The Experiences of Guilt and Shame: A Phenomenological—Psychological Study

Author(s): Gunnar Karlsson and Lennart Gustav Sjöberg

Source: Human Studies , September 2009, Vol. 32, No. 3 (September 2009), pp. 335-355
Published by: Springer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25652827

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Hum Stud (2009) 32:335-355
DOI 10.1007/S10746-009-9123-3

RESEARCH PAPER

The Experiences of Guilt and Shame:

A Phenomenological-Psychological Study

Gunnar Karlsson - Lennart Gustav Sjoberg

Published online: 11 December 2009

? Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract This study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in the
experiences of guilt and shame. Guilt concerns a subject's action or omission of
action and has a clear temporal unfolding entailing a moment in which the subject
lives in a care-free way. Afterwards, this moment undergoes a reconstruction, in the
moment of guilt, which constitutes the moment of negligence. The reconstruction is
a comprehensive transformation of one's attitude with respect to one's ego; one's
action; the object of guilt and the temporal-existential experience. The main con
stituents concerning shame are its anchorage in the situation to which it refers; its
public side involving the experience of being perceptually objectified; the exclusion
of social community; the bodily experience; the revelation of an undesired self; and
the genesis of shame in terms of a history of frozen now-ness. The article ends with
a comparison between guilt and shame.

Keywords Emotions EPP-method Guilt Hermeneutics Phenomenology

Shame

Introduction

Guilt and shame have attracted the interest of several disciplines, such as theology,
philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis as well as being a common theme in
literature. They can be minor common daily experiences or severe psychological
inhibitions impeding the possibility of living a rewarding life. Etymologically the

G. Karlsson (^)
Department of Education, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
e-mail: gunnark@ped.su.se

L. G. Sjoberg
Skarpovagen 7, 132 32 Saltsjo-Boo, Sweden
e-mail: ls_brev@yahoo.se

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336 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

word "shame" is traced back to the Indo-European root kam/kem, and refers to the
"hiding," "concealing," "covering up." The English word "guilt" is related to the
german word "Geld" (money), which is reflected by the fact that guilt can be
understood as expressing a striving to "repair," or to recompense someone for
something.
In a philosophical context, guilt has been given an ontological status, describing
the unfulfilled striving of human beings (Buber 1958; Heidegger 1980/1927). Jean
Paul Sartre's (1956) conceptualization of shame gives it a philosophical anthro
pological meaning, in that it is connected to the birth of the subject's self
consciousness. In cultural and anthropological studies, it has been discussed whether
shame should be conceived of as a cultural phenomenon, i.e., a consequence of
historical, cultural development (Elias 1978), or as a universal and ubiquitous
phenomenon, having to do with e.g. sexuality and the genitals (Duer 1988).
In psychology, shame and guilt are often discussed together, analyzing their
similarities and differences, as well as their possible interconnectedness. One claim
has been that they are different expressions of what should be considered the same
affect, that guilt is a kind of moral shame (Tomkins 1963; Izard 1977). Some
researchers treat them as similar emotions and argue that they both involve a
perception of one's self as the causal agent (Fridja et al. 1989; Roseman 1984;
Smith and Ellsworth 1985). Pain, tension and arousal have been presented as
common attributes (Wicker et al. 1983), and it is pointed out that they are both
dysphoric feelings which involve negative self-evaluations (Niedenthal et al. 1994).
In general, guilt has to do with the person's actions in terms of transgressing
limits and/or breaking rules, whereas shame has to do with a negative evaluation of
one's self (cf. Lindsay-Hartz 1984; Piers and Singer 1953; Tangney 1992; Thrane
1979; Wicker et al. 1983). It has been pointed out that the situations eliciting shame
and guilt often are the same, but that they are otherwise different experiential
phenomena (Niedenthal et al. 1994). Another suggestion is that shame is a stronger
and more incapacitating emotion than guilt (Lewis 1971; Lynd 1958; Wicker et al.
1983). Furthermore, the two phenomena involve other persons in fundamentally
different ways (De Rivera 1977; Rawls 1963). Shame entails a more obvious feeling
of a negative self-exposure in relation to the other (Lewis 1971). The connection of
shame to one's self highlights the element of wanting to hide oneself, and some
writers have pointed out that in shame one gives up one's identity in favour of the
other person (cf. Kinston 1983; Lichtenstein 1963).
Guilt and shame are two important concepts for clinicians. Guilt, in particular has
a long history in psychoanalytic theory, being of importance for the oedipus
complex and the psychological development of the human being. Shame has
recently gained more and more attention in psychoanalytic writings, which it
certainly deserves owing to its important function in the treatment process
(cf. Ikonen and Rechardt 1993; Wurmser 1981).
In psychoanalytic writings, one finds guilt to be basically a feeling arising after
phantasies or actions of aggression?connecting guilt with the super-ego/con
science?whereas shame is a reaction to an unfulfilled libidinal striving. Pentti
Ikonen and Eero Reckhardt (1993) consider shame to be the results of the rejection
of a person's striving to attain reciprocity. Leon Wurmser points out the connection

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 337

between shame and the experience of not being loved. More precisely, shame is the
result of a striving for being loved that is rejected. In general, the communicative
dimension of shame and its perceptual significance has been taken up in
psychoanalytic theorizing (Rizzuto 1991; Wurmser 1981).
The present study is a phenomenological-psychological analysis of guilt and
shame. We believe that a systematic phenomenological-psychological investigation
of these phenomena can help in clarifying the relationship between guilt and shame
as well as deepening the understanding of them. A theoretical clarification of their
respective meaning structures is crucial, since they often are inter-related and
sometimes even confused with one another. Not only is it important to lay out their
respective structures theoretically, but a knowledge of their structures is also
important in practical life. This importance comes forth for example in clinical
experiences, which one of us, being a psychoanalyst, can testify to almost daily in
his clinical practice. The feeling of guilt or shame may e.g. contribute to a
psychoanalyst's/psychotherapist's deviation from the analytic/therapeutic frame
work (cf. Bohm 1996). And if we go to psychopathology, such as certain forms of
depression, both guilt and shame play significant roles. Johan Beck-Friis (2005)
claims that in many forms of depression, there is a deadlock between shame and
guilt, and it becomes important to differentiate and dissolve these emotions from
one another. Beck-Friis states: "It is important to be able to separate shame and
guilt, which one is often careless about in daily as well as in professional contexts"
(2005, p. 118). Shame is a deeper emotion than guilt and leads to a more
pathological state (Tangney and Dearing 2002). Furthermore, shame is a more
unpleasant emotion, and many times it may be more difficult to discern shame than
guilt. Guilt somehow covers up shame. There is a risk that shame will not be
discovered and not diagnosed (cf. Kjellqvist 1993; Ikonen and Rechardt 1993).
Beck-Friis (2005) points out the importance of separating shame from guilt and
focusing on shame in psychotherapeutic treatment of depressed people, "which
demands a specific ear for its qualities" (p. 237).
The data in this present study are based on subjects' conscious experiences of the
two phenomena. To present an ontological-philosophical notion of guilt and shame
as well as addressing the possibility of unconscious feelings that consciously are
experienced in ways other than guilt and shame fall outside the realm of this study.

Method

A combined phenomenological-psychological and hermeneutical method has been

used in this study, the aim of which is to make explicit the meaning structure of the
subjects' concrete descriptions of their experiences (see Karlsson 1993). The
phenomenological analysis of the subjects' spontaneous experiences can be
described briefly in three points:

(1) The phenomenological analysis of consciousness-as-intentionality (e.g. Hus

serl 1962/1913, 1977/1925) constitutes the starting point for the empirical
phenomenological-psychological method. Consciousness-as-intentionality

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338 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

divides experience analytically into a subject and an object pole. The subject
always relates in a special way to the object. The subject constitutes the object
pole, i.e. the subject bestows meaning upon the object (see the following
point). The intentionality of consciousness is a general point of departure, in
that all descriptions of experience are interpreted in terms of how the subject
(person) constitutes the object ("object" should be understood in a broad
sense, as object for the acts of consciousness).
(2) The phenomenological researcher is interested in the meaning of the persons'
experiences, in light of the phenomenon being studied. The specific facts that
the subjects' concrete descriptions contain, for example the fact that a person's
feeling had to do with the theft of, for instance, a car is not of interest in itself.
The aim is rather to discover (interpret) the meaning that it had for the person
to steal, for example, this particular car.
(3) The phenomenological analysis is based upon the experience itself. One can
say that phenomenology partakes of an "inside perspective," in the sense that
one tries to avoid explaining or describing experience with concepts and
frames of references falling outside of the experience. A phenomenological
analysis seeks to be as faithful as possible to the phenomenon in question.
However, it is not a mere phenomenal description. One does not just reiterate
experience, but rather attempts to describe the logos of the phenomenon, that
is, to specify the necessary constituents (structure) needed for that particular
phenomenon to be what it is.

Procedure

The data used in this study consisted of subjects' retrospectively written protocols
followed by interviews. Twenty subjects participated in the study, of which eight
described the experience of guilt and twelve the experience of shame. Five out of
the twenty subjects were congenitally blind. One subject became blind at the age of
four and has visual memories of such things as, bicycles, doors, her mother's face.
Two subjects became blind as adults. The signification of (visual) perception in the
experience of shame makes it interesting to include blind people in this study. All
subjects were interviewed afterwards. A second follow-up interview was conducted
with five of the subjects. The interviews were taped in order to be transcribed and
subsequently analyzed by means of the above presented phenomenological
psychological method.

Results

An initial comment has to be made before presenting the results. Quotations from
the raw data are intended to illustrate the interpretations presented. The subject from
whom the quote is taken is listed at the end of the quotation, for example (SI), (S2)
etc. One may find periods within the quotations. If several periods follow upon each

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 339

other after a word, for example "kid...", this indicates that the person has paused
and is quiet. If the periods are set within brackets [...] this means that a section of
the quote is left out from the subject's protocol. Our aim has been to omit
"unnecessary" bulk from the text in the quotation. Words within brackets, for
example [have the gift], are our explication of words that cannot be inferred without
access to a larger part of the protocol than the quoted part. The first time a quote is
used from a subject, we introduce briefly the subject's protocol, sometimes within
brackets, preceding the specific quote.
No doubt, the experiences of guilt and shame are both very painful experiences,
which came out clearly in the subjects' protocols and interviews. One sign of the pain
involved in these experiences is that the subjects remarkably often described their
experiences in terms of the third-person pronoun ("one") instead of in first person
("I"). The two phenomena of guilt and shame differ structurally from one another,
although shame always plays a part in guilt. When there is guilt there is always shame.
The reverse, however, does not hold. Because of this asymmetry, we will speak about
"pure shame." Finally we want to emphasize that it is the experience of feeling guilt
and shame that is in focus in our study. If these experiences are reasonable,
unreasonable, neurotic etc. is of no interest for our study.

The Structure of Guilt

The specific type of guilt that has been analyzed in this study far from exhausts this
phenomenon. Our interest is in the experience of guilt, i.e., in the subject's
conscious experience of guilt. Furthermore, the type of guilt being dealt with in this
study has a situational character, and is not guilt of a more permanent kind, which
would more or less permeate the subject's whole existence.
First of all the feeling of guilt, delineated in this study, is connected to an action,
or to a lack of action. For reasons of simplicity, we will henceforth write only
"action" although it should be kept in mind that it may just as well concern a lack of
action. Secondly guilt as a phenomenon has a very clear temporal unfolding. The
moment of the guilt feeling occurs after that moment in which the action that is the
source of the guilt feeling has been committed. Thus, temporally we have to make a
distinction between that which will be called "the moment of guilt" and that which
will be called "the moment of negligence." In spite of the fact that "the moment of
negligence" temporally takes place before "the moment of guilt"?its denomina
tion and status as a moment of negligence is only conferred in retrospect at the
"moment of guilt."
In order to make this relationship between the two moments intelligible we have
to introduce an element of reconstruction which ties together the two moments. The
reconstruction concerns a re-evaluation of the action that was committed in the
moment of negligence. Preliminarily let us clarify it in the following way: First one
lives through an action in an "innocent way," but this action becomes after the
reconstruction constituted as a moment of negligence. What the act of reconstruc
tion accomplishes is a changing of the "innocent" situation into a moment of
negligence, which is revealed in and through the moment of guilt. The

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340 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

reconstruction can also be described as a shift of perspective in the one's experience

of oneself and one's actions: An "inside perspective" would prevail in the living
through the moment of negligence which only after a reconstruction will become an
outside, self critical perspective in the moment of guilt (cf. Montgomery 1994, for
the terms inside/outside perspective applied to the experience of making decisions).
It might be important to take into account that the subjects' descriptions
(protocols and interviews) are collected after the guilt feelings have occurred. The
subjects' descriptions of the moment of negligence are therefore, in a certain sense,
not "pure" descriptions of that moment but reconstructed after the moment of guilt
has occurred. If it were possible to collect data from situations which at the time of
the data collection were not yet descriptions of guilt experience, but would turn out
to be so later on, then we could not rule out the possibility that these situations
(moments of negligence) would be described differently from the descriptions we
have actually received. Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain such "pure" data.
A more detailed presentation of the structure of the feeling of guilt will now be
presented in terms of (1) The experience of the ego; (2) The experience of the
action; (3) The experience of the object of guilt, and; (4) The temporal-existential
experience. Under each of these main headings we will try to illustrate the temporal
unfolding of the experience of guilt by organizing the presentation around the
moment of negligence, the reconstruction, and the moment of guilt.

The Experience of the Ego

The experience of the ego undergoes a reconstruction from being lived basically in a
"mindless" and easy-going way, into perceiving itself as actively having inflicted
pain on someone else. So to begin with, in the moment of negligence, the ego itself
stands out as being in the center. As the second of the two following examples
illustrates, there might be an awareness of oneself committing a bad action,
although at the time, self-reproach is put off.

[This person experiences guilt after she has chosen not to follow her father
who went out fishing. She chose to stay home to watch TV. The father went
out by himself and suffered from a heart attack. The father came home,
breathing heavily, which was neglected by the person.] [When] I got to know
what really had happened, then this fact that dad had been breathing heavily
when he came home appeared completely absurd, that I should have taken that
as normal, why had I not reacted then. (S2)

[This person has been unfaithful to her boyfriend] When one does something
like this, one knows what one does, but simultaneously one doesn't care about
it, right then it doesn't matter, one imagines that this is the case, one convinces
oneself that that which one then does is the best, [...] one is aware of what one
does, but one doesn't give a shit about it, right then it's really worth it, one
thinks it's so reasonable. (SI)

The reconstruction entails a changing of position between the perspective of

living through one's wishes, desires, strivings, impulses etc., into a perspective of

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 341

reproaching oneself, as is illustrated by a person who was caught in the act of

stealing and reproached himself: "I still can't understand why I stole things, I can't
understand that, that I have been so incredibly stupid" (S3).
By means of this reconstruction the moment of guilt is apparent. In the moment of
guilt one's ego appears as being responsible for performing an action of negligence.
The ego is aware of its own actions and their consequences and there is a very
characteristic self-reproach of what one has done, as with the person who stayed at
home watching TV, instead of going out fishing with her father: "Certainly it was
my fault, I had at least been able to prevent it. But what had I done? I had been
home watching "Dallas" [which in light of the incident appeared as a silly
TV-program to the subject]" (S2).
In the experience of guilt we find self-reproach, a reproach of one's ego and its
actions (see next point). The reproach of one's ego can analytically be comprised by
two "parts"?one that is about the subject's guilt (and therefore necessary linked to
the ego's actions) and one that concerns the subject's being, which is experienced as
shame. Thus, as we pointed out earlier, feeling guilt presupposes shame. The
capacity to feel shame is a condition for the experience of guilt, both in a temporal
and logical way. Logically one can argue that the feeling of having done something
bad implies that one can, in one's being, feel bad about oneself. The shame
component in guilt is felt as a reproach of one's self?of one's being, which is
clearly illustrated in the following quote:

Besides this immense feeling of guilt about being guilty of my dad's being so
sick, the shame I felt for having preferred a simple TV-program rather than
having spent time with my dad. (S2)

The Experience of the Action

Already under the above point, the role of the ego's action was addressed. Indeed,
guilt is essentially about one's action. In the unfolding of the phenomenon of guilt,
we can see that the subject's actions in the moment of negligence are lived through
relatively non-problematically, compared to how this same action is then considered
after the reconstruction. The action may even appear afterwards as strange and
lacking motives: "If I look back at it and think of me as well, then I can't understand
that I at all did it, because I can't see any motives for doing it" (S3). Yet another
example:
It's like, for the time being, one does not at all realize what it is one is doing,
then nothing else matters, but afterwards, once you've done it, then it was so
unnecessary, but it was not like that, but afterwards one can't understand what
could make one so convinced that it was right then. (SI)

The above quotes also illustrate the reconstruction of the action, where the activity
is transformed from being considered as non-problematic to being incomprehensible.
This reconstruction ends with the moment of guilt illustrated by the examples below.
The first example can be seen as an example of guilt concerning a lack of action, while
the second example concerns guilt about the action itself

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342 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

[This person feels guilt, for not having informed a very close friend, bordering
on a love relationship, that he has started a love relationship with another
person] Then I understood, oh this was wrong, I should have said something.
(S8)
[This person leaves a dog that has become very attached to her] It is like we
had been merely playing with this dog [...] it was for fun but yet we leave it...
that someone who really trusts you, you just leave. (S4)

The Experience of the Object of Guilt

Feelings of guilt are directed towards some kind of object. Judging from the
empirical data, most often this "object" is a person, although data contained an
example of feeling guilty towards a dog as well. What is important is to explicate
and understand the qualities of the object of guilt. The object of guilt cannot be
anything?it can hardly be a non-living thing. One can feel guilty because one has
destroyed something material, non-living, but then the object of guilt is the
person(s) who, for example, is/are in need or of in possession of the object. The
object of guilt may even be humanity, if the damaging would concern a valued
cultural, historical object. One can also imagine stretching feelings of guilt towards
something metaphysical, like God?if one's actions have been judged harmful to
the earth or to some cosmic order. Thus, there is a wide scope of "objects" towards
which feelings of guilt can be directed.
The qualities that permeate the objects of guilt have to do with subjectivity, with
desires, longings, striving, intending, etc. Roughly speaking, the object of guilt is
seen from the perspective of possessing an intentional character. The objects of guilt
are experiential beings with the capacity of having a first-person perspective; they
can feel things and one may ask "what it feels like" or "what it is like to have a
certain feeling." This subjective, intentional character stands in sharp contrast to the
character of a pure material body, such as a stone, a chair or a computer (cf. Zahavi
2005).
The qualities associated with the object of guilt undergo a change. To begin with,
in the moment of negligence, the intentional quality of the object of guilt is not
reckoned with, it is somehow "de-actualized." This de-actualization resembles
taking a reified thing-like view of the object: "...to exclude the other person from
important parts of one's life all of a sudden, like having a business partner and using
double records and one only shows one record for the partner" (S8).
Strictly speaking, one cannot talk about the object of guilt until after the
reconstruction. Before the reconstruction, in the spontaneous living-through, the
object can be said to be de-actualized (not a "subject") in a certain manner. By
means of a reconstruction, a subject with wishes, desires, intentions etc. comes
forth. The intentional structure of the object of guilt is re-actualized in the
reconstruction. The reconstruction adds yet another feature to the object of guilt,
namely that the subject (i.e., the object of guilt) is considered as a vulnerable
subject, upon whom one has inflicted pain by one's own "violent" action. Thus, in
the moment of guilt, it is this violated subject who is "the object of guilt," now

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 343

"equipped" with intentional quality as well as the quality of being vulnerable:

"When I noticed how humiliated he was, I regretted it incredibly and wanted that
everything should have been unsaid" (SI).

The Temporal-Existential Experience

This point addresses an existential dimension in the unfolding of the phenomenon of

guilt. The action appears, in the moment of negligence, as being closed-off in what
could be called an action-now, sometimes characterized by a playful care-free
attitude, where the ensuing negative consequences are not reckoned with.

[This person had after severe intoxication been taken to the police and was
picked up by his parents, towards whom he felt guilt after having both
frightened them and smashed the car window on the way home from the police
station.] It was not a conscious action to hit the car, but it was like a flash you
know, then it was done. (S9)

The reconstruction brings forth another way of being in the world, in contrast to
this care-free, spontaneous, and sometimes even impulsive, living-through. As one
person stated: "The only reason I can think of is that I thought it could be exciting,
but I can't understand what it was that was exciting" (S3).
The reconstruction, bringing us to the moment of guilt, opens up a deeper
existential dimension, based upon an understanding of the finite and irrevocable
character of life. This existential dimension catches the burden of responsibility,
time and guilt. What one has done cannot be undone; an action has been performed
in a finite existence. "The great love of the dog and its trust. It gave us everything?
and we left it?that one could never restore again" (S4).
The wish to be pardoned is especially strong in relation to this constituent (i.e. the
temporal-existential experience). The striving to appease one's guilt is particularly
expressed in terms of strivings not to repeat that which one has done as well as
doing good things that often are related to the content of one's reproached action.
For instance, the person who reproached herself so severely for abandoning the dog,
relates later in her interview that when she found an abandoned cat she took care of
it; "I'm not doing this again to leave someone, I don't do it again, it was self
evident, I have to take her home, now I have a cat" (S4).

The Structure of Pure Shame

In this section we will deal with the rather complex experience of shame?as well as
something that could be called "pure shame"?that is, shame that is not connected
to guilt. Despite the recurring confusion between guilt and shame in the literature, it
is easy to see upon a closer scrutinization the clear structural difference between the
two phenomena. We will come back to a comparison between them later in the
discussion section.
The type of shame studied here does not exhaust the range of potential
shame experience. Our focus has been on the subjects' conscious experiences of

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344 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

shame. A further delimitation has been made, and some types of shame which are
more or less consciously experienced have fallen outside this analysis, such as the
following: (1) A more or less permanent or frequently re-occurring shame feeling,
which often borders on the experience of shyness. (2) A kind of private (i.e., not
constituted by other people) shame about not matching one's ideal self. One person
in our study, for example related that she felt ashamed of herself after she had not
dared to express an opinion, and had remained quiet. This kind of shame experience
vis-a-vis oneself is connected with the fear of being ashamed. The person does not
dare to expose herself/himself to other, because (s)he is afraid of being rejected/
being negatively constituted which would stir up feelings of shame for the person.
(3) Collective shame, which is based on the person's identification or belongingness
to a certain group. For instance, the pure fact that one is a citizen of, for instance, an
aggressive country may make one feel ashamed, whilst having nothing to do with
the specific politics. An adult blind person (i.e., she had become blind as an adult)
related how another blind person had behaved in a way that she considered strange
which was enough for her to feel ashamed of herself.
The structure of feeling ashamed is rather difficult to describe in that it is
temporally a very compressed phenomenon. In brief, shame occurs in a situation
where one experiences that someone else's negative constitution of oneself is
revealing an undesired self. This revelation is felt very strongly, including bodily
experiences. The other's (or others') constitution is linked to perceptual-visual
elements. The subject attempts to fight back the feeling of being revealed in a
shameful way by annihilating the situation emotionally, e.g., by fantasizing about
disappearing or wishing to sink into the earth. The type of shame presented here,
highlights the perceptual-bodily involvement in shame in a way that lacks
counterpart in the three above mentioned excluded types of shame.
It is striking how painful an experience of shame can be, despite its often very
"innocent" content. How is this discrepancy between the innocent contents of the
experience and the incredible pain it can cause the person to be understood? We
believe that two aspects?connected to one another?can shed some light on this
discrepancy. Firstly, the feeling of shame reawakens painful infantile experiences.
In this sense one can see a clear regressive movement in this experience. Secondly,
there is something in its specific structure that allows for this painful experience.
The most important structural element for constituting this regressive movement is,
we believe, the experience of time. More precisely the experience of a "frozen
now" seems to bring one back to early childhood.
A word should also be said about the methodological reason for allowing both
blind and sighted people to describe the experience of shame. We thought that the
role of perception could be better highlighted if we included subjects who lacked
vision. In a sense, blind people found it more difficult to describe the experience of
shame. Some had problems finding and identifying such experiences and situations.
Other described situations and experiences that were not so clearly and purely
experienced as shame. These descriptions entailed shame in guilt (this is not the
pure shame that we will focus on here), shame in terms of regret (like; "it's a shame,
too bad, that I didn't break up the relationship earlier"), slight shame as in the
feeling of being embarrassed and awkward. Further comments on the perceptual

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 345

role in pure shame will be given in connection to the presentation of the relevant and
appropriate constituents for perception.
We present the structure of pure shame in more detail in terms of the following
constituents: Sections "The Experience of Shame and Its Anchorage in the Situation
to Which It Refers"; "The Emotional Annihilation of the Situation"; "The Public
Side of Shame"; "The Experience of Being Perceptually Objectified"; "The
Exclusion of Social Community"; "The Bodily Experience of Shame"; "The
Revelation of an Undesired Self; "The Genesis of Shame: A History of Frozen
Now-Ness".

The Experience of Shame and Its Anchorage in the Situation to Which It Refers

There is an amazing emotional and psychological pressure experienced in the shame

situation. As a rule shame is experienced directly in the shame situation. Quotes of
this simultaneity will be given below, although we must not limit the experience of a
specific shame feeling to the situation to which it refers. We have, for instance, seen
that the shame involved in guilt can refer back to a situation in the past. But more
important is that also in pure shame it can easily be imagined that one is struck with
a feeling of shame after having lived through a situation. This is why the scope of
this constituent has to be broadened and include the feeling of shame feeling and its
very specific and essential anchorage in the situation in which it was lived. Even if it
does not strike one until afterwards that it was a shameful situation, the feeling of
shame brings one back to the situation in a very specific way. One is imaginatively
pulled back into the situation and feels its horror as well as wishes that the situation
would be annihilated. There is no wish here to repair the situation by means of
future actions. The dominant experience is rather the wish to have the whole
situation annihilated. Here follows an example of the simultaneity between the
shame feeling and the situation to which it referred:

[This person feels she has made a complete fool of herself when a person's
offer of a gift was actually to someone else.] It comes simultaneously, it is
this, "my love I have a gift for you" and thereafter my reaction comes so
quickly and I guess this is the shame so to speak, this immediate, "but I should
not" [have the gift], it is an impulse. (S6)

We mentioned above the possibility that one is struck by shame after the specific
situation. We have received an interesting example where shame partly refers back
to a situation (a party), in which the person was too drunk to be able to constitute it
as a shameful situation. The shame is felt on a later occasion when his behavior is
discussed among coworkers during coffee break, and it is on this occasion he finds
out what he was doing at the party. Interestingly enough, then the shame situation is
extended to include both the party and the specific situation in which his behavior is
discussed.

I felt anxious already the day after, since I didn't remember anything, one
couldn't know what one had done, what one had said to people, I had only
vague memories of having been out on the dance floor and flitted about.

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346 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

[The person specifies the shame situation later on in the interview]... the
whole situation, from the beginning to the end, partly the self image one has
that one shouldn't drink too much [...] and partly that we, around the coffee
table [...] I should have replied to this situation better and sort of stood up for
myself better, how I behaved. (S10)

Under this main heading we will present one sub-constituent; Section "The
Emotional Annihilation of the Situation".

The Emotional Annihilation of the Situation

This terrifying now-centered experience together with the somehow unreal moment
of shame must be fought. It is terrifying because it has revealed something about
oneself (more on this later). At this point, it is important to shed light on the
resistance to the horror of the situation at the moment of shame, and that this
resistance is equal in strength to the intensity of displeasure being revealed in the
situation. Shame also calls forth primitive reactions and experiences, such as
wanting to annihilate the situation and/or starting to associate about one's
disappearance. In a certain sense shame is the opposite of freedom. Shame
expresses itself as a feeling of being restricted and imprisoned. Feeling shame does
not give sense to a longing for freedom, indeed one does want to escape and/or
annihilate the situation, but it is not a free and developing movement, but rather a
search for disappearing. In a metaphorical sense, shame can be understood as "the
subject's death," if by "subject" is meant a spontaneous intentional being. We can
refer here to Sartre's (1956) analysis of the objectification of oneself in the
experience of shame. It is in the presence of the other that one's being is objectified.
One becomes an object for another subject. Sartre's way of portraying shame agrees
in many ways with the analysis presented here, although his analysis of shame
serves to explain self-consciousness; a topic that goes beyond the aim of this work.
The heading of this section (i.e. the emotional annihilation of the situation) deals
with the more devastating kinds of shame feelings. To be more specific, if one feels
very revealed and finds it hard to "cover up" the situation, then there is a pressure
and wish to annihilate the situation altogether. A weaker form can be seen if the
revelation is not felt to be so devastating (e.g. one may feel that that about which
one feels ashamed can be justified rather well), or that one feels that one has not
been so painfully revealed. Our point is that the intensity of displeasure guides the
attitude, fantasies, and wishes that one has in the situation. "I just wanted to
disappear from there, I wanted to sink into the earth, most of all just stand up and
leave right away" (S10). Yet another example that expresses a strong desire to
annihilate both the situation and the traces leading back to the situation.

[This person had been asked to present his work activities, but had been
negligent and not prepared himself, which became quite apparent.] I wanted to
run from there... still I can wish that an atom bomb would exterminate X (the
town in which shame was experienced) and that the investigator and her staff
would get cancer. All witnesses have to be exterminated. (S7)

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 347

The Public Side of Shame

Shame is connected to a social situation. It is in the eyes of other people that one
feels ashamed, which makes it understandable, that there is such a strong tendency
to try to keep the shame experience as private as possible. Compare Sartre's (1956
p. 348ff.) poignant description of shame, when a person looks into a room through a
key-hole and is discovered by someone, and then the moment of shame becomes
apparent. Without the other?real or imagined?one cannot feel ashamed. This is
why we can talk about the public side of shame. There is an intrinsic character of
shame, in that it pulls together two disparate aspects, one of which is the experience
of oneself, something very private, and the other being the (shared) publicity of the
experience. It is felt in the sense that one knows that the other one knows that one
feels ashamed. Thus, it is not only the case that one feels ashamed in front of the
other, but that the other one knows that one feels ashamed (cf. Tomkins 1963). And
it is this shared knowledge that constitutes the experience of shame: "One thing is
that I myself realize the blame, or however one should put it, the other thing is that
she confirms the blame by saying [...] if she laughs or whatever she says, but she
confirms that" (S6).
The public side of shame contains the following sub-constituents: Sections "The
Experience of Being Perceptually Objectified"; "The Exclusion of Social
Community."

The Experience of Being Perceptually Objectified

Shame entails a feeling of being objectified, most clearly by means of feeling

visually objectified. It is the other to whom one attributes a constituting power,
while one's own self is objectified and in that sense experienced passively. The gaze
of the other is experienced as disclosing (revealing) something very negative. The
other's negative perceptual constitution is one side of a double perceptual
experience. The other side is one's own perception of the other, including the
factual or imaginative negative appearance of the other one. The revelation is about
something negative, and includes an awareness that another person knows that one
feels revealed. The typical case of being perceptually objectified is in terms of a
visual objectification, which is illustrated in the following quote: "That I look at
somebody and she would see how I felt, that I would have to show how I felt, that
felt intolerably" (S7).
For sighted people there is clearly something special about the visual-perceptual
objectification in shame. Let us contrast this with a congenitally blind person's
recount of a shame experience. She imagines that other people have looked at her,
which somehow does not seem frightening, after all, compared to other people's
possible talk about her, which makes a negative impression upon her: "...of course
people must have looked, it must also have looked rather amusingly, but I think of
the talk that comes out of it in a more negative way" (S15).
Another description from a person who became blind as an adult showed that she,
as a sighted person, could feel ashamed when she looked into other people's eyes, a
feeling that is weaker nowadays as a blind person.

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348 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

The difference is that I don't have to look at the others' eyes, the eyes of other
people directed towards me in order to make a judgment... then when I can't
look at other people, why should they look at me, then I think I protect myself
a little bit from being stared at, by wearing glasses, if I would be stared at,
I mean. (S20)
However, the importance of the visual objectification can be problemized. We
have namely found an example of a person who experiences the other's avoidance
of looking at her as having the same significance as we related above about being
visually objectified. This shows, in a more subtle way, that the dimension of
perception and vision still plays an important role in the feeling of shame. In other
words, not to be looked at can, under certain circumstances, be taken as an
objectification. Let us first reproduce the quote and thereafter make some further
comments.

[This person feels ashamed after having not understood a technical word that
was said to her] He didn't look at me and he spoke fast from the beginning and
he spoke still faster, he sort of wanted to get rid of me. (SI 1)

As will be seen later on in this presentation (under point 5) of the structure of

shame, there is a characteristic history in the experience of shame that points back to
previous experiences of shame. A feeling of shame can re-awaken earlier
experiences of shame, which are charged by "bodily-perceptual" meaning, and
where the visual element is not least apparent in SI 1, who was just quoted above.
To conclude, for sighted people vision is, in one way or the other, the
predominant sense in the experience of shame. For blind people it is more
complicated. As a congenitally blind person, the feeling of being looked at can only
be experienced indirectly based upon conclusions from other sense experiences. We
quoted S15?a congenitally blind person?above, concerning her assertion that "the
talk that comes out of it" was somehow more frightening than the looks that she
imagined receiving from others in the shame situation. For her, the feeling of being
looked at was based on her (direct) experience that people became quiet. Thus, the
visual objectification for congenitally blind people is given in an uncertain way in at
least two respects, compared to the way it is given for sighted people: (1) The visual
objectification cannot be ascertained directly, but only given indirectly, either by
someone telling the person that s(he) is being looked at, or that the person draws this
conclusion on the basis of some other sense-experiences (audition). (2) For
congenitally blind people there is always an uncertainty concerning what it means
"to look" at someone. They cannot really concretely and bodily understand what a
look conveys and looks like.

The Exclusion of Social Community

The feeling of shame entails a feeling of rejection, which by the way has been
clearly spelled out in psychoanalytic literature. We can conceptualize this feeling as
an experience of exclusion, a feeling of being very alone, as exemplified in the
following quote.

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 349

I had the impression that they thought I was an exciting person when they
looked forward hearing what I had to offer. Now they seemed to look at me
with puzzlement "what's happened to him?" I had deceived them, I was no
longer the member of the board with the national perspective, but a lonely boy
who wanted to hide. (S7)

The Bodily Experience of Shame

Shame cannot be hidden; it is exposed to the other's gaze. One's private, "inner
self becomes exposed to the other, and one's body reveals and manifests the
experience of shame. One's body becomes primarily experienced as an object, given
from a third-person perspective. One's experience of oneself (and oneself is now in
Sartre's terms an in-itself) is felt to be bodily revealed from a third-person
perspective. One can by all means have a private feeling of, for example, a pounding
heart or a churning stomach, but one's experience is nevertheless that one is not able
to keep it private, but that one is revealed or about to be revealed.

It is humiliating to have shown this... it is very revealing somehow, it is as if I

have revealed my most private, I can still feel in my stomach although it is
thirteen years after the situation, which is hard to formulate. (S6)

I sat completely quiet, paralyzingly heavy and perspiring in my body. (S7)

Shame is experienced bodily, and the perceptual, especially visual perceptual,

objectification contributes to the heightening of this bodily experience. To feel
shame in a distinct way is to feel one's body. In line with the more fuzzy and
unclear shame experiences of blind people, bodily experiences for them tended to be
less explicit as well. And those blind people, who most clearly and purely described
shame experiences, were correspondingly the ones where the bodily experiences
were most distinctly described. To begin with let us see what blind people's
experiences of hiding can look like. The analysis reveals that there is a tendency
in shame to want to hide and disappear, which, of course, is a very embodied
experience. There is one interesting quote from a congenitally blind subject whose
bodily experience had a kind of abstract character related to her head. The following
quote illustrates the experienced connection between thinking and one's head as
well.
[Whether the feeling of shame is felt in the body as well?] I really don't know.
[Is it difficult to remember?] I remember it mainly as a thought, sometimes
I can feel that I want to carry away my head or something, hide it a little bit,
I can feel like that sometimes when I think of such things that I have done and
which I don't think were good. (S15)

However, there is an interesting description from a person (SI8) who became

blind at the age of four and a half who shared the clear and distinct structure of
sighted people's experience of shame. This person's experience clearly entailed the
constituent of a history of frozen now-ness, which will be elaborated later on. Apart
from having had sight until four and a half years of age, the experience described by

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350 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

this person (SI8) entailed the sense of smell and audition. The other's reaction was
noticed through hearing, and she thought it had to do with the bad odor that she
thought she exposed. The point that we want to make with this example is that the
reason why shame can be experienced so strongly and distinctly in this case is that
the smell is experienced as directly for the blind person as she imagines it be by the
other, and the smell also comes from body secretions, in this case. Earlier on, we
talked about the double perceptual character of vision for sighted people. In the case
of this subject, odor fulfilled a similar function. Here follows a quote from this
subject.

[The subject has related a situation of shame that had nothing to do with smell]
Yes another thing that I think I feel almost as ashamed for, it is if I would
smell, if I for some reason suddenly would be perspiring and start to smell, I
think I would die, I think it is even worse, that's why I haven't written about it
I think, because I think it is worse. [The subject then recounts an event when
she thought that she smelled badly]... but I will never forget this how the man
just pushed in the chair [as a sign of his leaving abruptly] (SI8)

The Revelation of an Undesired Self

To experience shame is to experience revealing a side of oneself that is utterly

undesirable. Despite the fact that this revelation of oneself is very undesired and
under other circumstances kept private and secret, that which is revealed in shame is
nevertheless experienced as a familiar side of oneself. It is the most private side of
oneself that is being shown?that which can be felt as really revealing the truth of
oneself. Thus, the person feeling ashamed is not surprised that such a side is
disclosed, but is rather sorry that this essential side has been so openly disclosed to
others. Along with this disclosure of oneself to other(s), corresponds a heightened
sense of self-awareness as well. One comes in focus for oneself and other(s). Here, it
may be fruitful to point out the immediate character of this disclosure. There is an
immediate relationship between the disclosed self and that action or "sign" that
directly points to the disclosed self. Shame goes, so to speak, right through one's
actions and reveals one's being. It is also interesting to see how this undesired self is
constituted as being connected to other people's values and perception of oneself.
Here follows two examples:

Probably I thought myself that it was stupid, that I should understand what it
meant, it is almost as if I started to identify myself with him [in the sense of
appropriating the other person's values that one should understand this word].
I started to see myself as an idiot [...] I thought he was right to be angry with
such an idiot as I was. Then I felt shame [...] he could completely define the
situation, completely [...] I accepted his, what I apprehended was his
judgment of me, that I was an idiot. (Sll)

My incredible childish impulsive reaction and then we have this... when I

realize that... damn I did it again, it is a real crime, the feeling of shame

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 351

depends on that it is a real crime to want to have a lot and to express to want to
have a lot. (S6)

The Genesis of Shame: A History of Frozen Now-Ness

In this point we will try to clarify a kind of historical dimension in the experience of
shame. There is something very remarkable with this phenomenon, in that the
content of the shame experience can be so insignificant and yet the experience is felt
with such amazing agonizing pain. We will seek the solution to this puzzle in the
structural character of shame as well as speculating about the unconscious, infantile
significance of the shame experience. The possibility of this sustained feeling of
shame is made intelligible through, in particular, its structural character of being cut
out of the ordinary temporal flow of life, illustrated in the following quote; "It's like
a separate scene or however one should express it, it's like a separate memory"
(S6).
Besides, it seems that the revealed self is a part of oneself that precisely reveals
traits going back to early childhood. These traits are indeed very human and
universal wishes and desires?that are always there but now displayed in an open
way?opposing the public demands that one's "social" self so forcefully tries to
obey. This historical dimension does not then concern the factual content of the
present shame experience, rather it is the eidetic, structural form that binds together
this specific situation with earlier experiences of shame.
Given the infantile basis and the specific structure of shame, we may speculate
about their interconnectedness. These early experiences of shame establish
themselves as frozen, objectified now-moments?cut off from the ordinary temporal
flow of living. And these moments?precisely because of their objectified
character?do not disappear in the course of time. As an adult one once again
has these structurally similar experiences, which can now easily awaken the more
infantile horrible experiences. And despite the fact that one is now grown up enough
to intellectually realize their insignificance, emotionally one is drawn back to the
childhood experiences. Let us give a couple of interesting quotes that support our
way of understanding this phenomenon:

It becomes much of the feeling that [...] she stands up and I sit down and she's
my... it is mummy here, this is the way it becomes somehow, it becomes so
apparent or that I am placed as a kid... regardless who she is I become a kid
who sits and feels ashamed. (S6)
[This person recounts events from school when she was teased because she
blushed. She then experienced shame, and this feeling re-occurs now when she
feels shame for not having understood the technical word] Yes, that people
looked at me, that's it, that it feels like as if people looked at me, shame,
that which I experienced then was that I wanted to disappear in the same way,
that I wanted to be away from it, the feeling of being paid attention to, it is that
which was the same. (SI 1)

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352 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

Discussion

The results presented show that guilt involves shame, but that there is a form of pure
shame that has nothing to do with guilt. We have also found that the structure of
guilt and shame are quite different, and we would now like to highlight some of the
essential differences between them in terms of three points. Thereafter we will pick
up a thread from the introduction section, where we stressed the importance in
clinical psychotherapeutic contexts to be able to separate these emotions, and we
pointed out that shame is a more painful emotion and risks being undiscovered. On
the basis of this phenomenological study we will present some ideas why this
may be so. We will end the discussion section by speculating on blind people's
experiences of shame.

Differences Between the Experience of Guilt and Shame with Regard

to Their Object

Feelings of guilt concern actions or omissions of actions, and in that sense guilt falls
under the mode of doing. Shame on the other hand, has to do with one's self, i.e., it
has to do with one's mode of being. Even if shame appears to be due to an action,
the feeling of shame is not about the action in itself, but about a revealed self. The
self that is revealed is also experienced as pointing to something permanent. An
interesting difference between the feeling of estrangement and familiarity with
respect to guilt and shame was observed, which may have to do with the fact that
guilt is about temporary actions and shame about a permanent being. The subjects
expressed a feeling of estrangement a propos the actions of guilt, some kind of
surprise that they had acted as "stupidly" as they did. The feeling of shame seemed
to stir up an experience of familiarity, although of a very unpleasant kind. This
difference fits in well with the attempt to repair or compensate for the committed
deed in guilt. One's attitude to one's experience of shame is quite different. There is
no attempt to try to repair, instead one wants to hide or annihilate the situation.
How are we to understand these different attitudes? They can be made intelligible
if one takes into consideration the above constituents. Shame concerns a self that
somehow is always there, although most often hidden and unrevealed. One can say
that one feels identified with the revealed self in shame. It is one's fate. "Identified"
is here to be understood in terms of imprisoned, condemned, since it is a self that is
quite painful. As an experience of one's "fate," there is hardly any possibility for
reparation, for making it better. We remind the reader that the analysis of these two
phenomena is of a structural, phenomenological kind, i.e., it is a disclosure of the
experiences. No doubt, by e.g. therapeutic and psychoanalytic means one's attitude
to what here has been called the revealed self, can undergo radical changes. But this
is beyond the scope of this article to discuss.
Guilt, on the other hand, is connected to one's voluntary action, and therefore one
can at least attempt to change one's voluntary life and thereby achieve a feeling of
reparation. In the process of achieving this, one is helped by the fact that there is a
gap between the self-image and the committed action?manifested by one's feeling
of estrangement from the action.

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The Experiences of Guilt and Shame 353

Different Positions Between the Self and the Other

In the experience of guilt one is the "subject of action." The other?the object of
guilt?appears to be the vulnerable object of one's violation. Shame reveals quite
different scenery, in that the other stands out as constituting one's being or one's
self in an objectified way. It is the other to whom one attributes a constituting
power, while one's own self is objectified and in that sense experienced passively.
One can say that guilt has the function of protecting the integrity of the other,
whereas shame (or the risk of being shamefully exposed) functions on the basis of
protecting oneself and one's private inner soul.

Differences Between the Experience of Guilt and Shame with Respect

to Their Temporal Order

The feeling of guilt is a phenomenon with a very clear process character. It begins
after a moment of innocent living through, which after the reconstruction of this
moment in guilt, is constituted as a moment of negligence. It is in this moment of
guilt that the element of shame also can be present. The so-called pure experience of
shame does not have this process character. Quite the contrary, the feeling of shame
is cut out of the temporal flow of living. One is struck by how condensed this
moment is, like an external attack against which the subject is defenseless.
Shame is very much a now-centered moment, a "frozen now," although it is a
"frozen now" that can be said to have a supra-temporal extension. This is shown
first of all in the way that the same feeling of shame, experienced in the original
situation, can be re-experienced so severely years after the original situation, and
secondly in the sense that shame awakens other previous identical experiences, by
the force of its structural identity.
In the introduction section it was stated that shame is more painful and harder to
discover than guilt. Given the phenomenological structures presented here we
believe we can provide some interesting reflections on this topic. Shame is a very
tight, shut-in, imprisoned emotion compared to guilt. This is made possible due to
several significant constituents in shame. Shame concerns one's being, one's self,
and not one's doing as in guilt. The self in question in shame is an objectified self
and a self that needs to be hidden at all costs. In guilt there is more of a relationship
with another being, which also may make it easier to get a grip on it, in for example
a therapeutic relationship. Furthermore, the difference between guilt and shame with
respect to their temporal order is also significant for understanding the more painful
quality of shame and that it is more difficult to discover. Shame lacks the character
of process, and is very much a now-centered moment, a "frozen now," connected to
a regressive move towards infantile experiences of shame. Else-Britt Kjellqvist
(2008) traces the origin of the most severe and painful shame experience?which
she calls "the white shame"?to the very young infant, even to the newly born
baby. And this "white shame" is described as "an undifferentiated all-embracing
total shame that is characterized by immobility, apathy?of non-life" (p. 7).
We believe that the painfulness of shame has to be understood in light of the
passivity of the self in shame. This passivity has several origins, one of which goes

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354 G. Karlsson, L. G. Sjoberg

back to the time of infancy with the subject. Another structural factor mentioned
above is the constituting power of the other in the shame experience. The feeling of
shamefulness within the self does not come out of the nature of the self. The feeling
of a shameful self is rather the result of one's experience of being rejected by the
other one. The deepest level of shame is in other words a feeling that the other one
rejects one's being (as an intentional subject). Being rejected in one's subjectivity,
brings about an objectification of one's self, which equals psychical death, being a
petrified or dead soul.
This study has also included blind people's experiences of pure shame, which is a
topic in need of further examination, before being able to make any definite
assertions. Nevertheless, as has been seen, congenitally blind people and sighted
people tend to display interesting differences with respect to the experience of
shame. The visual perceptual element in pure shame is of importance for sighted
people. Especially the connection between vision and the experience of being
perceptually objectified is interesting. This connection can perhaps be further
problemized, by further investigating congenitally blind people's experiences of
shame. The congenitally blind person who had the most distinct and clear bodily
experiences in feeling shame, was someone who has been very active in sports, and
deviated clearly from the other congenitally blind people when it came to such
things as her active body language and body movements. One may therefore wonder
if the body in itself, and independently of the function of vision, may be more
receptive to bodily sensations involved in emotional experiences due to training or
exercise. Only further research can give us further insight into this issue.

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Orpheus turned around. A book about depression as a loss of self esteem. ]. Stockholm: Natur och
Kultur.
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