In Praise of Guilt and Shame
Part 1, Shame, Guilt, and Social Repair
In 2 Corinthians 7 Paul describes how his prior remonstrations with the church had caused them grief and sorrow. Noting this sadness, Paul goes on to describe how sorrow and grief, while painful, are not wholly bad. In fact, sorrow and grief are often necessary for our development, growth, and health. Especially in our relationships. Here's Paul making his positive argument for the experiences of grief and sorrow:
For even if I grieved you with my letter, I don’t regret it. And if I regretted it—since I saw that the letter grieved you, yet only for a while—I now rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance. For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn’t experience any loss from us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death.
In our therapeutic culture, negative motions are generally viewed as pathological. Sadness, sorrow, depression, grief, guilt, remorse, and shame, these are disease-states. So is worry, apprehension, fear, and anxiety. This is a deeply problematic take on negative emotions as these emotions exist for adaptive purposes. The same way physical pain is adaptive. Unpleasant, but adaptive. When my students report being "anxious" about final exams, well, that's what anxiety is for. To alert us to challenges and focus our resources on tackling those challenges.
In a similar way, guilt, shame, and remorse are hugely important social emotions. They nudge us toward the relational work that psychologists have called "social repair," addressing and mending how we've failed and hurt each other. As much as I love Brené Brown, when she famously defined guilt as "I have done something bad" and shame as "I am bad," she made a mistake. No serious psychologist has ever defined shame as the feeling "I am bad." Further, Brown goes on to say that "I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive." This is also a ludicrous claim. As social creatures, shame is enormously helpful and productive. Shame, as psychologists describe it, doesn't name some pathological self-loathing directed toward the self. Shame is a social emotion that regulates how we comply with social norms and expectations. Consequently, shame, which is also related to what is called "face" in collectivist cultures, promotes group cohesion, social responsibility, moral accountability, and empathy.
Again, contra Brené Brown, shame is very helpful and productive! Which is why we have these emotions in the first place. Shame is an evolved emotional response, vital for adaption among social animals. Shame doesn't show up in our brains as some sort of neurotic handicap that cripples us without point or purpose. Shame is there for a reason. And you see some of that reason in Paul's description of godly grief and sorrow, how these emotions prompt repentance and social repair.
I raise all this to set up a point from The Shape of Joy which I'll make in the next post.
I think it’s helpful to highlight the function of social shame as you do. But I wonder if there are two kinds of shame. I’ve witnessed both social shame and individual shame (Brown’s kind). There seems to be some difference between them. I think Brown’s shame is a berating personalized shame where the shamer attacks in a one on one relationship. Social shame, being community oriented, is very different even though I think it can cut equally deep.
Perhaps it’s not a matter of seeing the emotions you mention as negative or as positive, but that all of these emotions can be positive (healthy) but also negative (unhealthy) depending on a lot of factors. Thanks for sharing and for listening.
It seems like a lot of this is semantics. I don’t know what one may wish to call it, but just as Paul postulates in 2 Cor, there is a “godly sorrow” and a “worldly sorrow”. I admit that I have repeated the “there’s a difference between guilt and shame” mantra, as well as the “I did a bad thing” vs “I am a bad person”. Using “guilt” for one and “shame” for the other is just a convenient way to differentiate. But clearly there is a toxic, poisonous “shame” that is linked with this “worldly sorrow that leads to death”. It’s a shame that begins or reinforces the downward spiral of self perception that leads either to a surrender (“I can’t change”) or a self-defeating defensiveness, then “medication” (addictions) of some sort in an effort to recover but almost always just deepens the spiral. Is not this the “shame” that Jesus came to eradicate? Is this not the “slavery to sin” that is defeated at the cross? Looking forward to reading more.