The outer judge, the inner judge: debt – guilt – shame.
Conversation between the lawyer Dr. Urs Egli and the psychotherapist Dr. med. Marc Melchert.
For the lawyer, debt is a major cultural innovation. Labour is given a tradable value. The external judge (the law of obligations) regulates the relationships arising from debts.
For the psychotherapist, feelings of guilt are not feelings, but the cognitive abstraction of feelings of shame. The inner judge wants to dissolve dependencies in order to achieve autonomy.
Lawyers deal mainly with debt.
Psychotherapists deal mainly with shame.
HOST: Welcome to today’s talk on 3 March 2014 with our two speakers: Urs Egli is the ‹LAWYER› and Marc Melchert is the ‹THERAPIST›. The topic is debt – guilt – blame – shame. Obviously these words are put into a different context by the lawyer and the therapist, and thus each takes on a different meaning. The contextual meaning of words is shown in this advert for the language school Berlitz:
Commercial for the language school BERLITZ.
Year unknown, source YouTube
JURIST: Why are we showing this? We are trying to bring our disciplines closer together. We are both talking about guilt. But maybe we don’t mean the same thing. It’s clear that a psychiatrist is sitting at the microphone….
THERAPEUT:…. and while the psychiatrist tries to clarify the problems, the lawyer flips through the laws:
HOST: The two speakers have been exploring the idea that there are many similarities and overlaps between legal doctrine and psychology for some time. They held a dialogue in our salon in 2009 entitled ‹Psychodynamics of Legal Cases›. At that time you showed that legal cases often have a psychodynamic component.
THERAPIST: The conclusion was that if the clients had come to me earlier, the outcome might have been different.
LAWYER: The aggressive ones end up with me. The passive ones go to you.
But today we are talking about debt and guilt. These are concepts that unite our disciplines. The law that governs our private actions is called the Swiss Code of Obligations. Obligation = debt. Karl Lorenz called it the law of obligations. Lawyers are mainly concerned with debts.
THERAPIST: In forensic psychiatry, the term criminal culpability is often used in connection with guilt. What does it mean?
LAWYER: That’s another dimension! It’s about punishing someone for a crime they’ve committed: a rule has been broken and there has to be a response. Debts are in the code of obligations, crimes are in criminal law.
THERAPIST: What does criminal liability mean? The crime was committed or not!
LAWYER: Today, it is no longer enough to have broken a rule in order to be punished. It used to be different: the old Germanic criminal law was a success-based criminal law. It did not matter whether someone was injured or killed in an accident while cutting wood or in a brawl; the reaction was always the same. Today we have a blame-based criminal law: punishment is only meted out if the offence can be attributed to the individual (if blame can be apportioned). This requires the ability to recognise guilt, which is present if someone is capable of doing so:
- to recognise the injustice of the act and
- to act on this knowledge.
THERAPEUT: And what, then, is the aforementioned law of obligations about?
LAWYER: Ferdinand von Schirach once said that he was tired of dealing with who owed how much to whom throughout his entire professional life. That’s why he turned to criminal law, where everything is much more obvious, painted in bolder colours. Here today, we are doing the opposite, we are looking at the subtle in this conversation: We ask ourselves why one should owe anything to other people at all and how it comes about?
THERAPEUT: So go ahead. What is the law of obligations? What are we talking about today?
JURIST: The law of obligations deals with how people can incur debts among themselves. It is interesting that the Anglo-Saxons programmatically leave out the concept of guilt. In German, ‘Schulden’ (debt) and ‘Schuld’ (guilt) have the same etymological roots. It’s obvious: if you incur debt, you incur guilt. That’s pietistic Protestantism. Quite different in English: ‘debt’ is debt, ‘guilt’ is guilt. Perhaps this explains why the City of London has such a relaxed relationship with debt.
In German, ‘Schulden’ (debt) and ‘Schuld’ (guilt) have the same etymological roots,
in English: ‘debt’ is debt, ‘guilt’ is guilt.
THERAPIST: But why do we have to owe each other something in the legal sense?
LAWYER: The legal concept of debt goes back to Roman law. At that time, a highly developed form of social exchange emerged for the first time. This presupposes the existence of organisation. There were two types of lawsuits:
- „Actio in rem“ (action on a matter): From this, ownership developed. What belongs to whom?
- “Actio in personam“ (action concerning a person): From this, the contract and thus the debt has developed. Who owes what to whom?
THERAPEUT: What actually is a contract?
JURIST: A legally protected bond between people. Legally protected means that some authority ensures its enforcement.
The possibility of creating a legally protected bond between people is a major cultural innovation.
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A barter is the mother of all contracts.
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A regulated debt system allows the division of labour to be fixed over time. The work done is given a constant and tradable value.
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- Meeting of the Minds: close to law of obligation.
- Unauthorised action: close to criminal law.
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„Help we are sinking!“
„Let me think for you!“
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- between Adam and Eve: the «I» is different from the «you».
- between them and God: The «I» is different from the perfect.
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- I am unique: not the same as the others
- Not perfect (not the same as God)
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Recognising limits and boundaries and taking responsibility for them: That is what shame is.
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Guilt is created in the other person, in order to relieve one’s own sense of shame.
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Everybody loves Raymond, S5 E13, Superbowl,
©2000, Worldwide-Pants-Incorporated and HBO-Independent-Productions
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Expectations are the waiting room for feelings of guilt.
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Shame is an intimate feeling that is difficult to describe. Guilt, on the other hand, is a thought that is easier to put into words and communicate
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The sense of guilt has a frame of reference and presupposes a network of relationships (you, family, society).
Feelings of guilt are a cognitive abstraction of feelings of shame.
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God asks Adam: ‘Where are you?’ Adam replies: ‘I hid because I was naked.’
God asks Cain: ’Where is your brother Abel?……what have you done?’
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If I kill someone in my dream, I feel ashamed in the morning –
if I tell someone about the dream, I feel guilty –
if I kill someone in real life, I am really guilty.
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Commercial for Condoms „Jonny’s“.
Year unknown, source YouTube
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In this way the shamed person becomes the guilty one. He wants to eliminate diversity from the world. Those who are not like me are not allowed to be.
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It is the inner judge that drives to end dependency and regain autonomy.
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Bond vs. Autonomy: the mother of all conflicts.
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A balance between commitment and autonomy
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… guilt frees you from shame…
… guilt is like superglue…
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We are now also interested in how the debt professionals, the economists, view the topic of debt.
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When a company goes bankrupt, the resources it has tied up become available again and can be used by other, better companies.
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Excerpt from the political thriller: «The International“.
Director Tom Tykwer, 2009. Source: YouTube.
Infos über Film auf Wikipedia
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Public finances are the political commons.
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And at some point, inflation will set in and eat away at the debt, and unfortunately also at the value of the savings.
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LAWYER: So, to summarise from my point of view: debts release relationships from the here and now, making them abstract and thus tradable. Only in this way is it possible to share the workload of economic activity.
PSYCHOTHERAPIST: But be careful when using ‘superglue’. Sometimes you can’t get it off your fingers.