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 constituents 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.
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Karlsson, G., Sjöberg, L.G. The Experiences of Guilt and Shame: A Phenomenological–Psychological Study. Hum Stud 32, 335–355 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-009-9123-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-009-9123-3