Editing Guilt (emotion) (section)

=== Defenses ===
According to psychoanalytic theory, defenses against feeling guilt can become an overriding aspect of one's personality.<ref>[[Otto Fenichel]] ''The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis'' (1946) p. 496</ref> The methods that can be used to avoid guilt are multiple.  They include:
#[[Psychological repression|Repression]], usually used by the [[superego]] and ego against instinctive impulses, but on occasion employed against the superego/conscience itself.<ref>Sigmund Freud, ''On Metapsychology'' (PFL 11)p. 393</ref> If the defence fails, then (in a return of the repressed) one may begin to feel guilty years later for actions lightly committed at the time.<ref>Eric Berne, ''A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis'' (Penguin 1976) p. 191</ref>
#[[Psychological projection|Projection]] is another defensive tool with wide applications. It may take the form of [[blaming the victim]]: The victim of someone else's accident or bad luck may be offered criticism, the theory being that the victim may be at fault for having attracted the other person's hostility.<ref>''The Pursuit of Health'', June Bingham & Norman Tamarkin, M.D., Walker Press</ref> Alternatively, not the guilt, but the condemning agency itself, may be projected onto other people, in the hope that they will look upon one's deeds more favorably than one's own conscience (a process that verges on [[Ideas of reference and delusions of reference|ideas of reference]]).<ref>Otto Fenichel, ''The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis'' (1946) p. 165 and p. 293</ref>
#Sharing a feeling of guilt, and thereby being less alone with it, is a motive force in both art and joke-telling; while it is also possible to "borrow" a sense of guilt from someone who is seen as in the wrong, and thereby assuage one's own.<ref>Otto Fenichel, ''The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis'' (1946) pp. 165–6 and p. 496</ref>
#Self-harm may be used as an alternative to compensating the object of one's transgression – perhaps in the form of not allowing oneself to enjoy opportunities open to one, or benefits due, as a result of uncompensated guilt feelings.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Nelissen | first1 = R. M. A. | last2 = Zeelenberg | first2 = M. | year = 2009 | title = When guilt evokes self-punishment: Evidence for the existence of a dobby effect | journal = Emotion | volume = 9 | issue = 1| pages = 118–122 | doi = 10.1037/a0014540 | pmid = 19186924 }}</ref>