You're Not Ashamed, Huh ?! Do You Have A Conscience ?! A Few Words About Shame And Conscience

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The most difficult feelings that a person can experience are feelings of shame and guilt. A persistent feeling of guilt often underlies psychosomatic illnesses, and shame is a very important factor in the development and maintenance of many psychopathologies.

Shame is a public feeling, it arises when there is a threat, something others learn, about some of our reprehensible actions. And for us the opinion of these others is important. People have always lived in communities. And perhaps even in primitive society, the beginnings of a sense of shame arose. And then it played an extremely important role, because whether the community accepted you directly depended on whether you would survive. Shame helped to internalize the norms of the group and not violate them, even when speech was still underdeveloped. And if the story of the origin of shame was really that, then here you can see its closer connection with fear, and not with respect or with moral values.

And now, in our time, shame plays the role of a regulator of behavior in the early stages of life, conscience begins to form much later - by puberty. Therefore, it is useless to appeal to the conscience of a 7-8 and even a 10-year-old child, he has not yet had time to form it.

Shame is toxic, and frequent shame leads to the formation of a neurotic personality. Keep this in mind when appealing to shame in your children.

Remorse, unlike conscience itself, is a feeling. And a feeling close to shame and guilt. Only, unlike shame, remorse is not caused by the presence of other people, but not by the correspondence of one's actions, thoughts, feelings to one's own attitudes. It's good to have principles, it's worse when principles start to have you.

In a state of shame or remorse, a person experiences extremely unpleasant tension, which he tries to reduce in various ways. Some of them are healthy, and some lead to social disadoption:

It can go into polarity:

Pride. When a person does not recognize the presence of those very significant others. He has his own casino, with his blackjack and his whores, his own morality. He considers himself, as it were, always right.

Into displacement:

When a person forgets, the event that causes an unpleasant feeling of shame: “It's not me! I didn't do that! - quite sincerely, the man says.

Into self-flagellation:

He blamed himself, scolded himself, and it seemed that it became easier for a little while.

Or in denial:

Shamelessness. When norms and rules are simply not recognized, they are protesting against them. We can often see this in adolescence. And a healthy way to rethink the imposed values, and shape your own. The main danger here is going into too antisocial behavior, when the matter is not limited to smoking and obscenities.

Conscience can hardly be called a feeling - these are moral values that are not formed immediately, slowly, through their experience. If most of the value attitudes are introjected (that is, they were "swallowed" entirely, without "chewing" and assimilating), then conscience will be perceived as something foreign, something that interferes with life.

Of course, it is easier to make a child feel ashamed and thus to manage him, rather than waiting until his value attitudes are formed. However, this is the path leading to the neurotization of the personality.

So, to summarize:

Shame is a feeling, conscience is a moral value.

Shame and guilt leads to a split in the personality between the accused and the internal prosecutor. Conscience makes a person a bearer of certain values.

Shame is closer to fear and guilt, and evokes feelings of inferiority: "you do not meet the requirements of society." Conscience is closer to empathy and compassion. And it carries the message "do not do bad to another."

Shame is easily induced and toxic. Conscience takes a long time to develop and can be an internal support for a person.