Guilt healing through spiritual direction

Abstract

This study aims at providing deep psychological, theological and pastoral support for Spiritual Direction to understand guilt and shame feelings and so provide healing. Carl Jung, the popular psychoanalyst believes that guilt can be released through therapy, which is a “dialogue or discussion between two persons.’’ The result of this therapeutic dialogue leads to healing and personality integration. Spiritual direction in the deepest sense is distinct from counselling, from opening up to a confidant and from sharing with a close friend. Spiritual direction is distinguishable from counselling in that the latter is client-oriented and deals primarily with the observance and behavioural aspects of the human person. Spiritual direction remains God-oriented: listening to him and to his mysterious, ineffable ways within the directee. I will take a journey into the human mind and explore the way it tries to meet threats to our psychic survival and our self-esteem. I try to portray the many faces of guilt and the various ways we all express guilt day after day. I show how guilt and shame make us uncomfortable, reduce us to unpleasant, childlike feelings, and lower our self-image so much that we do not like it. It is clear, then that if we can learn to deal with guilt we can communicate more successfully. This means that through spiritual direction we learn to accept guilt when it belongs to us, and to refuse it if it is not ours. So I will be analysing the difference between real guilt and false/neurotic guilt. The former we need to accept because it belongs to us. The latter we need to reject because it is not ours. As with most spiritual and psychological matters there are no fixed rules and no set prescriptions everyone can follow. Each spiritual director must find his own way to deal with his directee. But through this study I propose some suggestions and guidelines that are often helpful, and make it possible for the process of healing to be effective. However, there is indeed a true Conscience within us, a voice that can be said to come from our real Self and that tries to correct us when we deviate from our proper path in life. When this voice comes to us we need to listen. Thus, here I present the importance of discernment in spiritual direction. Painful though such corrections may be through the spiritual director, they lead us back to our true Self, not away from it. These corrections come, not from false guilt, but from a violation of our true and deepest nature. When we deviate from our true nature, we hear what amounts to be the voice of God within us. This is our true Conscience. The bibliographical research method applied in this dissertation will provide a deep understanding of the concept of guilt together with practical tools for spiritual directors to deal with an effective way of guilt healing through spiritual direction.