Katchadourian, Herant. Guilt: The Bite of Conscience

Katchadourian, Herant. Guilt: The Bite of Conscience. Stanford UP: Stanford, CA. 2010.
“The capacity for guilt is innate—we are born with it hard-wired into our brain through evolution. Guilt serves a variety of functions in connection with social control, hence its experiences are subject to cultural variation. Like other emotions, guilt is neutral in itself, neither good nor bad as such” (xiii). =E

“The word emotion is associated with psychological excitement ( from the Latin “I was moved”; “I got upset”). The more informal term for emotion—feeling—may be used both as a noun (“I have a gut feeling”) as well as a verb (“I feel guilty”). Emotions are states of heightened psychological arousal accompanied by physical manifestations, like the pounding heart of fear and the blush of embarrassment” (4). =E

“Emotions are at the core of human nature” (4). =E

“Natural as they are, emotions do not just happen—they occur for some reason” (5). =E
“Earlier investigators focused on primary emotions such as anger and fear (as well as sadness, happiness, disgust, and surprise). These core emotions have a biological basis (hence they are shared with higher animals) and distinctive physiological manifestations” (5). =B & E

“The subjective experiences of guilt, shame, regret, embarrassment, and pride place them squarely in the emotional ballpark. However, they lack some of the universal components of the primary emotions, and hence are called secondary emotions. It is easier to tell if a person is angry or afraid than if a person feels guilty or ashamed. Secondary emotions are more subject to social conditioning, and thus show greater cultural differences in their experience and expression” (5). =E

“However, secondary does not eman of secondary importance. These secondary emotions play a central role in regulating our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors” (5).
“Psychologists call guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pride social emotions because they are heavily dependant on social interactions” (7). =E

“Psychologists now generally refer to guilt shame, embarrassment, and pride as self-concious emotions” (7). =B & E

“What the term is meant to convey is that such emotions reflect the evaluations of the self by others. . .To call them emotions of self-assessment would be even less cryptic, but that term is far less commonly used” (7). =E

“The word shame is derived from the Old German term skew (“to cover”0. This points to the association of shaming with exposure, which we described as the essential element in embarrassment” (15). = B

“Non-moral shame results from public exposure of defects that lead to loss of social status; in that sense, it may overlap with embarrassment” (16). =B

“Guilty action and guilty feeling do not always go together. It is possible to be guilty but not feel guilty, or feel guilty without having done anything wrong” (21).

(Goes with conduct books and the guilt they induce).

“ancient Greek has no word for guilt in the sense of “feeling guilty” (21).

“guilt is a part of the ‘currency’ we use carrying out our personal transactions with others. It is a powerful influence technique (laying ‘guilt trips’) to change the behavior of others” (22). =E ***

“guilt remains a common source of distress in the modern world’ (22).

“In existential terms, guilt ties us down to the past, making it difficult for us to live in an authentic present. It underminds the trust we have in the adequacy of our selves and leads to a loss of self-esteem and self-confidence” (23). =E ***

“There are no reliable physical manifestations of ‘looking guilty,’ despite Darwin’s claim that the expression of guilt could be recognized across culturess. Studies based on photographic expressions of self-conscious emotions have so far failed to find distinctive features of guilt” (23) ***

“we feel guilt when our actions have caused pain, suffering, fear, and disappointment’ (26). =E

“Guilt has a complex relationship with pride, Feelings of superiority, at the expense of others, makes us feel bad. The sense of guilt is especially acute when we are contemptuous toward those who are close to us (46). =B

“There is a special form of guilt called positive inequity that is associated with privilege. Some affluent people assuage their guilt by being charitable, but one can also be charitable out of compassion, a sense of moral obligation and social responsibility” (54).

“Since guilt is a painful emotion, we need to deal with it. If we shove it under the carpet, it will not go away. We usually try to deal with guilt in the privacy of our conscience; less often, by approaching the person we have offended” (60).

“Interpersonal relationship is the term that refers to all forms of relationships between people” (64). =B

“The primary purpose of guilt in these contexts is to deter wrongdoing and to repair the damage to the relationship (65). =B

“Like money, guilt can be used effectively, but also abused or debased. It may be used to pay an honest debt, or it may be contrived” (66).

“The second source of guilt is associated with exclusion anxiety, which results from the sense of alientation from the relationship partner we have hurt” (66).

“The particular techniques of inducing guilt vary from the subtle . . . to the theatrical (68).

“the power of guilt in seeking out vulnerable spots and striking where it hurts most” (69).

“Since guilt is a distressing feeling, people have a generally negative view of it. Nobody wants to feel guilty” (75).

“Psychologists now view guilt as an emotion that promotes prosocial effects. It moves people to admit responsibility for their wrong actions, to make amends, and repair damaged relationships. However useful it might be, guilt still carries a serious pathological potential” (75).

“Yet there are instances when one feels guilty without having done anything wrong. Survivor guilt is one such example” (89). =B

“A second form of such guilt results from the feeling of personal responsibility for the wrong that the members of one’s group have done—collective guilt. Finally there is existential guilt—the feeling of guilt for more puzzling reasons ranging from being better off to merely being human” (89). =B

“Collective guilt results from feelings of culpability for unjust or criminal actions perpetrated by a group one identifies with. The common bond may be based on nationality, ethnicity, or some other social bond” (96).= B & E

Collective guilt and women and the Eve problem. Men would associate all women with Eve creating a sense of collective guilt for women.

“The justification for collective guilt goes back to the biblical injunction that children will pay for the sins of their fathers for many generations. (97). =B

“Since the value of what we have is relative to what others have, the guilt of positive inequity is expressed not in the absolute but relative terms. It is not an issue of having too much or too little, but having more or less relative to others we compare ourselves with” (134). =B

“In its more popularized versions, existential guilt can also said to arise from the failure to develop our full potential as human beings” (110). =B

“In the medieval period, popular senteiment, usually but not always backed by church doctrine, fostered the idea that feeling guilty was a good thing—it reflected a healthy conscience—hence, the guiltier one felt, the better one could resist sin” (118). =B

“By the end of the nineteenth century, the stricture of Victorian morality led Nietzsche and Freud to protest against prevailsocial mores that induced needless guilt (117). =B $ E

“However, psychoanalysts distinguish between conscious and unconscious guilt” (119). =E

“The medieval church’s view of human nature was laden with guilt. The secular perspective that followed it in the Renaissance was equally bleak. Niccolo Machiavelli described his contemporaries as ‘ungrateful, fickle, dissembling, anxious to feel danger, and covetous of gain” (169). =B

“When we say that our capacity for feeling guilt is innate, what we mean is that the moral behavior can be adaptive in genetic terms by virtue of having provided our ancestors with a reproductive advantage. It does not mean than an innate trait will assert itself irrespective of the environment. Nor does it mean that it will lead to universal patterns of moral behavior across all cultures at all times and in all places. To avoid the use of nebulous labels, ethologists now use the term fixed action pattern to refer to behaviors that emerge without prior learning” (171).
Guilt, shame, and embarrassment are forms of social control” (186). =E ***

“These emotions may not always be portrayed in these terms, but that is how they have evolved and become embedded in our cultural beliefs and practices” (186). = E***

“Consequently, shame has been generally assumed to be the predominant sentiment that motivated and restrained the ancient Greeks. Their shame culture was based on public esteem” (189).

“I agree with the perception that guilt is a distinctive emotion—and quite separate from shame, embarrassment, and disgust” (307). =B

“A serious problem in the psychological literature on guilt and shame is the lack of sufficient attention to the cultural context of these emotions, although this problem is now being more widely recognized” (307).