The Victim’s False Guilt

On how the person who is harmed may come to carry what another has done

One of the most unjust things about guilt is that it does not always remain where it belongs.

It can move.

It can leave the person who acted wrongly and attach itself to the one who was harmed. It can remain as unrest, shame, self-reproach, and silence in a person who, in truth, had no guilt. This is how the victim’s false guilt arises.

This is one of the most painful distortions of guilt. The person who was violated begins to ask: Why did I not say anything? Why did I go there? Why did I trust him? Why did I not understand? Why did I not resist? Why did I not tell someone earlier?

Such questions may sound like moral reflection. But often they are traces of power, fear, shock, and confusion. They may be attempts to create order in something unbearable. If I can only find my own part in it, perhaps I can understand why it happened. If I could have done something differently, perhaps the world was not as dangerous as it turned out to be.

False guilt can therefore give an illusion of control.

It is less frightening to think that I should have acted differently than to recognize that another person had the power to violate me. It is less unbearable to accuse oneself than to fully see what the other person did. For this reason, the victim’s guilt feeling can sometimes become a protection against an even deeper recognition: I was subjected to something I could not control.

But protection is not the same as truth.

Guilt must be placed according to responsibility, not according to pain. The one who feels the most guilt is not necessarily the one who is guilty. The one who lies awake at night is not necessarily the one who has done wrong. The one who feels shame is not necessarily the one who ought to feel shame.

Paul Leer-Salvesen’s distinction between guilt and guilt feeling is crucial here. Guilt feeling may exist where guilt is absent. Guilt may exist where guilt feeling is absent. Therefore guilt feeling must be interpreted. It must not simply be confirmed because it feels strong.

The victim’s false guilt often arises in situations where the balance of power is unequal.

The child in relation to the adult. The patient in relation to the therapist. The pupil in relation to the teacher. The employee in relation to the leader. The person in need of help in relation to the system. The economically dependent person in relation to the one who controls the resources. The one who seeks recognition, love, or protection in relation to the one who misuses trust.

In such relationships, responsibility can become unclear to the person who is harmed. Not because responsibility is actually unclear, but because power makes reality difficult to interpret. The one who has power can define the situation. He can say that this was normal, necessary, lovingly meant, professionally justified, a misunderstanding, or the victim’s own fault.

In this way, the violation may be followed by an interpretation that makes the violated person partly guilty.

This is especially serious. For the violation does not happen only in the act itself. It can continue in the language afterward. When the victim is told, directly or indirectly, that he or she should have understood, should have said no, should have left, should have reported it, should have reacted differently, some of the responsibility is moved away from the one who acted wrongly.

Then language becomes a new burden.

This does not mean that human situations are always simple. There are conflicts in which both parties have responsibility. There are relationships in which guilt and responsibility are complex. But in the face of violence, abuse, manipulation, and serious misuse of power, we must guard against false symmetry. Not everything is mutual. Not every violation is a conflict. Not every silence is consent. Not all survival looks like resistance.

The one who freezes does not always flee. The one who remains silent does not always consent. The one who stays does not always choose freely.

This must be said clearly, because the victim’s false guilt is often nourished by hindsight. Afterward, everything may look different. Afterward, one can imagine every possible way out. Afterward, one can formulate sentences one was not able to say. Afterward, one can see warning signs one did not see then. But afterward is not the same as then.

In the situation itself, a person may be afraid, confused, dependent, bound by loyalty, or unable to understand what is happening. Children in particular often interpret the world through the eyes of the adult. If the adult does something wrong, the child may more easily think that he or she is wrong than that the adult is guilty.

The child needs the adult in order to understand the world. Therefore it can be almost impossible for the child to place guilt with the adult on whom he or she is also dependent.

In this way, false guilt can take root early.

Later, it can become part of one’s self-understanding. The person no longer says only: I should have done something differently. The person begins to say: There must be something wrong with me. Here guilt slips into shame. Guilt concerns what one has done. Shame concerns who one is. False guilt becomes especially destructive when it becomes shame, because then the whole person is placed under judgment.

Then the question is no longer: What happened?

The question becomes: What is wrong with me?

This is a serious shift. As long as one asks what happened, responsibility can be examined. But when the whole self is made guilty, it becomes difficult to distinguish between action, experience, and identity. The person who was violated may come to carry the violation as proof of his or her own unworthiness.

Then injustice has entered the self-image.

In professional work, this is a crucial point. The person who meets people who carry false guilt must be careful with language. It is possible to ask questions that open, but also questions that accuse. “Why did you not leave?” may sound like a neutral question, but for someone who already carries guilt, it may sound like a judgment. “Why did you not say anything earlier?” may reinforce a silence that is already painful.

This does not mean that we should not investigate. But we must know what we are investigating.

We must not investigate in a way that moves responsibility from the one who acted wrongly to the one who was harmed. We must not turn the victim’s reaction into the cause. We must not turn survival strategies into moral failure. We must not turn the child’s silence, the victim’s confusion, or the vulnerable person’s dependence into complicity.

To place guilt correctly is therefore an ethical act.

It can be a form of redress. Not full redress, because what happened cannot always be undone. But a first form of justice may lie in giving reality a truthful language: This was done to you. It was not your fault. The responsibility belongs to the one who violated, the one who exploited, the one who knew, the one who should have understood, the one who had a duty to protect.

Such sentences may seem simple. But they can open a space in which the violated person no longer has to carry everything alone.

In the understanding of Baumeister, Stillwell, and Heatherton, guilt is closely connected to relationships. Guilt does not arise only inside the individual, but between people. This is an important point here as well. False guilt is not only a private error in the victim’s inner life. It can be created and maintained in relationships, families, institutions, and cultures. It can live in glances, hints, silence, and questions that are never asked of the guilty person.

Sometimes the guilty person is protected by the surroundings.

Not always consciously. Not always with evil intent. But through the need for peace, appearance, loyalty, or order, the community may come to press the victim into silence. It can be easier to tolerate the victim’s guilt feeling than the perpetrator’s responsibility. It can be easier to ask why the victim did not speak up than to ask why no one wanted to listen.

In this way, false guilt can become socially organized.

It may be carried by one person, but created by many. The family that does not want to know. The workplace that wants to move on. The profession that protects its reputation. The institution that fears responsibility. The community that asks the victim to put it behind them before the truth has been spoken.

Then the victim’s false guilt becomes part of a larger moral failure.

This is why practical philosophy cannot be content with saying that the individual must work with his or her guilt feeling. The question is also: Who benefits from this person feeling guilty? Who escapes responsibility when the victim accuses himself or herself? Which relationships, institutions, or narratives are maintained by guilt remaining in the wrong place?

These are uncomfortable questions. But they are necessary.

For false guilt can have a function. It can protect the guilty person. It can protect the surroundings from conflict. It can protect the institution from responsibility. It can protect the family from collapse. But it does not protect the one who carries it. It binds the person to a story that is not true.

Judith Herman shows in her understanding of trauma how important it is that abuse and violence are not understood only as individual experiences, but also as experiences that require truth, safety, and restored connection. The person who has been violated does not first of all need pressure to forgive or move on. What is needed first is safety and a language that does not distort responsibility.

Truth must come before reconciliation.

This does not mean that truth alone heals. But without truth, there can be no just working-through. If the victim must build life forward on a lie about his or her own guilt, the wound remains open in another way. Then the past is not only something that happened, but something that is repeated again and again in self-reproach.

The victim’s false guilt must therefore be contradicted.

Not brutally. Not moralistically. Not by saying that the person “must simply stop feeling that way.” Feelings do not disappear because others correct them. But they can slowly lose their authority when met with truth, care, and clear responsibility. The false guilt feeling may still be felt, but it no longer needs to have the final word.

A person can learn to say: I feel guilt, but that does not mean I was guilty.

That is an important sentence.

It creates distance between the feeling and the judgment. It opens the possibility that the body may carry old traces, while reason, language, and community help to place responsibility correctly. It says that the experience is real, but that the experience’s own interpretation is not always true.

This is not an easy path.

False guilt can be persistent. It can return in certain situations, in encounters with authorities, through criticism, in close relationships, in the silence of the night. It can be activated by small signs that recall the old violation. Therefore the work with false guilt must often be patient. It is not only about understanding once and for all. It is about repeating the truth until it slowly takes hold.

The truth is: The person who was harmed must not carry the guilt of the guilty person.

This is not only therapeutic language. It is moral language. It concerns justice. It concerns human dignity. It concerns preventing injustice from being completed by making the violated person responsible for the violation as well.

At the same time, we must be careful with the word victim. Some need the word because it says something true: I was subjected to something. I was not guilty. Others do not want to remain in the position of victim. They may prefer to be spoken of as survivors, as those who were harmed, as those who were affected, or simply as human beings. This must be respected.

But regardless of which word we use, responsibility must be placed.

Not being guilty does not mean being weak. Having been harmed does not mean being reduced to what happened. Carrying reactions does not mean being destroyed. It means that a human being is trying to live on after something that should not have happened.

False guilt must therefore be lifted away without taking the experience away from the person.

This is a delicate balance. One must not say: This means nothing. For it may have meant everything. One must not say: Forget it. For the body and memory do not forget on command. Nor must one say: You must forgive. For forgiveness can never be demanded. But one can say: The guilt was not yours. The responsibility was not yours. What happened to you does not tell the truth about your worth.

This may be the beginning of a more truthful story.

The victim’s false guilt is therefore not only a psychological phenomenon. It is an ethical and social phenomenon. It shows what happens when guilt becomes detached from responsibility and attaches itself to the one who has already been harmed. It shows how dangerous it is when feeling is confused with moral truth. It shows how important it is that other people, professions, and communities dare to place responsibility where it belongs.

For the placement of guilt is never indifferent.

When guilt is placed wrongly, injustice deepens. When guilt is placed correctly, something may begin to loosen. Not everything. Not immediately. Not without pain. But something.

The one who carried another person’s guilt may begin to lay it down.

The guilty person does not become innocent because the victim feels guilty.

The victim does not become guilty because the guilt feels true.

And a community does not become just until it dares to say the difference aloud.

It was not your fault.

It is a simple sentence.

But sometimes it is the beginning of freedom.

References

Baumeister, R. F., Stillwell, A. M., & Heatherton, T. F. (1994). Guilt: An interpersonal approach. Psychological Bulletin, 115(2), 243–267. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.115.2.243

Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence: From domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.

Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of trauma. Free Press.

Leer-Salvesen, P. (1991). Menneske og straff: En refleksjon om skyld og straff som et bidrag til arbeidet med straffens etikk [Human beings and punishment: A reflection on guilt and punishment as a contribution to the ethics of punishment]. Universitetsforlaget.

Tangney, J. P., & Dearing, R. L. (2002). Shame and guilt. Guilford Press.