Margaret Visser, who guest-lectured a few times in a course I once took from her husband*, likes to talk about the difference between shame and guilt - basically she defines shame as something that's imposed on you from outside, and guilt as what you feel when you believe you've done wrong. Guilt is a more advanced and positive concept, because (in theory, at least), you only feel it if you have actually done something bad, and you can atone for it, whereas you and your family can be shamed by, for instance, being raped, and about all you can do to get rid of it is kill yourself or kill the person who did it to you...
*Colin Visser. They look fairly similar except he's bald and she has bright red hair in a somewhat '20s do, and one of my classmates was conviced Colin just occasionally showed up in drag, but I've seen them standing next to each other, so I know they're different people...
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Date: 2006-05-15 12:57 am (UTC)From: (Anonymous)*Colin Visser. They look fairly similar except he's bald and she has bright red hair in a somewhat '20s do, and one of my classmates was conviced Colin just occasionally showed up in drag, but I've seen them standing next to each other, so I know they're different people...
/Sarah