Guilt

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The feeling of guilt is a social emotion - usually perceived as negative - which consciously or unconsciously follows a wrong reaction, breach of duty or wrongdoing . Possible physical reactions (blushing, sweating, possibly even depressive mood, fever or upset stomach) are often comparable to those of shame or fear , but are usually less pronounced. Guilt, shame, and responsibility can easily be confused; H. the demarcation in the experience of the individual is often difficult. In the specialist literature, shame is differentiated from guilt by means of the assessment basis of behavior: while, according to Michael Lewis (2000), guilt is generated by a negative assessment of a specific behavior (“I did something wrong”), shame is generated by a negative assessment of the global self generated ("I am a bad person"). The theories of attribution also deal with the effect, depending on whether individual successful or unsuccessful actions are interpreted as indicative of the whole person.

In depth psychology , which originally goes back to Freud , the feeling of guilt is triggered by the “ super-ego ”. In contrast, it is assumed that shame is triggered by a comparison with the ego ideal . The ability to experience feelings of guilt and how they can be triggered by characteristic current life events is acquired according to analytical and depth psychological developmental psychological theories within characteristic life phases in childhood . According to Zinck, the feeling of guilt becomes self-reflective emotions or, according to Krause, me-emotions, because they arise when dealing with oneself and one's own standards of values. While the basic emotions can already be observed in the first months of life, self-reflective emotions are only acquired later, for example from the age of two, when there are representations of oneself and others. Michael Lewis assumes a period between two and a half and three years of age.

trigger

Feelings of guilt are triggered, provided the individual has already acquired the ability to do so, when a socially undesirable act is committed. These can be:

Obvious triggering factors can be, for example, damage caused, missed an appointment or similar (unnecessary or avoidable) errors. There may be specific reasons if people regret missing opportunities or, afterwards, doubt the correctness of life decisions made. Although this creates tormenting feelings, their deeper meaning is that they can learn from past errors and from then on they can make better and more coherent (= more plausible) decisions.

In addition, the feeling of guilt can also arise from objectively difficult to understand triggers. It is usually developed and amplified either by the environment or by the person affected. A more or less pronounced disposition , personality disorder or mental illness, such as B. in the moderate or severe depressive episode. (See also self-esteem , self-esteem .) A frequently observed phenomenon is the development of feelings of guilt when the following conditions are present at the same time: 1. Suddenly occurring situation 2. Emotionally burdened (e.g. sudden death or accident of a loved one, experience sexual abuse, but also after experiencing distant natural disasters, if they are emotionally stressful for the person concerned). In these cases no personal disposition is decisive.

Reactions

Feelings of guilt can provoke remorse , anger , fear, and even panic ; see also association (psychology) . The person will be agitated, feel guilty, and generally feel depressed. Doubt , self-blame and constant preoccupation with the wrongdoing are typical. The person concerned feels pronounced remorse , i.e. the desire to undo what happened or to make amends. In some cases, feelings of guilt are also a trigger for self-harming behavior (SVV).

Psychology of Guilt

According to the psychiatrist and neuroscientist Raphael M. Bonelli (2013), the feeling of guilt is an alarm signal that, like the feeling of pain, indicates danger. While the pain indicates physical harm (such as a knee injury), guilt indicates social harm (such as insulting the partner). Pathological pain (such as phantom pain ) is a false alarm of the nervous system without a morphological correlate ; analogously, "pathological guilt feeling" is a feeling of guilt without guilt (in the case of depression , neurosis , delusion or self-insecure personality disorder ). Bonelli: " Normally you feel guilty because you have become guilty. It is perfectly normal to be guilty. Human life consists of being wronged and doing wrong. A sense of guilt, guilt, remorse and a guilty conscience are in and in itself sign of mental health . " It becomes dangerous if the alarm system no longer works, as is the case with diabetic foot syndrome in medicine or with the repression of guilt in psychodynamics, because then the physical or social damage cannot be corrected. Bonelli: "In the past, sex was suppressed, today it is guilt ." That makes people unable to ask for forgiveness and thus to rehabilitate their relationships.

Feelings of Guilt in Cognitivism

According to the cognitive theory approach, feelings of guilt arise when the person concerned evaluates his behavior as wrong and condemns himself for it as a person. In some directions of these theories they are not regarded as “feelings” but as evaluations and conclusions, the (from this point of view correct) associated emotion is shame; the term guilt or feelings of guilt is therefore not used in a strict interpretation, so there is no delimitation (e.g. Stavemann, 2008). Accordingly, feelings of guilt or shame can be overcome if assessment and inference are reviewed and corrected. Those affected often feel responsible for events that were not or only partially under their control. Those affected often do not distinguish between themselves and a one-off behavior at a certain point in time. Those affected link the making of mistakes - the violation of (in this approach always their own, internalized) norms - with an assessment of their entire person, or make a judgment about themselves as a person or valuable or worthless person (in the sense of a pathological Self-esteem). These are usually deeply rooted and now unconscious evaluation processes. Often these theoretical approaches are also put into practice in behavioral psychotherapies.

Religious meaning

The Buddhism is the feeling of guilt largely in the range of suffering, from which you look over the road of acceptance must free.

The central dogma of Christianity of Christ's atoning death on the cross leads to freeing the conscience from existing feelings of guilt in order to make a rethinking ( metanoia ) possible.

Literary adaptations of the problem of guilt

In the novel Guilt and Atonement (1866, in German several times since 1882) by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the subject of “guilt” is treated literarily from the point of view that a crime requires punishment; Correspondingly, the Russian title of the novel means “crime and punishment” or “transgression and rebuke”.

In his utopian novel The Man Who Wanted to Be Guilty (1973, in German 1976) , the Danish author Henrik Stangerup addresses the imagined refusal of the authorities to deal with a feeling of guilt, to atone for the guilt by means of a corresponding punishment and thereby become "free" again ).

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: feeling of guilt  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Rainer Krause: General psychodynamic treatment and disease theory: Fundamentals and models . Kohlhammer Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-17-023561-8 , pp. 214, 220, 320 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ a b Ulfried Geuter: Body Psychotherapy: Outline of a Theory for Clinical Practice . Springer-Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-642-04014-6 , pp. 197 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, Lisa Feldman Barrett: Handbook of Emotions, Third Edition . Guilford Press, 2008, ISBN 978-1-60623-803-5 , pp. 302–319 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ^ Raphael M. Bonelli: Your own fault !: A guide out of spiritual dead ends. Pattloch-Verlag, Munich 2013, page 32 ff.
  5. ^ Raphael M. Bonelli: Your own fault !: A guide out of spiritual dead ends. Pattloch-Verlag, Munich 2013, page 45 ff.
  6. ↑ Nathalie Roden: I WANT ... to feel guilty too . Wienerin, March 2013, pages 174–175
  7. ^ Raphael M. Bonelli: Your own fault !: A guide out of spiritual dead ends. Pattloch-Verlag, Munich 2013, page 56.
  8. ↑ H. Stavemann: KVT-Praxis: Strategies and guidelines for cognitive behavioral therapy. 2nd Edition. Beltz / PVU, Weinheim 2008.
  9. ↑ cf. Justification (theology)