Guilt: Malady or Healing

Morality, guilt, disorder, and crime are considered as key concepts to dialogue between traditional and modern world. From Davanloo’s perspective (2001), guilt is such an overwhelming feeling that in most cases leads to mental illness. However, the experience of guilt may be supposed to lead to dynamics of human life and healing as well. So what makes the boundary between health and disease? The controversial point is Why and how this heavy feeling is the source of suffering and healing at the same time. In the process of attachment to parents, being rejected, or too supported may cause a child to experience conflictual feelings of rage, love, and guilt as the first two are synthesized. Since a child always tries to protect his or her attachment with parents, he or she protects them against destructive feelings by internalizing rage and this is the starting point of psychopathology and psychosomatic conditions. The process seems to be inevitable in human life. After a historical review of the issue, this study analyzed the recent research into guilt and demonstrated the inevitability of mental illness while illustrating that it is a self-imposed and flexible process. As long as the individual ignores the need for self-knowledge, it is possible to continue his or her mental life. But of course healing, self-actualization and vitality depend on being aware of deficiencies and experiencing guilt.