The underlying dynamic state of guilt is ambivalence. Without understanding and resolving this state the patient or victim of guilt, the victim cannot be cured in the least. The sedative and tranquilizer pills may alleviate the acute symptoms of anxiety for the time being but these are utterly helpless in addressing the main problem that is ambivalence of mind of the victim based on good or bad.
Guilt is very painful emotion characterized by anxiety, shame, uncomfortable feeling, and above all, ambivalence. It is negative emotion. What is guilt? Guilt is intense and uncomfortable feeling of having done something wrong. The
victim constantly feels that he or she has committed a blunder or wrong which is unpardonable. It is a fixed feeling or fixed idea that goes on haunting the psyche of the victim constantly and endlessly. It is a mental condition of tormenting conflict and dilemma. The paradoxical state of mind is very excitable and the patient suffers from contrasting and conflicting emotions.She had already lived these paradoxical emotions in her childhood or adolescence and now she is only dwelling on them, reliving and ruminating these emotions in imagination. This is also called “guilt- brooding” .Some guilt ridden persons describe this confused and excited situation of mind by saying, “their brain is surrounded by thoughts or their brain is in controversy with them”. These ambivalent thoughts create lot of tension and anxiety in the mind of the patient. The living example of the guilt ridden ambivalent mind is:
“I had committed the wrong so I deserve punishment”. In the same breath the victim says, “I should not have done this sin, should I be given punishment for my sin”?.
What is ambivalence?
Ambivalence is mental state of conflicting ideas, indecisiveness, irresoluteness and confusion. It shows inconstancy of mind, wavering mind or attitude. The conflict in ambivalence is marked between two simultaneous and incompatible feelings. There are two connotations of ambivalence:
1The coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate, toward a person, object, or idea
2 Uncertainty or indecisiveness or irresoluteness as to which course to follow.
Ambivalence is state of mind what we experience when we have two opposing feelings/ conflicting thoughts simultaneously toward an individual, situation, or object. It is by product of guilt complex. The guilty mind becomes very wavering in taking decisions. Although it is common practice that all of us feel some degree of ambivalence in routine life mattes in onetime or the other but the ambivalent mind fixedly and obsessively clings to the situation or thought. The “morbid ambivalence” is what we see in guilt ridden mind. It may be termed as “malignant ambivalence “or “pathological ambivalence”. The ambivalent mind
goes on circling in clockwise and anti clockwise direction and that too simultaneously. The victim is always in controversy with the self. It may also be termed as “antagonism with the self”.To be more vivid, the ambivalence is a fixed feeling or fixed idea, recurring in nature, on something / some subject/some situation. It is conflicting and contrasting in nature. It is knotty network or complex of conflicting feelings and ideas. As the time passes the fixed feelings and fixed ideas go on changing but the ambivalence of mind remains unchanged. The patient becomes very monomaniac. His/ her whole behavior is characterized by different kinds of monomanias. She is obsessively fixed or preoccupied with some monomania that goes on repeating it.
The ambivalence generally revolves around sexual feelings/ sexual thoughts or religious feelings/ religious thoughts. The religious thoughts are diagonally in contradiction or in opposition with religious pattern of thought. The innocent and child like sexual feelings and urges are surging in the mind of the victim but the religious bent of mind of the victim is in constant efforts to depress and reject these unwanted and cherished feelings and tremendously tries to suppress and repress these powerful thoughts and feelings.
The part of the consciousness of the individual based and built on the moral standards and rigid religious ideas passes the judgment terming these as “dirty and sinful”. So there is constant and endless tug of war between “good leveled” and “dirty leveled” feeling/ thoughts in the psyche of the victim. The irony of fate is that the victim is totally oblivious to this conflict. Actually this tumultuous turmoil and conflict happens in the hidden and deep depths of psyche i.e. unconscious mind and .it rarely comes to the living awareness or consciousness of the patient. The task of the psychiatrist is to bring this conflict and turmoil to the conscious level or in the living awareness and memory of the patient. It is very tedious and gradual process of progression. When the victim becomes aware of the ambivalent condition of his psyche, than the patient is cured of guilt and its subsequent conflict of ambivalence. Thus the vicious cycle of guilt ridden ambivalent mind is broken permanently. The conflicting reactions to the object or situation are stopped.
