An investigation of psychological self-destruction via self-knowledge, self-criticism and feelings of shame and guilt among patients with autoimmune and non-autoimmune disorders alongside healthy individuals

In autoimmune diseases, immune system acts against parts normally present in the body. Besides, according to Teleological Coherence Theory, psychological and physical systems work in a parallel fashion. Thus, present study aims to investigate such parallel func-tioning among autoimmune patients, non-autoimmune patients and healthy individuals. Actu-ally, it can be predicted that self-criticism and feelings of shame and guilt (as reflection of psychological inter-systemic inconsistency) are more common in autoimmune patients than other groups. Self-knowledge of autoimmune patients is less than other groups either. This is a casual-comparative study in which 130 autoimmune patients, 111 non-autoimmune patients and 151 university students who were selected by means of accessibility sampling. To gather the data Integrative Self-Knowledge Scale, Personal Feeling Question-naire (PFQ) and Levels of Self-Criticism Scale (LSCS) were employed. Next, for evaluation of structural equation model chi-squared test, Goodness of Fit Index, Non-Normed Fit Index, Comparative Fit Index, Incremental Fit Index and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation were used respectively. Findings indicated that models fitted in with healthy group, autoimmune group and non-autoimmune group. Moreover testing of assumptions related to factorial structure coeffi-cient and error variance showed that there was significant difference between three groups. Results could be explained in Teleological Coherence Theory; in other words, immune self-destruction and psychological self-destruction occurred simultaneously, as a re-sult of parallel goals.