on reciprocal conflicts should
account for the fact that people can belong to a group that has been both perpetrator and victim.

Objectives: Recent research has begun to pay attention to the experiences of guilt and shame in different realms of human life. However, there is an urgent need to develop valid instruments for measuring these emotional experiences. The main aims of this study are to introduce a newly developed tool, the Guilt and Shame Experience Scale (GSES), and to psychometrically evaluate its properties.

Sample and settings. An online sample of Czech respondents aged 15 and over (N=1101; 34.4 ± 13.0 years; 26.9% men) participated in the survey. Experiences of guilt and shame (GSES), together with basic socioeconomic information, were measured.

Results: The non-parametric comparison of different socio-demographic groups showed a higher disposition for experiencing guilt among women and religious respondents and a lower disposition for experiencing both vindication and shame among middle-aged respondents. For the purpose of factor analysis, the data set was divided into two groups. One group (N=551) was used for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and the second (N=550) for Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). On the basis of the EFA performed on a matrix of polychoric correlations and the subsequent CFA, two items were excluded. The eight-item version of the scale has good internal consistency, with Cronbach's alpha 0.86 and McDonald's ω t 0.88. At the same time, the polychoric correlations between the items of the scale showed a low to moderate inter-item correlation, with values between 0.20 and 0.60. A two-factor model has the best fit with the data. The two-factor solution also corresponds to the theoretical assumptions and to the two expected subscales of the questionnaire: shame and guilt. Each subset contains four items.

Study limitations: The main limitation of this study is that it did not reach a representative sample, allowing a more detailed exploration among socio-demographic groups, and therefore, it was not possible to determine the norms for the population.

Guilt plays a significant role in the occurrence and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Two major types of guilt have been identified: one deriving from the transgression of a moral rule (deontological guilt DG), another (altruistic guilt AG), relying on the assumption of having compromised a personal altruistic goal. Clinical evidence suggests that OCD patients are particularly sensitive to DG, but not AG. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated brain response of OCD patients while processing DG and AG stimuli. A previously validated fMRI paradigm was used to selectively evoke DG and AG, and anger and sadness, as control emotions in 13 OCD patients and 19 healthy controls. Patients' behavioral results showed a prominent attitude to experience guilt, compared to controls, while accomplishing task. fMRI results revealed that patients have reduced activation in the anterior cingulate (ACC) and frontal gyrus when experiencing guilt, regardless of its specific type (DG or AG). When separately considering each type of guilt (against each of its control), patients showed decreased activation in the ACC, the insula and the precuneus, for DG. No significant differences were observed between groups when processing AG, anger or sad stimuli. This study provides evidence for an abnormal processing of guilt, and specifically DG, in OCD patients. We suggest that decreased activation may reflect patients' cerebral efficiency, which derives from their frequent exposure to guilty feelings ("neural efficiency hypothesis"). In conclusion, our study confirms a selective abnormal processing of guilt, and specifically DG, in OCD.

Extensive research has established the pivotal role that group-based emotions play in shaping intergroup processes. The underlying implicit assumption in previous work has been that these emotions reflect what the rest of the group feels (i.e., collective emotions). However, one can experience an emotion in the name of her or his group, which is inconsistent with what the collective feels. The current research investigated this phenomenon of emotional nonconformity. Particularly, we proposed that when a certain emotional reaction is perceived as appropriate, but the collective is perceived as not experiencing this emotion, people would experience stronger levels of group-based emotion, placing their emotional experience farther away from that of the collective. We provided evidence for this process across 2 different emotions: group-based guilt and group-based anger (Studies 1 and 2) and across different intergroup contexts (Israeli-Palestinian relations in Israel, and Black-White r...

The concept of guilt in relation to conscience and anxiety is not referred to as a feeling or an emotion in existential philosophy. Rather, the phenomenon of guilt is analyzed through the structure of existence. In Being and Time, Heidegger interprets guilt in the context of Dasein's understanding of its own Being. The nature of Dasein as a finite entity permeates the analysis of guilt, which is based on the analysis of negation (nullity) and the time structure of Dasein (temporality). An existential interpretation of guilt, conscience, and anxiety offers a new dimension of the study of emotions with regard to the understanding of human Being.

Summary The aim of this study was to evaluate the correlations between the narcissistic personality trait, measured with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, and proneness to shame and guilt, measured with the Shame-Guilt Proneness Scale. Participants were 165 ...

Iako je hinduizam treća po brojnosti religija u svetu, ne možemo ga smatrati jednom religijom - poput hrišćanstva ili islama - već pre spojem različitih religijskih tradicija koje potiču sa istog geografskog tla, iz Indije. Od samog početka svog razvoja hinduizam je bio politeistička religija, a njegovi sledbenici su verovali u mnoštvo bogova: po nekima, ima ih na hiljade, na milione. Drugi su uverenja da uprkos tolikom broju polubogova, u srcu hinduizma stoji samo jedan istinski Bog – Brahman. Ipak, svi sledbenici hinduizma dele brojne zajedničke principe. Nakon opisivanja tih principa i dužnosti hindusa, u radu se bliže objašnjava čovekova sanatana dharma, zatim društvena podela varnašrama dharma - podela na varne i ašrame i konačno karma kao opšteprihvaćeni zakon koji obezbeđuje kosmičku pravdu. Sledeći karmički zakon u hinduizmu se veruje da određene delatnosti mogu dovesti svaku osobu bliže Bogu, bliže savršenstvu – ako ona deluje u skladu sa propisanom sanatana dharmom, odnosno varnašrama dharmom. A Bog nije tu da nagrađuje ili kažnjava, On strpljivo čeka da čovek probudi svoju uspavanu ljubav prema Njemu i dostigne savršenstvo, napuštajući tako samsaru, večiti kruga rađanja i umiranja.
Budizam svojom filozofijom Srednjeg puta podržava delovanje koje, pre svega, ne bi ni dovelo do bilo kakve krivice. A ako se ipak neko loše delo počini, osoba treba da se pokaje i odluči da takvu grešku nikada više ne napravi. Potom, osoba nastavlja svoj postupan uspon ka nirvani.

In writings about the Holocaust, both Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt appeal to a concept of shame that extends the reach of the concept in a dramatic way. In its more familiar uses, we experience shame because of a failing of our own (I refer to this as “self-incurred shame”) or because of the failing of another with whom we share membership of a significant group (“other-incurred shame”).  Levi ascribes shame to those soldiers who came across Auschwitz in early 1945; and Arendt writes of an “elemental shame,” the “shame at being human.” Neither case fits the familiar models.This article provides an analysis of both “self-incurred” and “other-incurred shame” in order to reach an understanding of the importance of Levi and Arendt’s extension of the concept and of the challenges it poses.  It also explores the relationship between shame and responsibility and defends a notion of collective guilt. At various points, it engages with the work of Gabriele Taylor, Bernard Williams, Max Scheler,  and David Velleman.

Past research has revealed that forgiveness promotes prosocial cognition, feeling, and behavior toward the offender. The present research extends this research by examining whether forgiveness may spill over beyond the relationship with the offender, promoting generalized prosocial orientation. Consistent with hypotheses, three studies revealed that forgiveness compared to unforgiveness is generally associated with higher levels of a generalized prosocial orientation, as indicated by higher levels of a we frame of mind (as indicated by a greater use of first-person plural pronouns, e.g., we, us, in a language task) and greater feelings of relatedness toward others in general. Moreover, forgiveness (vs. unforgiveness) was even associated with greater probability of donating to charity and greater willingness to engage in volunteering. Finally, the authors found that unforgiveness reduces tendencies toward generalized prosocial orientation, whereas forgiveness restores generalized pro...

Although there has been much discussion regarding shame and guilt, not enough has been said about the complexities of the relationship between the two. In this paper, I examine one way in which I take shame and guilt to interact – namely in cases of so-called “survivor’s guilt” among victims of trauma. More specifically, I argue that survivor’s guilt may represent a kind of response to feelings of shame – one which is centrally tied to the central philosophical notions of autonomy and integrity.

Contained here are a collection of teaching notes meant to guide a multi-day discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche's _On the Genealogy of Morality_.  The goal is to provide a careful framework around which a more free-flowing discussion can revolve.

This paper examines the differing perspectives of wartime and post-war generations. It discusses the widely spread statement ”Those who did not live during the Nazi period should not be allowed to make judgments“ in its moral and ethical consequences. It argues for Christian theologians to face failure and guilt in their history in order to find ways of repentance for church and theology.

We propose to study the way in which silence, as a "part of language", takes shape into the verbal matter of the Argentine writer of French expression Santiago H. Amigorena’s novel Le Ghetto intérieur (2019) and to discover the main textual mechanisms of exploration and construction, including the classification, description and explanation of the functions of silence in the novel, in close connection with the mechanisms of the main character’s (de)construction of identity. We will also take into consideration the polyphonic character of the novel that resides not only in references to other literary works but also to media discourse. A several aspects as the making of reality, the true rendering of History, the necessity of remembering or the shared guilt are being discussed.

ABSTRACT We focus on children's conscience, an inner guiding system responsible for the gradual emergence and maintenance of self-regulation. Drawing from our research program that has encompassed three large longitudinal studies cumulatively covering the first 6 years of life, we discuss two major components of conscience: moral emotions (guilt, discomfort following transgressions) and moral conduct compatible with rules and standards. We discuss the organization of young children's conscience, focusing on relations between moral emotions and moral conduct, and the development of conscience, focusing on its early form: the child's eager, willing stance toward parental socialization. We also review research on two major sets of influences that predict individual differences in moral emotions and moral conduct: biologically based temperament and socialization in the family. We discuss two inhibitory systems of temperament—fearfulness and effortful control—and several features of socialization, including the style of parental discipline and the quality of the parent-child relationship. Early conscience is an important early personality system, coherently organized, relatively stable over time, and subject to individual differences that emerge as a result of a complex interplay between children's temperamental individuality and socialization in the family.

Jungians and Christians use the word evil in different and contradictory senses. The moral aim of the Jungian is the "integration of evil", whereas for the Christian it is "the overcoming of evil by good". This paper guides the reader through White"s thinking on evil-understood in the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas as parasitic on good-malum est privatio boni, and concludes by considering the clinical significance of the relationship between moral evil-malum culpae-and guilt. Although Jung and White never resolved their differences on evil, they agreed that the subject demands concentration and careful reflection. The hypothesis here is that, although the literature on the Jung-White dialogue offers extensive analysis on evil, it does not go far enough. There is little evidence of dynamic engagement with the underlying ethical issues that White"s clarity of thought challenges one to consider.

In his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel describes tragedy as a ‘collision’ between opposing notions of the good. Two moral paradigms, each internally consistent, yet each apparently incompatible with the other, struggle ‘to destroy one another in their mutual conflict.’ In Greek tragedy, these ‘two sides’ tend to be represented by a different characters: Antigone vs. Creon; Philoctetes vs. Odysseus; Orestes vs. the Eumenides.  Building on this basic concept of what tragedy is, but departing from Hegel’s sense of Shakespeare’s distinctiveness, I argue here that in Shakespeare’s tragedies, as in those of Seneca, the two sides of the ethical dilemma at the heart of the play’s interest tend to be presented, not as opposing characters, but instead within the psyche of a single individual: the so-called ‘tragic hero.’ They appear as contending moral paradigms, not necessarily each personified: rival imperatives, each grounded in a different emotional impulse. The tension between these two poles is most clearly expressed in the protagonist’s repeated, climactic soliloquies, which show him deciding between irreconcilable courses of action. Moreover, the two value-systems in question tend to be more or less the same across all four of the major tragedies: ‘pity’ vs. ‘ambition’; ‘kindness’ vs. ‘honour’; ‘mercy’ vs. ‘constancy.’ Over the course of their soliloquies, Macbeth, Othello, Hamlet, and Lear articulate and expose the incongruity Shakespeare discerns between Christianity and contemporary notions of honour: Christian compassion proves at odds with the desire to subjugate, dominate, and command.