From the author: The article was published: Acmeology, No. 4 - 2012 ( ) The dynamics of the experience of guilt in existential analysis Edit “The feeling must grow; until it matures, nothing will happen.” , man is not exempt from facing his limitations, which include what I call the tragic triad of human existence, namely pain, death and guilt. By pain I mean suffering; the other two components of the tragic triad represent the dual fact of human mortality and the inevitability of mistakes,” writes V. Frankl in his work “The Will to Meaning” [8, p. 18]. We will try to examine in detail one component of this “tragic triad”, namely guilt, and trace how the phenomenon of guilt is connected with existence (the central concept of existential analysis), with the experience of the four fundamental motivations of a person, with his answers to the questions: firstly, the very possibility of Being-here; secondly, the values ​​of life, thirdly, justification for the embodiment of the Own in life; and, fourthly, the meaning of existence, when a person finds himself in a larger system of relationships and, based on the previous three premises, carries out his life. It is not easy for a modern person to talk about feelings, and, in our opinion, it is especially difficult for a person to talk about guilt, After all, in the words of Langle - “Feelings are “a person’s underwear.” Showing up in public in underwear is awkward and even shameful” [7, p. 154]. In addition to the fact that any feeling motivates a person to take one or another action, Langle notes that with the help of feelings a person can navigate himself and the world, since: “Feelings are the basis and force for motivation, i.e. feelings are the beginning and end of actions...they indicate and warn, drawing our attention to something” [7], therefore it is important not to push away your feeling, no matter how heavy it may seem, but to try to “explore” it. Otherwise, if a person begins to ignore his feelings, push them aside, they acquire unlimited power over him, and then the person will again and again defend himself from his feeling and understand its content less and less. And it is extremely important for a person to understand the content of a feeling, because... behind every feeling there is a value. And it is about the impact of this or that value, about its state, about the relationship a person is in with it, that this or that feeling in him speaks to a person. This is especially important if we are talking about an unpleasant, difficult feeling, such as guilt , experiencing which, a person experiences suffering and pain, and therefore can evaluate it as a threat to himself. Because of this, guilt may not be accepted by a person, and because of its “unacceptance”, it may be underestimated by him or pushed aside. In existential analysis, 3 forms of the phenomenon of guilt are distinguished: real guilt; guilt, like a mistake; guilt. Real guilt arises as a result of the fact that a person in a specific life situation, through dialogue with his Conscience, evaluates the questionable value facing him as good and correct, as correct for implementation, and makes a decision and commits a specific act in accordance with another value, i.e. .e. “when a person acts contrary to a meaningful value” [6, p. 94]. Thus, guilt in its highest manifestation is not based on a “platform of norms and rules,” i.e. is not considered primarily as behavior that does not comply with regulations or the law: guilt is based on meaning, when a person commits a conscious betrayal of the meaning he has discovered in a specific life situation and, thus, denies himself “access” to his authentic life. When working with real guilt at one of the stages of therapy it is important to clarify: why the person chose andwas guided in his actions by another value, due to which reasons it became more important for embodiment at that moment. Guilt-error arises if a person, taking a personal position and listening to the voice of Conscience, when choosing values ​​at the time of making a decision does not have sufficient information about the situation or even about himself. As a result of this, the value that he wants to live in his specific action is determined by him correctly at that moment, but subsequently, when over time a person becomes the owner of more information, he begins to evaluate this chosen value as erroneous and incorrect, and considers his actions wrong, feeling guilty. The feeling of guilt arises if a person cannot, for various reasons, assess the value and reconcile it with his Conscience in order to take a personal position and make a decision. Due to the fact that the personal position is not engaged, a person develops apersonal behavior, which is experienced as a feeling of impasse, despair, meaninglessness and unbearable heaviness, because. Conscience time after time evaluates such human behavior as wrong and unjustified. This behavior reduces existence, and the person feels a sense of guilt. Guilt in existential analysis can be considered as a gift, human talent, as a flair for living according to Conscience, that is, in the words of Langle “for being a Personality, whether I behave authentically or not, those. Do I correspond both to my essence and value to the situation in which I find myself” [6, p. 114]. Only in the practical work of a psychologist or psychotherapist is it very important to understand which of these 3 forms of guilt a person experiences, because he can blame any of them for himself, and the tactics of work in these three forms can differ significantly. A person in his integrity is described in the theory of existential analysis from three perspectives: he is simultaneously bodily, mental and spiritual. Fig. 1. Three dimensions of a person These three dimensions are in fact inseparable in a person and are in a complex relationship when he is present in his experience of guilt. Each of them has its own contents and driving forces, which can conflict with the aspirations of another dimension. A person experiences guilt deeply and hard, because... guilt is a very important signal that indicates to a person, through the physical and psychodynamic aspects of his existence, a threat to his existence as a Personality. At the level of the physical body: guilt falls on a person with the full weight of this experience and encloses it in its painful embrace. A person often has a feeling of physical transformation, the body becomes different, it seems that something is happening in it, and this accompanies the person in the experience of guilt. Guilt is often described as a physically heavy feeling, heaviness in the body, heaviness in the chest, heart, pain, the posture takes on hunched shoulders, some note loss of appetite, insomnia, and decreased physical activity. The body, as it were, forces a person to stop, “fall out” of the usual time rhythm and focus on something important for oneself, on something important that can no longer be avoided or brushed aside. The body encourages you to look for support within yourself, asks you to find balance when a person resists such a gravity of experience. At the level of mental processes in the experience of guilt, a person can experience increased mental activity - thoughts about the same thing that do not let go, the person is held by memories of the situation of his offense . This maximum involvement in the experience of one’s own guilt not only concentrates a person on important spiritual work, but also stimulates internal dialogue. The appearance of other “depressive” feelings of sadness, fear, sadness, and regret speak of unlived value, of its loss. A person experiencing guilt has a desire to limit his social contacts to a minimum and to be alone. Then, when a person comes to repentance, he has a desire to confess, to reveal himself in a perfect action that he did not agree with his Conscience. Hewants to actively act, ask for forgiveness, perform some specific and real actions so that the other person’s trace of the harm caused becomes smaller. At the fundamentally inexplicable and unknowable level of human existence Person, a person may or may not (in the experience of guilt) establish a conversation with your Conscience, treat your experiences of guilt creatively in order to be able to take a certain distance in relation to your guilt, discover for yourself its value content and integrate it into your existing value structure, understand, accept the situation as a whole and see yourself in your life , both present and future. It must be remembered that guilt affects both the external and internal world of a person’s personality. When a person acts contrary to his meaningful value, causing harm to another, he at the same moment harms himself, removes himself from being a Personality and his authentic being. Guilt highlights a double injustice both to the other and to oneself - it is important to remember this too second share of the blame. And here guilt is like an appeal of the Personality to the “I” of a person, as a call for a meeting, dialogue and being a Personality. Fig. 2. Two poles of the experience of guilt. Guilt poses a number of tasks for a person, which he, experiencing from stage to stage, must solve for himself with a double attitude: openness to the world and with an internal dialogue with himself. In fact, the solution of these problems by a person, his free passage through the next stages, is the dynamics of the experience of guilt. A. Langle writes very supportively and beautifully: “Sometimes a stream of sadness suddenly rises from one’s own depths, getting stuck like a stone behind the sternum, a lump in the throat. And at the same time we experience a cruel demand to solve these riddles, to understand what is happening to you” [6, p. 165]. The first stage is that a person experiencing guilt needs to clarify the situation of guilt itself, i.e. to see and understand its specifics - in what very specific way he finds his guilt in this particular situation. In general, not a single human need is solvable, and the decision must be made each time very specifically in the individuality of the existence of each specific person. It is no coincidence that thoughts about a committed offense “pursue” a person, giving him the opportunity to experience a situation of guilt over and over again, to see it in all its details, to understand its specifics. It is important for a person to be courageously in a situation of his guilt, to be able to look at it with this double glance and with self-confidence - to experience the outer pole of being a Personality, when he sees the situation through the eyes of others (what others will say to this - and here it is possible to add shame, like a certain “ showing one’s own intimate”). And it is also important to experience the inner pole of this situation, to look at yourself through the eyes of your Personality, and in this view, courageously and with trust in yourself, endure and accept yourself as guilty. It is important to establish a close relationship with the situation of your guilt, devote time to this situation, “want analyze it,” and also establish a close relationship with oneself, “want to understand oneself” in this difficult situation of one’s own guilt. It is important for a person to recognize the value of the fact that he is engaged in experiencing his guilt, that he respectfully considers this situation in all its details, takes it seriously and recognizes its value, and in the same way acts in relation to himself - takes it seriously and recognizes the value of himself himself. At this first stage of experiencing guilt, a person receives for himself a “concrete vision” of the situation in the world and in himself, in which he went against his Conscience, deciding to choose to live a different value in himself, thereby forever losing the only correct one for himself, but also the unlived, unrealized meaning of the situation.. At this stage, a person gives the “right to be” to all the accomplished facts of his offense, and thereby forms for himself trust, support and courage in his experience of guilt, in order to give his feelings freedom, to give They should be in themselves, let any feelings be, sometimes very difficult. The second stage of experiencing guilt isa person tries to understand for himself the situation of his guilt: the experience of his own guilt is described by many respondents as very strong. And it can make a person unfree, capture him in such a way that he loses all ability not only to understand his feelings, but also to internal dialogue with himself. A person can be captured and depressed by the force of the impression of his own guilt, discouraged by his weakness. This is a very important task, because... It is precisely the attentive look at the details, the ability to listen carefully, not to rush, the opportunity to put aside extraneous thoughts that will allow me to courageously and focusedly explain to myself - what was it in me? Understand your primary emotion, its phenomenological content. It is necessary to say a few words about understanding primary emotion in the aspect of analyzing the phenomenon of guilt, its occurrence and dynamics. Any emotion contains its beginning - and it is always barely perceptible, mentally unprocessed, but contains very valuable content - because it contains a primary assessment of what a person perceives: this is the attitude of what is perceived to the basic attitude towards life (the subjective side of the relationship); the attitude towards the basic value (the objective side of the relationship); the reaction that is triggered by this perception. And the way a person is used to, knows how and can cope with his primary emotionality, can largely indicate how personal, authentic being he manages to lead in everyday life. The process of integration of primary emotion, according to the existential analysis of emotions, occurs in five stages: this is perception; understanding; assessment of conscience (justification); taking a certain position, making a decision and rational action. Therefore, in order for a person to recognize the value content of a primary emotion, its strength must correspond to the physical and psycho-emotional state of the person. And only under this condition will the phenomenological content of the primary emotion “not be lost”, and the value that it, as a harbinger, carries for a person will be achieved by him in the future. Fig. 3. The Power of Primary Emotion and the Achievement of Value Attention to the specific details of this stage is important without losing courage, trust and space for emotions. After all, a person feels guilt as something very difficult and unpleasant, and this feeling can be mixed with experiences of value, and as a result, a feeling of displeasure is born, which in turn brings new and different feelings of displeasure. So a specific guilt can be blurred by anxiety, shame, fear, pain, despair and others. Specificity and clarification of the situation of guilt are important for separating real guilt from guilt-mistakes and feelings of guilt. Because in the case of a mistake, a clarified situation will immediately show and limit the area of ​​​​knowledge and information on which the person relied and possessed precisely at that moment in time when he took a personal position, made decisions and took actions. So, the stage of experiencing guilt requires a person to side of the theory of personal existential analysis to recognize the value that the primary emotion carries. Of course, there still remains an area of ​​incomprehension - and, in our opinion, a person is unlikely to be able to turn his attention to this issue on his own outside the framework of therapy, without the participation of a psychotherapist. So, we have come to the third stage of experiencing guilt, when a person is required to hear the voice of his own again. Conscience. The third stage is to hear the voice of Conscience again and correlate your action, which brought harm to someone, with it. We begin to talk about the phenomenon of guilt within the framework of existential analysis when the topic of Conscience arises. The previous stages of experiencing guilt are important because clarification and understanding is an important task also because there is always ontological guilt in a person, as responsibility for one’s being a Personality, for one’s freedom of choice, for one’s dignity and authenticity, and here it is important to separate these types guilt, cutting off the possibilities for manipulating this - the norms of religion, state, etc.Heidegger is guilty from the very beginning, because this is a condition of existence: man is a guilty being. Conscience is the voice that takes care of a person so that he achieves his existence in the authenticity of himself. Conscience is not a means of atonement for guilt, but a “call of care.” Heidegger writes: “Correct hearing of the call is then tantamount to understanding in one’s very ability to be, i.e. throwing oneself at one’s own ability to become guilty” [10, p. 312]. And when the “call of Conscience” is heard by a person (a call that returns us to the awareness of our authentic, personal presence in our own being), we invariably become “guilty” - guilty insofar as we have failed in realizing the potential of this authenticity. Therefore, it is very important to know, cherish and thank this human talent - ontological guilt, as an opportunity for a hint from your Personality that you are following an apersonal path. Often after it is possible to clarify and understand this specific situation of guilt with the client and the specific action of the person in it, to hear the voice of his Conscience again in response to that situation, then guilt cannot be detected. That guilt, as a special, conscious act, as a result of deviation from the heard call of Conscience, pushed aside and unlived on the basis of this deviation of value for the sake of another. There is a good question to be tested by Conscience - “Would you do this again, possessing the same information that did you have at the time when you were in the same situation? And often this question and the answer to it removes guilt, that guilt as a mistake, removing this person’s act from the category of guilt. It is important to understand that the voice of Conscience and the voice of the Super-Ego can coincide and talk about the same thing! And therefore, in a fault-mistake, it is important to separate the voice of Conscience and the voice of the Super-Ego, because the voice of the Super-Ego can blur the boundaries of the Self in a person and impute to him the responsibility that is “wrong” for him. V. Frankl believes that true conscience can even resist the Conscience or guilt as 3. Freud understood it, since it has nothing to do with the pseudo-morality of the superego. It seems to coordinate “the eternal universal moral law with the specific situation of a particular person” [9, p. 196]. He considers the main condition for experiencing guilt to be the ability to pose and solve a problem with Conscience, i.e. the task of meaning, understanding what is happening to a person with him, therefore, referring to the pressure of circumstances or obeying an order as an excuse for an unacceptable act is an avoidance of the task of meaning! In feelings of guilt, it often happens that solving the first three stages in psychotherapeutic work takes a lot of time , and the psychotherapist must take this into account and warn the client about this. Very often, a person, remembering the situation of the offense he has committed, turns to his sense of guilt and does not give himself peace, constantly expanding the territory of his guilt and maintaining high emotional tension from his own experience , and thereby prevents oneself from grasping the value of the primary emotion in order to understand its message, to understand oneself, the situation and the other. It often happens that the internal dialogue with Conscience is blocked, and a person again comes to the same point, starting anew the neurotic experience of guilt. But in our opinion, even under the weight of such an unproductive block there lives a personal, personal sprout - the decision of the person himself - to sort it out with a situation of own guilt. “The decision to understand, the attempt to understand is no less, and often more valuable, than any answer found to the question: so what was it?” - writes S. Krivtsova. In the fourth stage of experiencing guilt, a person establishes emotional, sensual closeness with the one to whom he harmed, and as a result of this, from regret he comes to repentance. This is important so that the guilty person develops a sense of value and the feeling of interruption, the feeling of personal non-existence disappears. The experience of guilt helps to better and more closely understand and feel what the person experiences, to whom we, voluntarily or unwittingly (in the case of a guilt-mistake), caused damage, caused harm; seeand his suffering, pain and torment. Thus, one’s own suffering in the experience of guilt makes it easier to see the suffering of another. In the words of Martin Buber, we can say “I become with You” [2, p. 60]. It is at this stage, as an appeal to the negative, that regret, sadness arises, as a worry about lost value, both from the external world - where I lose the value of another person in guilt, due to the harm done to him, and from my own inner world - where I lose my own existence as a Personality in guilt. Such involvement in my feelings gives rise to a person’s desire to connect everything he has experienced, on the processing of which he has already spent so much mental strength, with a practical way of life, connecting it with the prospects of his future. Langlet writes : “It would be a great existential loss if the results of processing processes did not influence future life; this would contradict the principle of development as the integration of the new” [3, p. 14].A person can be himself again. In our opinion, the words of Karl Jaspers are important that “in repentance a person chooses himself.” And then a person can even turn back to life out of his guilt in order to begin to take specific actions to atone for his guilt. Then the opportunity arises - to see for yourself the meaning in this situation of “being guilty.” If we take into account only the first 3 stages, which are of a more cognitive nature, it is important to remember that “meaning has an emotional nature - only what is felt and causes feelings - can affect us... and if there is no feeling regarding value, then there is no strength and meaning to do something” [4, p. 87].Repentance is more than an apology. “Moral conviction,” according to B. Bratus’ definition, “must always be provided with a golden reserve of corresponding personal meaning, an affective, emotionally experienced attitude to life; otherwise, it will be devalued to the level of a simple declaration, moreover, it may become a sham that masks completely different aspirations” [1, p. 64]. Therefore, in sincere repentance, a person becomes greater than his guilt, he stands hand in hand with his Person, opposite his guilt, and decides how he can act correctly in the current situation, treat both others and himself. It is from this stage - repentance - a person responsibly regains his activity, freedom and personality. It is no coincidence that many describe repentance as a process of liberation, “when repentance sets in, then guilt is no longer needed.” It is repentance that provides a solid basis for wanting to restore a relationship with a person who has been harmed, because... in the process of experiencing guilt, the value of the other was discovered. Repentance, as a powerful force that arises as a result of the integration of the impression from the experience of guilt, it contains within itself the germ of will and therefore can rightfully be a “bridge towards peace.” This stage restores a person’s value system, makes it brighter, richer, “stronger.” ”, due to the hard mental work of integrating “the emotions of guilt and remorse.” In the famous saying of the sages of the Talmud there is a saying: “The temptations that the repentant will resist cannot be overcome even by the righteous.” The fifth stage of experiencing guilt is atonement, i.e. a person must find for himself the opportunity to move on to specific actions to correct the situation. “But repentance loses its meaning if it ends there: to cry and live as before. Repentance is the opening of the path for new relationships,” writes Solzhenitsyn in 1973 in his article [8, p. 74]. And if a person at the previous stage acquired “will”, obtained from his own repentance, as mental work, precisely that will, as desire, as freedom of his actions, in connection with the “correctly” taken position, then the solution to a specific action is found, which will be embodied on the path to redemption in this particular human situation. And again a person feels the voice of a “pure” Conscience within himself - if I act as I intend to do, then this can go on, and in mepeace and inner peace are established. Guilt forces us to look for suitable words and actions that can save a person from pain and harm caused to others and to ourselves. However, repentance alone is not enough; to fully live with guilt, specific actions are necessary that will finally confirm repentance as a person’s personal position, confirm his decision, his activity and finally recognize the value of another, the value of oneself and the value of relationships. The person’s desire for this relationship to continue in the future will also be confirmed. The sixth stage of the experience is the acceptance of the fact of guilt that has happened as an accomplished reality, one that a person cannot cancel. This is a very courageous step to accept what happened is my fault and cannot be returned. Accept that we are all human and can be guilty of making bad decisions, making mistakes or facing our own weaknesses; We all make mistakes, we learn and move on, trying to take into account the mistakes in our experience. Accept that even this experience of knowledge, one’s own guilt, and the suffering of others may not insure us from mistakes in the future. And that our human time is finite, and that it flows in one direction and cannot be returned. And here A. Langle gives us spiritual support: “Go - this is your life!” Open yourself up to everything that speaks to you. Give me your answer, it has never been given before. No one can give it for you. It’s worse not to live because of fear of mistakes than to live with mistakes” [4, p. 89].Guilt is not the final station. And not a dead end, but a challenge in order to start moving and begin to live an authentic life. Guilt can also be experienced by a person in the “neurotic” version - “feelings of guilt” if a person does not have strong enough structures from any of the four fundamental motivations. Then not only a feeling of guilt arises, but also various coping reactions may arise that will correspond precisely to the person’s violated fundamental motivation. A person may simply not notice his guilt, or will try to forget about it, deny it, escape from its yoke, joke about it; try to devalue it, as if mentally justifying oneself, belittling the harm caused to another, may try to drown it out with some kind of activity or alcohol, play; may formally ask for forgiveness, or will ask for forgiveness, and at the same time not be able to take specific real actions to “compensate for the damage caused” to another in one form or another, etc. Each guilt we experience leaves in us a certain existential trace, a memory of the experience non-existence as a Personality, and therefore the experience of guilt is of great importance for a person. The meaning of the experience of guilt, in our opinion, is associated with a person’s existential need to achieve true identity, to have the greatest possible existence. It is no coincidence that guilt goes next to Conscience, because... it is one of the givens of true human existence. Guilt each time allows a person to remember his unlived Dignity, Freedom, Responsibility and Authenticity in a specific action. Guilt helps to meet the value of one’s own being as a Personality and to live one’s personal existential meaning. In the experience of guilt, a person is able to realize that he has forgotten who he is, who he can be, what kind of relationships he can build in his life and what his own world can be like, or simply get to know yourself better in this own experience. Knowledge of the phenomenon of guilt, which is touched upon in this article, is important because a modern psychologist must very clearly define the field of his activity in each specific case and see the context of the work. After all, existential guilt cannot be avoided; it is important to see the value basis on which this feeling rests and be able to show this to the client so that he feels that despite the severity of the experience, lived guilt helps a person regain himself and continue to create his personal existence, to realize everything your personal capabilities. Experienced guilt makes a person more sensitive to others and himself.