A personal illustration for this psycho café Tree trunks bathed in fog in the forest of Hauts-sous-le-Vent, at Saint-Paul de La Réunion. 🔗 Thierry Caro. Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0. | |
| Title | Is guilt useful? |
| Animation | Françoise Mariotti |
| Place | The restaurant “Les Coulondrines” at Saint Gély du Fesc |
| Date and times | Thursday, November 21, 2013 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. |
| Frame | The psycho café is a discussion café in the form of a conference-debate, organized by the PSYC & GENRE association, created by Françoise Mariotti. |
| Keywords | emotion, feeling, felt, guilt, origin, café |
| Information |  I am a member of the PSYC & GENRE association. For more details, see the webpage about the psycho cafés on the official website of the presenter. |
1. My personal thoughts/questions before the café▲
Duration, emotion or feeling, questioning, and limit, here are my first questions that come to me on this question of the café:
- Over a short period of time, it seems to me that yes, guilt can be useful. On the other hand, if this feeling persists, it becomes harmful to the person’s health.
- Is it an emotion, a feeling? This word makes me think of remorse… A difference between these two notions of guilt and remorse? Difficult to say… Perhaps it is precisely the duration of the feeling?
- I consider that guilt is useful to the extent that it allows personal questioning (awareness), to question oneself, to listen to oneself, to ask oneself (questions) and to set… answers. But it’s not a question of thinking too much… If there is a feeling of guilt, where is the fault? If so, is there an error? What is the origin?
- What is the limit of the fault, of the responsibility that falls on the wrongdoer? There can be fault without a guilty person and/or without a responsible person and what about the feeling of guilt in this case? This is the problem of unfounded origin.
2. According to the nature of the fault▲
In case of real fault/error
Especially talking to someone about your fault. Should we still continue to feel guilty? How to get out of it? Is redemption possible? At least in terms of the person’s health? Even in the event of a crime?
Is correcting the error or mistake enough to make the feeling of guilt disappear? Not said at all… Accept your humanity, your helplessness.
In case of absence of fault and error
If there is no fault or error, why the presence of guilt? Here too, talk to someone about it to get better information, see more clearly… My first thoughts therefore show that if you feel guilty, it is advisable to talk to someone 🙂
3. My thoughts one year later▲
In my opinion, the feeling of guilt is useful in prevention, to avoid an irresponsible act but can be terribly destructive if it persists. It also depends on how we look at a fault, a malevolence (that of another person, or our own).
4. Reflections on 07/22/2015▲
I chose a photo with fog on purpose because in our society the feeling of guilt unfairly and cruelly fogs the heads of victims. I write these words with a heavy heart.
What I feel, what I want to write here… As an invitation to make the feeling of guilt fall… into the tomb of the guilty in the same way that the fog ends up disappearing when the rays arrive luminous: Truth and Justice.
“Car c’est de la Lumière que viendra la Lumière et resplendira”
(For it is from the Light that the Light will come and shine)
Tintin in the work The Secret of the Unicorn by Hergé.