Joy, Guilt, Anger, Love (7 page)

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Guilt: An Indelible Stain

Guilt has very quick ears to an accusation

HENRY FIELDING

A good deed never goes unpunished

GORE VIDAL

T
he window was semi-open. The early-morning sun rays flickered through the slits in the venetian blinds that kept banging against the window, at the mercy of a mild, yet insistent wind. For a few moments, I wasn’t sure whether I was awake or still sleeping, lying in the borderland between fact and reverie. I remained motionless, trying to make sense of my surroundings. I had forgotten where I was. An unpleasant feeling had stirred me in the early hours of the morning with a dream, which I was determined to remember, without letting it dissipate through the sieve of my consciousness. It was a rather curious dream. At the centre of it was a date I had made with my old friend Esra to see each other in Rome, something we had looked forward to for a long time. On the day of our appointment we arranged to meet on the river bank, close to her hotel in Trastevere. When I arrived at our agreed meeting point she wasn’t there and I sat by myself on a bench. While I waited, a few figures stopped, one after the other, to ask me for the time and what day it was. A beggar, a traffic warden, a policeman, even a nun. Each time, I looked at my watch and I obliged with an answer, after which they all ran away fretfully saying how late they were. No sign of Esra, though. Time goes by erratically in a dream, but the wait felt like an eternity and started to make me impatient. I called the hotel, but no one answered. I tried her mobile and she would not pick up. I slowly became bored and a little upset. Then a line of professors holding glasses and microphones paraded in front of me. They all stared at me and I didn’t understand why. Some were inquisitive, others impassive. I left a message on Esra’s voicemail. All of a sudden, I began to hear a loud, banging sound as if something kept being dropped from the sky to hit the ground. I worried something might have happened to Esra, but I also lamented her standing me up. I called again, in vain, and left another message. Finally, I rose from the bench, trying to locate the source of that sound. I turned around several times, but there was nothing to see. Then I woke up, that annoying sound echoing with the irregular bangs of the blinds against the window.

You may be wondering what that dream was all about. I more or less knew what it signified the minute my eyes opened. Those seemingly absurd figures, and the bizarreness of their actions, the long wait and the intrusion of associations to time and the disappearance of my friend, were the disguise for something that was troubling me: guilt.

For several weeks, I had carried with me an unpleasant sensation that I had more or less successfully put aside thanks to the conveniently distracting thrust of daily routine, which is commonly deft at burying emotions. On a brief holiday, that sensation found the path to re-emerge. Someone was knocking on the door of my conscience. The truth was that a few months before, Esra had invited me to speak at an interesting conference she had organized. Flattered by the invitation and excited by the opportunity, I enthusiastically accepted. But I sloppily failed to mark the date in my calendar! Busy and overworked, I completely forgot about the invitation. Then, just a couple of weeks before the conference, came a gentle reminder to confirm my participation and submit my paper. What?

Panic.

I was supposed to give a paper I had never given before, and a few other trips and speaking commitments stood ahead of Esra’s symposium. Even if I had decided to do without sleep from here on to the deadline, it would have been impossible for me to be ready for the occasion and honour the invitation with a decent lecture. Reluctantly, but with no better choice, I cancelled, with endless apologies. But Esra wasn’t pleased with me at all. Understandably. I was afflicted with guilt. I felt awfully bad that I had not been able to fulfil my commitment and I couldn’t believe I had neglected to meet the request for my participation in the symposium, especially since it came from a friend. I have organized conferences myself and I know what it means to find oneself with an empty slot at the last minute. I was haunted by negative judgements about my conduct and deeply hated myself for not doing what I should have done – marking my calendar, keeping track of my schedule, preparing and honouring my friend’s kind invitation.

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Like a ghost, guilt often materializes in dreams, disguised in more or less inscrutable, at times bizarre permutations. It was, in fact, a guilt-themed dream Sigmund Freud experienced himself in the summer of 1895 that helped him formulate his theory on the interpretation of this enigmatic nocturnal stream of unconsciousness.
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In Freud’s dream, everything pointed to a sense of guilt he felt for a misdiagnosis of a patient, Irma, who was also a friend of his. According to Freud, Irma suffered from hysteria. After a period of treatment, Irma got better but she kept experiencing somatic pains and unease. Freud, however, discounted her medical symptoms and established that what she was experiencing did not have an organic nature.
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On the evening before Freud had the dream, Otto, one of his best friends, who had recently visited Irma, reported she was better, ‘but not altogether well’. Freud sensed some kind of criticism hidden in the tone of Otto’s voice and interpreted his remark as a reproach, perhaps a message coming from Irma and her family, for the superficial therapeutic choice he had made. Freud became upset about this. The dream has for its setting a party at his house, at which Irma is also present. In the initial moments, he takes Irma aside and tells her bluntly: ‘If you still have pains, it is really only your own fault.’ Freud then examines her throat, which he finds to be full of greyish and white scabs, clearly proving the presence of an infection, which was also confirmed by another doctor present in the dream. Irma had in reality received an injection and in the dream Freud suspects that perhaps the injection had been carried out sloppily and with a non-sterile syringe.

Freud clearly felt responsible for having underestimated Irma’s condition, but he shifts his own blame on to her and the other doctor for mistreating her. The experience is so strong and the guilt so unacceptable that he sheds it on to others. But he knew all too well that in fact the dream was about his own discomfort with the failure, real or perceived, of his treatment of Irma. Thanks to this revealing experience, he concluded that ‘the dream has a meaning, albeit a hidden one; that it is intended as a substitute for some other thought process, and that it is only a question of revealing this substitute correctly in order to reach the hidden signification of the dream’.
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Freud also concluded that the dream is often the fulfilment of a wish. In this case, the wish that he had acted differently, that he could erase his responsibility for Irma’s protracted sickness. Likewise, in my dream, I must have tried to avenge my guilt at failing to keep my commitment, by turning the reproach back upon Esra for being late to the imaginary appointment of the dream.

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Still in bed, slowly emerging from a cloud of intense mental rumination, I raised the blinds and looked outside. It was another beautiful day in the eternal city and I had no commitments. I believed that a long walk would do me good, so I set out into the street heading to the centre and the river intending to make the most of the day.

Bad conduct

Guilt involves misconduct, or even just the belief of having done wrong. And it is generally some wrongdoing that offends, overlooks or causes harm to someone else, often in violation of a rule or a social norm. It entails judging right from wrong, discerning what is acceptable from what is despicable, advantageous from hurtful. An unjustified burst of rage towards someone we care for or an excessively snappy reaction, such as in Bruce’s case, makes guilt supervene. Guilt is a moral emotion, perhaps the quintessential moral emotion, and is therefore about values.

When considering complex emotions such as guilt, conceit, vanity or humility, Darwin wondered whether they could be identified clearly and unmistakably by any distinct physical expression, and acknowledged it to be difficult. Some of his foreign correspondents who searched for snapshots of emotions across the world did provide him with a few answers. For guilt, what they mainly referred to was the facial expression of someone who avoided the gaze of their accuser by keeping the eyelids lowered and semi-closed, giving the accuser only ‘stolen looks’.
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Darwin reports having read an expression of guilt on the face of his own two-year-old son, who gave away his unspecified ‘little crime’ by an ‘unnatural brightness in the eyes, and by an odd, affected manner, impossible to describe’.

Why do we feel guilt at all? Where does it come from, and what is its use?

It is more or less intuitively clear why one would benefit from the capacity to feel anger, despite the outflow of energy connected to our uncontained bursts of rage and the ruinous, dangerous forms the emotion may take: anger is a strategy we have developed to defend ourselves from attack. It is a mutinous protest against any violation of the delicate borders that safeguard our survival and, I would say, respect.

Like anger, guilt is shaped by personal values and by the behavioural codes and norms of the culture in which we live. However, guilt is anger’s reverse. We feel anger when another person offends us. We feel guilt after we have ourselves offended or violated someone. I can list at least a dozen flavours of this destructive emotion besides the guilt I felt for not keeping a commitment. Just to recall a few, think of the guilt you may carry with you for arriving late to work, or missing a deadline. Then there is the guilt your parents may impose on you if you neglect calling them for more than a week or you have chosen to live thousands of miles away from them. We are capable of inflicting guilt upon ourselves for doing or failing to do something: skipping a yoga lesson, say, and nevertheless ingesting irresistible crisps at the pub, or failing to quit smoking. Forgetting to respond to an email may haunt us for an entire weekend. Guilt assails us when we feel we have neglected or been snappy with our partners or even when we are more successful than they are. It is even possible to feel guilty for being happy!

We also use guilt to manipulate others. We may make employees feel guilty about their mistakes and may similarly make family members feel guilty for demanding too much or giving us too little. I could definitely go on with the list.

On a daily basis, and through the years, the load of guilt adds up interminably and sinks so deep inside us that it becomes hardly possible to eradicate it.

Guilt loads us with fear. Guilt gnaws. It bites. It attacks relentlessly. It’s like a pebble in your shoe that you wish you could get rid of, or some heavy burden. A stinging insect. All such common metaphors apply.

However we personally feel the pressure of guilt, it’s fairly certain that we spend – or waste – a lot of time ruminating on it. Now imagine a life, your social and interpersonal life, void of
any
kind of guilt. If you haven’t already dismissed this as a ridiculous exercise, but are taking seriously the possibility of a guilt-free existence, you are probably thinking: what a relief it would be! In view of all the various instances that can produce, prolong and generate new guilt, we would certainly gain a considerable amount of time and peace of mind.

However, if we did not or could not feel guilt, we would repeatedly make mistakes. There would be no incentive to alter or improve our conduct. We would disregard any form of social and moral norm, overlook the consequences of our actions. Repenting murderers fight with a sense of guilt to the end of their lives. By contrast, psychopaths often don’t feel guilty. So, biologically, guilt has evolved as a social reparative tool that ensures certain actions will not occur, or are not repeated. It sculpts a better version of ourselves. It curbs personal interests and makes space for altruistic and pro-social deeds. The feeling of guilt is indeed unpleasant, long-lasting and hard to eradicate, but, that being so, it inspires action to repair the damage done (for example with an apology) and attempts to stop, undo or make up for the consequences of the offence perpetrated. Guilt is, therefore, a strong motivator to act in morally and socially accepted ways and to correct our conduct.

My main aim in this chapter is to tell you what neuroscience has learnt about guilt and where scientists believe it hides in the brain. Before that, I will also tell you how guilt is connected to concepts of moral purity and of the special relationship it entertains with time and memory. But first of all, I am going to briefly introduce you to some of its friends.

The pang of guilt, the sourness of regret, the heat of shame

Guilt is often misinterpreted and mistaken for other emotions, especially regret or shame. There are similarities between these emotions, but also fundamental differences.

Both guilt and regret entail decisions and choice of actions – or omissions of actions – with often unwanted consequences, but regret is morally less intense. We experience regret when the outcome of our decisions turns out to be less desirable than what we expected, or less favourable than a discarded option. But unlike a guilty action, a regrettable decision does not harm others. For instance, imagine you forget your clothes and shoes in the bathroom after taking a shower. If, later, you stumble upon them yourself and break your arm, you will feel regret, but if it is your little brother who falls and breaks his arm because of your negligence, you will feel guilt.
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Regret is also the emotion of missed chances. For instance, you may regret all your life having wasted four years of your youth in law school, following the advice and insistence of your parents, realizing only later that law wasn’t exactly for you and that mathematics or art would have been a better choice. Or you may regret having postponed, for lack of courage, initiating a conversation with a beautiful passenger once seen in the tube.