Shame, Guilt and Character Development
Neurotics are too quick to feel ashamed when they’ve fallen short and too guilty when they think they’ve done wrong. In contrast, disordered characters are disturbingly lacking in their capacity to experience even healthy levels of shame or guilt.
I’ve posted on how neurotics differ from disordered characters on dimensions such as their levels of awareness (“Neurosis vs. Character Disorder: Levels of Awareness”), needs in therapy (“Neurosis vs. Character Disorder: Contrasting Needs in Therapy”), and use of defense mechanisms such as denial (“Understanding Denial as a Defense Mechanism”). But there is perhaps no greater difference between these two groups of individuals as there is with respect to issues related to shame and guilt.
Because they are persons of conscience, neurotics experience high, often excessive, and sometimes toxic levels of shame and guilt. Shame is the emotional state we experience when we feel badly about who we are and guilt is the condition we experience when feel badly about what we’ve done. Judging themselves as harshly as they tend to do, neurotics are quick to feel ashamed of themselves when they fail to measure up to the high standards they set for themselves. They’re also quick to feel guilty when they think they’ve done something hurtful, or harmful. Some neurotics experienced levels of shame and guilt growing up that were so toxic that it led them to develop truly pathological symptoms of their neurosis. But most neurotics don’t carry with them extreme levels of guilt or shame. Nonetheless, they are hypersensitive to these feelings and are quick to feel badly about themselves when they’ve done something that reflects negatively on their character and too quick to beat themselves up emotionally when they think they’ve committed social sins.
When he does something harmful, the disturbed character lacks the pangs of guilt or shame that emanate from a well-developed conscience. Shamelessness and guiltlessness are the disturbed character’s most hallmark features. Disordered characters don’t feel badly enough about themselves when they fail to measure up to reasonable expectations, and they don’t feel guilty enough when they do things hurtful or harmful to others. They actually appear to lack sufficient capacity to experience the guilt or shame necessary to keep most of us behaving in a pro-social manner.
The plethora of books dealing with shame and guilt that dominated the self-help and “recovery” market of the 60s, 70s, and even 80s, was largely written by, for, and about neurotics. Shame and blame were the names of their game, and most of those books blamed toxic levels of guilt and/or shame for a wide variety of psychological problems that damaged a person’s self-esteem. These books largely made us believe that there was no such thing as good shame or healthy guilt. Some authors and theorists later relented on the topic of guilt, acknowledging that at least some measure of guilt is necessary to keep us civilized. But even today, the dominant opinion about shame, even among more empirically-based researchers and theorists, is that it’s a bad thing, period. The general consensus seems to be that while it’s a relatively good thing to feel badly about something you’ve done that’s harmful, feeling badly about oneself — about who one literally is — is never a good thing. After working for many years with disturbed characters, I came to see the short-sightedness of this premise some time ago. It is precisely because most of us might experience some genuine self-disgust with the kind of person we might find ourselves becoming when we habitually engage in the kinds of behaviors disordered characters display that prompts us to change our ways and restore a self-image we can live with. I’ve known many individuals who made significant changes in their characters not only because they regretted their irresponsible behaviors, but also because they became unsettled enough with the kind of person they had allowed themselves to become (i.e., became too ashamed of themselves) that they decided a character makeover was in order. In my opinion, the capacity to experience both shame and guilt is essential for sound character development. As is usually the case, however, it’s a matter of degree. When individuals experience toxic levels of either guilt or shame, especially when either is truly unwarranted, there can indeed be a negative impact on psychological health.
Some professionals (and non-professionals) take issue with the premises above. They insist that disordered characters actually do feel guilt and shame but that they effectively utilize — or perhaps over-utilize — certain “defense mechanisms” such as “denial” and “projection” to assuage the emotional pain associated with that guilt or pain. This is because they continue to accept the tenets of classical psychology (i.e., that everyone is neurotic to a greater or lesser degree) and because believing that all individuals are fundamentally similar makes it hard for them to imagine how anyone could behave in a manner that appears so shameless unless they were in fact defending themselves against real pain underneath it all. My work has taught me, however, that being embarrassed at being uncovered or found out is not the same as being ashamed of oneself. Shame is one of those mechanisms that makes a person think twice about doing something wrong in the first place. Moreover, a person who truly feels ashamed of himself is certainly not likely do the same shameful things over and over again. Character-disordered people will sometimes claim they didn’t come clean with themselves or others because they were ashamed. But this is often a lie they tell because they know a neurotic person is likely to find it plausible. Individuals overly invested in the classical explanations of human behavior might also tend to believe that those who commit criminal behaviors in a manner that is so careless, reckless, impulsive, and thoughtless, do so because they have a subconscious desire (arising out of pangs of conscience) to be caught. There has never been any empirical support for this notion, but that has not kept many from adhering to it. In fact, there is mounting evidence that some of the most seriously disturbed characters act the way they do because they experience few if any pangs of conscience. A very renowned researcher, Dr. Robert Hare, has aptly titled his very revealing book about the most seriously disturbed character — the psychopath — Without Conscience [Amazon-US | Amazon-UK].
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11th October 2008
You seem to be of the opinion that an individual can be *either* neurotic or character disordered, as if they are mutually exclusive rather than overlapping factors. Having read Millon and David Shapiro, I don’t think they agree with you on that and frankly, I don’t find your dichotomy nearly as illuminating. An obsessive-compulsive character style for example, with its focus on perfection, can certainly coexist with plenty of guilt and shame.
11th October 2008
Keith’s comment made me realize that probably not everyone has read all the prior posts, and also made me realize how much I will need to emphasize some things in future posts. Suffice it to say that I am definitely NOT of the opinion that the neurotic vs. character disorder issue is a dichotomy. It is, rather both a continuum and a dimension of personality. And, as stated in prior posts, but as I probably should emphasize again, the term character is not synonymous with term personality, even though many use the phrase interchangeably. The obsessive-compulsive style is a personality style, not a character style. Millon refers to this pattern as the “passive-ambivalent” style of interpersonal relating because the O-C person maintains a deep-seated ambivalence about whether to set their own independent course or exceed to the expectations of and depend emotionally on others. The O-C personality maintains this ambivalence through a passive modality (not allowing themselves to cut loose so to speak). Shapiro characterizes all personality styles as “neurotic” styles. The perspective I adopt is that some personality styles are much more character disturbed than neurotic. The obsessive compulsive style (and its active-independent Millon counterpart) are among the most neurotic personality styles there are. The independent styles (narcissistic and antisocial) are among the more character disturbed.
11th October 2008
Hi George,
I agree with you that a certain amount of guilt or shame is healthy.
I like the word remorseful. And I think it can be a motivator to change oneself. Actually as a parent if I don’t see remorse I am deeply concerned. That means more is needed to teach! It can be viewed as concern in a way.
I often wonder in a character disordered individual if the brain has some missing wiring going in. Energetically speaking or if neural chemicals are being fired off to compensate with some kind of pain transmitter that would hinder the normal activity present in healthy individuals? Adrenaline?
11th October 2008
Wow! I am getting energized by such great comments and questions. Thanks again to Keith and Diane for their posts. Diane, your comments about remorse are very timely. In one of my soon upcoming posts, I’ll be addressing the relative capacity of neurotics vs. character disorders with regard to experiencing genuine remorse. With respect to brain differences, we’re just learning. We do know that psychopaths have deficits in neuronal activity in those parts of the brain that reflect imparting emotional contexts, connotations, and connections to ideas, concepts, and even people. If we present “normal” subjects with words like table, nail, plastic, etc. and look at brain activity, areas of the brain associated with concept and object recognition fire but areas involved in emotion do not. Yet when normals see words like love, beauty, marriage, baby, humanity, etc., areas of the brain involved in both emotion and concept recognition show activity. Not so with psychopaths. Show them words like endearing or even death and the concept recognition areas fire but no neuronal firing occurs in the areas typically associated with emotion. With antisocial personalities (and the other aggressive personality types) there are some interesting “dynamics” that impair the experiencing of guilt, shame, and even remorse - but we’ll be talking a bit more about that in a future post.
Keith, I do apologize for not being clearer in this post and possibly leaving a wrong impression. It’s so hard to pack in all of the elements of the perspective to which I subscribe. It’s also hard to remember sometimes where I have posted additional material (e.g., my own blog, website, or other comments to sites and blogs that feature my work) that helps clarify the broader paradigm. I’m so glad you gave me the opportunity to make things a bit clearer (I hope). This series is just one part of 4 other series that taken together should shed much more light on the broader picture.
Again, thanks all for the great comments. I’m always eager to get them even if I’m not always prepared to respond in a timely manner.
5th December 2008
I’m a non-professional who would agree wholeheartedly with this article. It’s great that we are living in an age where many of us are more enlightened on emotional and mental wellbeing than ever before, but I fear there are certain individuals who are happy to over-extend messages about defending one’s self esteem to the extent that they feel they should be beyond criticism, immune from guilt and never, ever at risk of shame - no matter what they do! Mistaken understanding of self-esteem has become king, without appreciating that true, healthy self-esteem tolerates some “negative” emotions or experiences allowing one to esteem oneself by responding to them positively.
The point about people believing in mythical “defence mechanisms” is also very astute. I’ve dealt with several highly manipulative people through my life, and until fairly recently was always willing to project an explanation that these people must be feeling something underneath, and that perhaps they’d just had a “tough life” and were responding to it as best they could. It does seem natural that as humans we try to understand others based on our understanding of ourselves. But over the past few years I’ve come to realise and accept that there really are some people out there who don’t believe doing the right thing is important. There are even some people who will antagonise anyone for identifying their actions as harmful, before they will even consider whether or not they should have committed them!
I personally think this is quite a hard thing for people to acknowledge. It’s a scary thing; like the traditional fears of mental illness, the idea that someone isn’t governed by or likely to behave according to the “normal” social rules poses a threat to our security on many levels. But I’m not really satisfied with leaving it at that. I can’t help but wonder what can (or should) be done with someone who feels no guilt or shame, or who fundamentally doesn’t care at all if their success comes at a high price to those around them. Is it ethical to impose our “normality” on them, by use of drugs or therapy? Is it wrong to exclude people from the benefits of a social group if they clearly are incapable or unwilling to adhere to its behavioural expectations? Many might argue it is, on the “we are all human beings” basis, but if exclusion gives the excluded individuals the choice of whether they wish to benefit from the community and adopt appropriate behaviour or remain excluded and do as they wish, perhaps that is the fairest option?
If there is a person who feels no guilt or shame, to me that poses a natural question - what is to be done, both for that person and about that person in the context of wider society?