Abstract:
Guilt and feeling guilty are part of people's daily lives and are a universal fact. Religion is not the only source of guilt. New sources of guilt are produced daily. Guilt (objective) and feeling guilty (subjective) affect relationships with others, with God and with oneself. Only those who are pathologically compromised in their personality do not suffer its effects. Therefore, its relevance in therapeutic spaces. We then seek to carry out this qualitative research based on the bibliographic review of the literature, seeking to develop a theoretical study that helps in understanding the topics to be addressed. Conceptualizing guilt and feeling guilty became a challenge due to the term's inaccuracy. But what is guilt or feeling guilty? Accusation or self-accusation for an offense or fault? A burden that we carry? For this reason, we advance the paths of guilt in search of a concept that is closer to its meanings. We approach guilt modalities: real, neurotic, existential or of finiteness, collective, theological, anthropological or of existence and ethical guilt or value guilt. We also present, due to the link with religion, guilt from Freud’s approach, a precursor to this theme, where religion is not the primary cause of guilt, but would be related to neuroses; and Jung, who claims that the source of neuroses is the absence of the experience with the sacred. The research will confront us with the question: Is guilt or feeling guilty related to psychosomatic illnesses, especially psychodermatoses? The dichotomy between body and soul (mind) is one of the most intricate philosophical problems of modernity, but psychosomatics tries to resolve this issue from a more humanized, less Cartesian and mechanistic medicine. The disease may be the result of the screams of the soul. Guilt and feeling guilty are part of that cry, and in particular, psychodermatoses are expressions of that pain. Disease is of the human person and not just the result of a physiological imbalance. Psychosomatics calls us to pay more attention to this relationship between body and soul and Theology of the Body impels us to think about the human being as a whole. That is why we will bring to memory the history of the body, the theologies of the Old and New Testaments, with a strategic look at the Theology of Grace, which is the foundation of counseling as an "act of resurrection". Counseling is a welcoming attitude. It is relational and will involve the perception of the environment for those imprisoned by this guilt and psychosomatic diseases. Counseling is also a political act that involves liberation from individual and structural sin. In counseling as an "act of resurrection" we will examine the paths of forgiveness and self-forgiveness in the process of liberation and healing, present confession and repentance, rites and rituals and the audible declaration of forgiveness of sins as facilitators of the Christian counseling process or pastoral care as an “act of resurrection” based on the acceptance of the theology of grace.
