New Book-GUILT: A CONTEMPORARY INTRODUCTION

[@SarahAshelford-o1u]

The book is excellent - especially when accompanied by these videos

[@jamesrose99]

Very much looking forward to reading this Don. Thank you

[@aysenurcelik5965]

I'm very pleased that I was lucky to find you here on KZbin. As a psychotherapist, learning these concepts about guilt, especially "reparative guilt" changed my perspective in such a good way, both in my practice and in my personal life. I'm very very thankful for you Mr. Carveth. Hope to watch all of your videos on KZbin and to read your works that I haven't yet, as soon as possible.

[@doncarveth]

Thank you very much, it’s very good to know my work is useful to psychotherapists and others

[@tylerdockendorff4492]

My thoughts about technical neutrality and politics are that it is okay to have opinions and maybe sometimes to share them, but not to impose them. Maybe that is a view that will change with more experienced though. Love the father/son dynamics of the discussion btw. Thanks for sharing.

[@doncarveth]

Thank you

[@jonashjerpe7421]

Hi again Don. I have ordered and read your fine book. Reading it really helped to further deepen the understanding how precisely the fall of man involves sin and guilt. Personally I was also helped by the reading to explore guilt and conscience somewhat further in my own life, which I really did appreciate. I would also say, the final paragraph in the book is a monumentally strong and a great encouragement to all of us to recognize that true hard work really needs to be done, should we not prefer to stay in Kindergarten forever. Thanks! One question in particular has stayed with me several days after completing the reading. It is clear that conscience represents our inner voice and faculty of love. Our reparatory guilt then represents our sinful nature; our failure to tune into what love asks of us. To some extent you also write, clearly I should add, about what repair of our guilt--our debt to ourselves, others and life--involves. Good. I have also, recently, come to the conclusion that you are perhaps right, that we will never ever entirely get rid of our guilt, although it is both necessary and desirable that we do work it through. So what is there to add? There are two sides of the coin. When you focus exclusively on guilt, the message gets really serious. It is adult, important and full of good responsibility. That is indeed one side of the coin of mature adulthood. But what is the other side, which I suggest that you pay too little attention to? The point is expressed clearly by Jesus, according to Matthew: "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18 All the talk about guilt in the book, I opine, shadows the nature of love somewhat. The significance of our primordial, yes innate, innocence for wholeness, growth, liberation is, I would say, essential. Is it not all important to say that an adult human being, worthy her salt as it were, needs to face her accumulated sins and work through her karmic debt (in this life I hasten to add), but that she also need to truly rediscover, in so doing, her deep innocence and childlike presence? Without the latter, there will after all be no salvation, no kingdom of God. Perhaps you will say that innocence is granted directly or indirectly by conscience, the faculty of love. In that case, I agree of course, but I have to add that the point in that case will merely be transfered from the manifest text to the overall sentiment of the book. You do write about guilt as if you would be surprised to hear about Matthew 18 in connection to guilt, or that you might view innocence as a narcissistic defence in PD that is used regressively to get rid of guilt anxiety altogether. My point is that we need to be careful not to split guilt and innocence and I do get the impression that the book, at least partially, conveys precisely that split. What is your opinion on innocence in connection to guilt? Best

[@doncarveth]

I agree with you, but I was trying to read a secular book. I did not want my Christianity to alienate my secular readers.

[@jonashjerpe7421]

I see. However, there is nothing sacral in and of itself with the innate innocence of consciousness. Yes, we can understand innocence in religious terms, as I did in the quote, but I have no problem if we prefer to conceive of it in another conceptual fashion. It is the reality and the nature of psychological health that matters, not the theoretical framework that is currently in vogue. I certainly see that you have your reasons. And I am in no position to give you recommendations. Generallt speaking, however, the truth that matters is not to be found in books, churches or the university. As long as that non-conceptual truth is deepened, all is well.

[@jonashjerpe7421]

By the way, I think Erich Fromm truly gets the value of the last remark in for instance The Art of Loving.

[@doncarveth]

@@jonashjerpe7421 yes

[@lisbethbird8268]

I've not read any of your books yet but this sounds like a great one, with a wide angle lense on an important and universal emotion. I don't have the academic background, but almost always manage to get the gist of what you're saying, because of the way you explain things. Congratulations on publishing.

[@doncarveth]

Thank you very much. It’s taken me awhile to overcome my academic, high theory style, but I tried to write this one as simply and clearly as I could.

[@jonashjerpe7421]

Book ordered! A healthy part of mature guilt just got to be a deep capacity for forgiveness. Guilt is sin as it was originally conceived. You feel guilt when you have missed the mark, i.e. when the ego's attempt to get what it wants and to avoid what it does not want neglects or transgresses what conscience signals is true and right to give full priority to. We constantly grow in our capacity to subject our lives to the inner truth, presuming we dedicate our lives to do so. When we get quite far, I would say, life is about expressing our existential truth continuously and to forgive ourselves whenever and whereever we fail to do so. Human beings are not supposed to feel quilty all the time or struggle with guilt all the time. If you do, you have some serious forgivness work to do. And I agree. We have a lot or work to do with guilt and sinfulness for a very long time. However, the focus needs to be on the truth; not the sin, although we certainly need to be equipped to forgive our sins. My brief reservation to this interview is that it somehow gives the impression that guilt is a more fundamental category than existential truth. That is not the case. A person who is dedicated to pursuit the deepest truth of his heart will not have to struggle with guilt anymore than his conscience invites him to face and resolve guilt. There is true liberation to be achieved in life, although we will forever have to face our humanity and its limitations. For some reason, unbeknown to me, psychoanalysis tend to stop at one of our major, truly critical human limitations and thereby loose sight of the supreme value, here truth, that we are asked to fully embody. To fully embody the truths of our hearts is not a small thing. And we will forever be limited in so doing. But a human being that is primarily taught to attend to guilt is most likely bound to neglect the more fundamental and most precious truth within. I sense that you underestimate what it means to embody truth. Thanks for the valuable wisdom on guilt!

[@jonashjerpe7421]

And yes, you don't need God to be good, but you do need truth.

[@doncarveth]

Jonas, in my other books and video lectures. I have heard a great deal to say about conscience as distinct from super ego, and I have described the conscience as forgiving rather than tormenting.

[@jonashjerpe7421]

@@doncarvethYou trust thinking, feeling, writing and knowing way too much. Remember Rumi's simple qoute? "There is a field beyond the right and wrong. I meet you there." You seem to be preoccupied getting it right about the super ego, conscience, guilt etcetera, but I rarely sense that you speak from or pay attention to the field beneath and beyond right and wrong. Writing a book about it is just not it. Yes, there is some lust here to be right and to correct you. That aggressive impulse is certainly acknowledged. But deeper than that is also the true voice from within inviting me to share, once again, what you and psychoanalysis insist on actually neglecting. You speak as if human beings are imprisoned in guilt. Way too many are indeed. But you deal with it as some sort of psychological and metaphysical necessity. The carrot on the stick is simply that we can mature with the inevitable bondage. We can build a loftier prison as it were. But when the true freedom fighters arrive on the scene, you instinctively turn your back because the idea of improving the prison facility is so deeply and utterly entrenched. Who is the true freedom fighter? It is not me. Neither is it someone else. It is Your heart. The field beyond the right and wrong. Ask your heart if there is a freedom for you, in this world and lifetime, that is profoundly larger than mature guilt. Can you forget about being right and good and instead receive the truth nakedly?

[@liamthompson9342]

Exciting news and I don't hesitate to obtain. You provide endless invaluable insights on this subject.

[@doncarveth]

Thanks

[@frannyfrandsen]

Have been waiting for this book! Your thinking is incredibly interesting and challenging. Thank you.

[@doncarveth]

Thank you

[@dannymarrone5221]

Thanks so much for the videos as always! One thing I've frequently encountered as I go through my coursework (which at the moment is largely underneath the relational psychoanalytic umbrella) is that the experience *shame* is more often spoken of as replacing the "outdated" models of unconscious guilt: in other words, so they say, tragic man's fundamental problem (as a result of poor parenting) is the hollowing experience of shame. Would it be correct to say, in your view, that shame would be an *effect* of the superego's self-inflicted punitive guilt, and that to go about repairing that particular manifestation of shame one must first address the repressed guilt? I would love to hear more of your thoughts on the interrelationship between guilt and shame, perhaps in a future video!

[@doncarveth]

Yes. I think persecutory, guilt and persecutory shame are pretty much the same thing: self persecution in the paranoid schizoid position. They are inflicted by the super ego. They are both narcissistic states, for persecutory guild, does not reflect concern for the other, as that is depressive or reparative guilt. Thanks.

[@cruxem]

I wonder how familiar you are with Habib Davanloo's work and ISTDP? There is a healthy community of therapists, many with no psychoanalytic training or background, who are trained in this model, which has unconscious guilt over rage towards loved ones (with love and attachment at the base) as the centrepiece of the therapeutic process. It is a contemporary dynamic psychotherapy, rooted in Freudian ideas, that retains the importance of unlocking unconscious guilt (and all other unconscious feeling, impulse etc). I just ordered your book and very much look forward to reading it.

[@doncarveth]

Yes, I know something about the Devon Lou tradition and there are definitely overlaps with my own work and Freud and psychoanalysis in general. But I don’t believe in short term therapy. It took patience a long time to build their neurosis, and it takes a considerable time to unravel them.

[@matureyoungman]

Have you ever seen David Mamet's The Verdict, starring Paul Newman? It's one of the most freudian movies I've ever seen

[@doncarveth]

Not sure that I have but thanks for the reference, I’ll certainly look it up

[@johnandrew5467]

Great movie. Thanks for the recommendation.

[@jamiefindlay5261]

I feel guilty about spending £18 on a 68 page book 😂 It's a very insightful book, I've been listening to his lectures for a few years now but it wasn't until I read this introduction that everything Donald Carveth has been saying clicked into place. It's a fantastic potentially life changing book for me. Thank you.

[@doncarveth]

Jamie, thank you. Routledge sent a 40,000 word limit and this was useful to me in forcing me to get to the point.

[@jamiefindlay5261]

​@@doncarvethI love it thank you

[@kirstinstrand6292]

Is it guilt or remorse. Do they go hand in hand, or are they two sides of the same coin? And is it only those who have empathy that feel these feelings?

[@doncarveth]

All this is explained in my 2013 and 2023 books

[@hashemali4750]

are freudian , jungian, bionian theories of dreams contraticted with each other or they can be integrated

[@doncarveth]

Although there are differences, I think there is a large measure of overlap between these approaches to dreams. In his essay “a psychological view of conscience“ Jung offer is a dream which I would have interpreted along pretty much the same lines as he did.

[@hashemali4750]

@@doncarveth thanks

[@elindel65]

Are shame and guilt two sides of the same coin?

[@doncarveth]

Persecutory, guilt and shame are two sides of the same coin, or, actually, the very same coin. They are both forms of persecution in the PS position. They differ radically from repaired with guilt in the depressive or reparative position, for reparative guilt concerns the other, where is persecutory, guilt and shame are all about the self. Narcissism reigns in the PS position.

[@kirstinstrand6292]

I often feel that shame is overused. I prefer embarrassment over shame. I am embarrassed by my untidy house, not shamed.