jung.org/Staples_on_Guilt.html "At some point, it dawned on me that guilt serves the psyche, and life itself, in a number of ways other than its support of morality. I began to notice that guilt is often morally neutral. That becomes obvious when we see that we can feel guilty about one thing and also feel guilty about its polar opposite. For example, we can feel guilty if we are too assertive or not assertive enough; a woman may feel guilty when she has a career (so-called “mommy guilt”) and she can feel guilty when she doesn’t have one. We can feel guilty if we work too hard or too little, when we are very rich or very poor, when we neglect others and when we neglect ourselves. Examples are legion. It thus appears that guilt in its non-moral function is actually an important part of the psyche’s self-regulatory system. It is often compensatory. If we move too far toward either of a pair of opposites, guilt may nudge us back toward the center."
Posted on: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:15:17 +0000