The experience of a sense of guilt for wrong-doing is necessary for the development of self-control. The guilt feelings will later... serve as a warning signal which the child can produce himself when an impulse to repeat the naughty act comes over him. When the child can produce his on warning signals, independent of the actual presence of the adult, he is on the way to developing a conscience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An older child, one who possesses a conscience, will be troubled with self-reproaches and feelings of shame for his naughtiness, e...ven if he is not discovered. But our two-year-olds and our three-year- olds experience guilt feelings only when they feel or anticipate disapproval from the outside. In doing this, they have taken the first steps toward the goal of conscience, but there is a long way ahead before the policeman outside becomes the policeman inside.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The parallel between antifeminism and race prejudice is striking. The same underlying motives appear to be at work, namely fear, j...ealousy, feelings of insecurity, fear of economic competition, guilt feelings, and the like. Many of the leaders of the feminist movement in the nineteenth-century United States clearly understood the similarity of the motives at work in antifeminism and race discrimination and associated themselves with the anti slavery movement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shame is closely related to guilt, but there is a key qualitative difference. No audience is needed for feelings of guilt, no one ...else need know, for the guilty person is his own judge. Not so for shame. The humiliation of shame requires disapproval or ridicule by others. If no one ever learns of a misdeed there will be no shame, but there still might be guilt. Of course, there may be both. The distinction between shame and guilt is very important, since these two emotions may tear a person in opposite directions. The wish to relieve guilt may motivate a confession, but the wish to avoid the humiliation of shame may prevent it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ease with which problems are understood and solved on paper, in books and magazine articles, is never matched by the reality o...f the mother's experience. . . . Her child's behavior often does not follow the storybook version. Her own feelings don't match the way she has been told she ought to feel. . . . There is something wrong with either her child or her, she thinks. Either way, she accepts the blame and guilt.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future.... Whatever you are doing, however, you are coping, if you listen to your child and to your own feelings, there will be something you can actually do to make things right.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mothers often take children's negative feelings so personally that the moment they come back from work to a moody child, a whole c...hecklist appears before their eyes. "Was I rushed this morning? Did I forget to pack lunch right? Am I away too much?" This personalization of children's day to day moods (which I've found practically nonexistent in fathers) makes moms an easy target.... Within seconds, children pick up on your guilt and use it to gain special attention.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most people agree that men have trouble showing hurt, jealousy, and fear but even mothers, whose wider emotional range is often ta...ken for granted, also seem more comfortable with anger than these other "unparentlike" feelings. This is probably because several generations of mothers have now been twelve-step-programmed and pop-psychologized enough to believe that expressing hurt, fear, anxiety, or dependence will create pathological guilt in their kids.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If your child is going to develop a healthy personality with the capacity to remain intact and grow, she must learn how to test re...ality, regulate her impulses, stabilize her moods, integrate her feelings and actions, focus her concentration and plan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shame can make you so angry you can barely function. It is the rage you feel when someone slights you because of the color of your... skin, your accent or the clothes you wear. The ultimate in shame, however, is the humiliation, self-blame you feel when someone has raped or abused you. In that instance, you turn your shame or rage on yourself, asking "What have I done wrong to be so abused?" With guilt we know what the wrong is, the car was stolen, the curfew was broken, the contract was bogus. Usually guilt is less intense and destructive an emotion than shame because it is less involved with the perception and evaluation of the whole self. With guilt there is a motivation to change, to make amends, and pay the dues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »