It all began in a typical enough way: Chris Moore had finished his end-of-year university exams and went out with his friends to celebrate but it ended with the tragic loss of innocent life. He was drunk, so were his friends, they stole a car, drove into a cyclist and killed him. Decades later, he is now professor of psychology at Dalhousie University in Canada and has devoted much of his 40-year scholarly career to the study of guilt.
Moore bravely takes a scholarly and personal deep dive into one of the most excruciating emotions we humans experience. Part memoir, part academic study, partly anecdotal, this is a formidable read that will challenge, unsettle and provoke.
His central thesis is this: guilt is a painful state but ultimately a helpful and necessary one because it fuels our drive to repair relationships, both at an individual and a societal level. In this way guilt protects relationships; it is not so much about breaking rules, but more about breaking relationships. In such a context Moore is making the case for guilt to be considered a constructive psychological response; one that plays a central role in social cohesion.
Moore understands guilt not as a stand-alone emotion but as a composite psychological state composed of various emotions such as anxiety, shame, fear and anger. The potency of the emotions that make up guilt are important; too much shame for example and the individual will likely withdraw into a world of self-hatred and all the associated pain that this brings to the individual and those around them.
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I couldn’t help thinking that what seemed to be among the most formative psychological experiences for Moore was not guilt but forgiveness. He movingly describes how friends of the person killed came to his hospital bed to offer their forgiveness and how this act transformed his life.
Moore is asking us to “make friends with guilt” and argues that our relationships and society will be stronger as a result - a noble and worthy call. However, the deeply layered, socially mediated and often transgenerational guilt that many people experience tends to be stubborn and requires more than a cognitive reframing in order to befriend it. It is this aspect of this powerful and potentially corrosive psychological state called guilt that warrants much more attention.
