Guilt

Because dealing with guilt and morality often makes even counselors uncomfortable, it is useful to reexamine this common experience. Quite often clients even begin with remarks about unworthiness; how counselors respond to this beginning can have crucial significance for the course of therapy. There is a useful and constructive function of morality in socialization. There is also distorted and nonfunctional guilt. We now have a complex view of moral responsibility with many levels of accountability on a freedom-determinism continuum. Once we have made a diagnosis concerning guilt, we need to proceed to appropriate treatment or else the very issue the client came to work on may be bypassed.