Psychologists, counselors, and other mental health professionals recognize the significance of shame and guilt. These are powerful and sometimes destructive. But not all guilt is the same; not all shame is the same. Distinguishing between different types of guilt and different types of shame allows the reader to more accurately analyze in any particular concrete situation.
One type of shame is perception — real or imagined — that the people in one’s environment are aware of one’s flaws or sins. A man is ashamed if others learn that he stole money from an orphanage, or embezzled from his employer, or has a secret addiction. Such shame is often occasioned by the sudden revelation of one’s secrets. This type of shame can be called ‘outer-directed.’
A different version of shame is “inner-directed.” This is a self-valuation based upon one’s flaws or sins. One might review one’s actions, and label one’s self as worthless or evil. Such an internalized shame might arise when the distinction between one’s actions and one’s self is not made clear. Although one might have committed horrible crimes, it is those crimes which are evil, not one’s self. Ultimately, actions, not people, are judged to be good or evil.
There are perhaps other varieties of shame, in addition to these two.
Likewise, there are different sorts of guilt.
One kind of guilt is the reality of an individual’s having committed a sin or crime. This is a physical objective truth. A man either did, or did not, rob a bank. It is not a matter of “feeling” that the man is guilty. It is a verifiable fact. This can be called ‘ontological guilt.’
By contrast, another type of guilt is an emotion: this can be called ‘phenomenological guilt.’ One perceives one’s self to be guilty. This perception can be accurate, or it can be false.
Shame and guilt are painful. Externalized shame is the experience of being publicly humiliated. Inner-directed shame is the experience of self-loathing. Ontological guilt is the fact that one has done evil. Phenomenological guilt is to feel — accurately or mistakenly — that one has done evil.
These concepts are seen in specific situations: in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the main character, Raskolnikov, repeatedly tries to persuade himself that he’s done nothing wrong, and therefore need not feel guilt. Yet a phenomenological guilt keeps reappearing in his mind, and as his attempts to repress it become more frantic, the sublimated guilt is the hidden cause of his bizarre thoughts, words, and deeds. Finally, persuaded by his friend Sofya, he confesses the crime which he has committed. One interpretation of Dostoevsky’s plot is this: to get rid of the phenomenological guilt — i.e., to get rid of the feelings of guilt — one must get rid of the actual guilt — i.e., one must get rid of the ontological guilt. Confession is the first step in a process which will eventually eliminate the ontological guilt. After his confession, Raskolnikov embraces the sentence given to him. Finally, throughout Lent, he wrestles mentally with accepting the facts that he committed the crime and is justly imprisoned. At Easter Time, he and Sofya communicate their love for each other, and he experiences a sense of renewal. Later, he meditates on New Testament texts; Sofya had given him a Bible. He experiences an internal resurrection and regeneration.
Raskolnikov first had to recognize that his phenomenological guilt was indeed accurate. Then he confessed his crime and accepted his sentence; this was not a simple act, but required a great deal of internal wrestling. Finally, he had to receive forgiveness and acceptance, both from human beings, and from God. His ontological guilt thus removed, his phenomenological guilt also disappeared.
A different example shows how shame is calculated into people’s decisions and actions.
In the works of Homer and especially of Virgil, characters commit acts which strike the reader as amoral and as fueled alternatingly by rage or by fear. Individuals like Aeneas seem almost sociopathic or psychopathic. These characters are acting in ways calculated either to avoid or to eliminate a sense of outer-directed shame. They have a hierarchy of values in which avoiding outer-directed shame is at or near the top.
These Virgilian characters are seeking honor, which is an inverse of shame. An outer-directed sense of honor is to be praised by one’s fellows. Entire cultures are sometimes labeled as ‘honor-shame’ cultures, because this polarity drives their ethical thinking as well as their personal ambitions.
Correspondingly, an inner-directed sense of honor would be a healthy form of self-regard, and the antidote of an inner-directed sense of shame. To acknowledge the reality of one’s misdeeds, to acknowledge the evil of those deeds, to accept the consequences for those deeds, and yet not loath one’s self, is a salutary inner-directed sense of honor.
To complete the symmetry, the opposite of guilt is innocence: the two types of guilt, ontological and phenomenological, would be balanced by the same two types of innocence. To be ontologically innocent would be to have in fact not committed the sin or sins in question. To be phenomenologically innocent would be to believe or to feel that one is innocent, quite apart from the actual fact of one’s guilt or innocence.
Perhaps a final concept can be added to the two types of guilt and the two types of innocence. All four of these are in some way in need of, and are relieved by, forgiveness.
Forgiveness from a human being, or a group of them, eliminates outer-directed shame. Forgiveness toward one’s self eliminates the inner-directed shame. Forgiveness from God eliminates ontological guilt, and embracing that forgiveness eliminates phenomenological guilt.
It is a lack of forgiveness which leaves the stories of Homer and Virgil with unsatisfying endings.
Dostoevsky’s plot comes to a happier conclusion. Raskolnikov must endure agonizing spiritual torment for several hundred pages before finally receiving forgiveness in the last two or three pages of Crime and Punishment.
Shame, guilt, and forgiveness form a powerful interpretive structure which can be applied to events real or fictitious.
