Shame, guilt, and violence

Social Research, Winter, 2003 by James Gilligan

That these are the same feelings that motivate the forms of collective violence just referred to has been documented by the social scientists who have studied them. Many students of traditional (pre-1945) Japanese culture, violence, nationalism, and warfare have commented on the centrality of both shame and violence in that culture. Ruth Benedict (1970 [1946]) used Japan as her primary example of what she meant by the concept of a "shame culture," a conclusion subsequently supported by Reischauer (1965) and many other experts on Japanese culture; and the Japanese traditionally referred to themselves as a "nation of warriors." Resort to suicide when no other means of avoiding or escaping from a situation of unavoidable shame is seen as possible (as in the seppuku or ritual suicide by means of which defeated samurai were able to minimize the shame of defeat and execution by dying honorably rather than dishonorably) was another well recognized method of mitigating shame. And those who have interviewed contemporary terrorists and suicide bombers, such as Jessica Stern (2003), have concluded that a primary motive for such behavior is humiliation--not necessarily personal or individual humiliation, but rather the sense of collective or national humiliation that is felt when the religion or culture at the center of their collective identity has been seen as inferior and subjected to insult and contempt.

Why would they regard rescuing or restoring their individual or collective self-esteem as more important than prolonging their biological lives? What many of these men have told me is that they themselves had died--meaning that their personalities had died--long before they began killing other people. What they mean by that is that they felt dead inside: empty, numb, without the capacity to feel anything, neither emotions (such as love, fear, or remorse) nor even physical sensations. Many described committing the most horrific atrocities in order to see if they could feel anything, and were surprised and disappointed to see that even that did not restore a capacity to have feelings and feel alive. Once in prison, they would mutilate themselves as viciously as they mutilated their victims, which means very viciously indeed, not because they felt guilty for their crimes and wanted to punish themselves, but because they found the feeling of deadness and numbness more intolerable than anything, even pain, and they wanted to see if they could make themselves feel anything. And then they would be surprised to find that they could commit even the most terrible self-mutilations--tearing out their toenails, blinding themselves, swallowing razor blades, inserting screws into their urethra--without experiencing physical pain at the time. They would cut themselves because only when they saw blood could they be reassured that they were still alive. Many referred to themselves by one of the many synonyms for the living dead--zombie, vampire, robot.

The "Death of the Self'