Richard Lloyd Jones: I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Back when I was a kid playing street hockey in my hometown, a couple of Dutch immigrant kids came out hoping to join us. They were carrying hockey sticks their father had made by nailing a piece of wood to long broom handles. These makeshift sticks were far from the sleek, black-taped, store-bought babies the rest of us were sporting, and my friends were lavish in the derision they heaped on the poor guys who retreated, humiliated, back to their rented house.
It was the shattered look on their faces that I remember even to this day. I felt so guilty I stopped playing and walked down to their house to apologize. It's a powerful feeling, guilt. It can keep us up at nights. It can make us sick. A police detective here in Brazil told me he thinks guilt may be the reason criminals leave clues so they get caught.
Today, though, we're counseled to mitigate our guilt. Not being able to manage our guilt feelings is actually considered detrimental to our mental health. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Even psychopaths feel guilty. Today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. Well, we're finally back on another episode of our Thinking with Somebody Else's Head podcast based on the groundbreaking science of Analytical Trilogy developed by a great Brazilian scientist named Norberto Keppe.
I'm really sorry about the infrequency of our programs. We've been really busy down here with our new educational initiatives. Our new university and our expanding post-grad programs, and, of course, our very dynamic language institute here in São Paulo, where we apply Norberto Keppe's psychosocio-scientific discoveries to help students overcome learning blocks and so learn language faster. That's really ground-level, practical work that I'm involved in for many hours of my day, so I don't get to producing programs as often as I'd like.
I think I'm explaining a lot because I feel guilty, right? The subject of our show today. Well, one thing that would help us a lot, of course, is to hear back from you. If you are liking what we do here on our program, please do drop me a line. It encourages us. Rich at richjonesvoice.com. I remember back along the way doing some personal development training and hearing about the concept of the necessity to go inside and forgive ourselves for our missteps in life.
Now, I know recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous focus a lot on guilt and shame. And we should keep in mind AA's conscious attention to that. Because they're perhaps a model of the importance of dealing with guilt and shame for real success in healing dependency. However, our modern psychological orientation seems to have introduced a suspicion and mistrust of moralism that has weakened our willingness to consider guilt as an important step on the road to self-awareness and mental health.
Guilt carries with it, doesn't it, the perception of restriction and punishment. You shouldn't have done that, the church lady inside all of us admonishes, and we dismiss the guilt as something imposed on us. So where does this concept of forgiving ourselves fit then in this equation that I'm talking about? Well I'm going to suggest that it's overly simplistic at best and woefully misguided at worst.
Because feeling guilty about something implies wrongdoing occurred at some point in the process. There was something I did that was not right and I have this internal monitor that's sounding the alarm about that. I would maintain that this is not externally governed, that I'd feel bad about my wrongdoing even if no one else saw it. And it's important that I feel those feelings, you know, or I run the risk of bad actions becoming normal over time to the point where my internal compass is so miscalibrated that I'm in danger of being permanently morally impaired but thinking it normal.
I understand the advice to go inside and forgive yourself for all those lousy deeds and thoughts. I understand that, but I think this philosophy wrongly stems from the belief that the guilt feelings are bad for us, crippling in some sort of existentialist way, which is not actually what guilt feelings do, in fact. No, they're a way through to cleansing and honesty, and there's only freedom in that.
Well, maybe that's enough to say about the idea of guilt feelings here at the beginning, but Dr. Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco will join me after the break to expand significantly and intelligently on guilt. When Thinking with Somebody Else's Head continues in just a moment on the Stop Radio Network. You're
listening to the most relevant conversations on the planet about how to stop destroying ourselves and the world.
Richard: The most original, contemporaneous writer in the world today, says the National Scientific Research Center in France. A genuine contributor to the intellectual treasury of civilization, says former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Gugassian. For these times of uncertainty and conflict comes a work of extraordinary vision, hope, and moral clarity. Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist Norberto Keppe writes with wisdom and authority about the things that really matter.
How to heal illness. How inverted science is leading the destruction of nature and what to do about it. Finding spirituality within. Structuring a truly just society. There are more than 3,000 books published worldwide every day. None are more important than these. The books of Norberto Keppe. Trilogical Science leading us to a new world.
To know thyself as Socrates intended depends on our awareness of envy.
Norberto Keppe.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Disinverting the human being and society.
Richard: The program is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head on the Stop Radio Network. Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco with us again. Hello, Cláudia. Hello, Richard. Nice to see you.
Cláudia: Hello, everybody.
Richard: Nice to hear you, actually. I'm hearing you more than see you because you're hidden behind
Cláudia: a mic stand here. I love this studio, Richard.
I love it. I would like someday to record a video of our talks, but I feel much
Richard: better just on the radio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel more relaxed. Yeah, I know. Television adds this other element of my nose is too big or my
Cláudia: ears are sticking out. And people can imagine us
Richard: the way they please. I love radio for that reason, yes.
Cláudia: We used
Richard: to say he has a perfect face for radio. I was at a very interesting event on Sunday. I went to the Municipal Museum of São Paulo, MASPI, here to see the Tarsila do Amaral presentation. Tarsila, I believe, is related to you, is she not?
Cláudia: Yes, she was cousin of my mother, my mother's cousin.
Richard: Your mother's cousin. So that's a relationship.
And she's one of the, if not the, most important painter in Brazil, maybe. She is. Indeed. And we were there with about 15 students doing a cultural tour and leading them through the exhibition. I was impressed with the quality of the exhibition, Cláudia. I was really impressed with the curator of the show. Put together a phenomenal presentation. Really good texts in Portuguese and English, so I could actually understand them.
And really good organization of the pictures. Beautiful. But I was thinking. And then I was looking out at Paulista Avenue. And at 10 o'clock every Sunday, they close Paulista to traffic and open it to pedestrians and people cycling. And they have music presentations and various hippies out there selling their goods.
Cláudia: Did you enjoy it?
Richard: I was very struck with the fact that Paulista Avenue could be a beautiful idea, but they don't lift the level
Cláudia: very much.
Inside Maspy, it's a very high level. And out
on Paulista, it's like a lot of heavy metal kind of electronic music. And, you know,
Richard: it's a chance for something really healthy, not only physically with bikes and jogging and that, but there's an opportunity to lift the soul of people. And they don't take
Cláudia: that opportunity. And what they have there is built upon something that was built much before they went there.
I mean, people who constructed, who built this avenue and the buildings. By the way, before there were the palaces that were in Paulista Avenue was really, really beautiful. Now I
Richard: guess they're banks, right?
Cláudia: Yeah, this is very sad because it was a testimonial from our culture, from all the immigrants that came to Brazil, mostly Italians, some Arabs. They built wonderful palaces in Paulista Avenue, and they were destroyed to build banks.
But now it's even worse because, as you said, they use what was built before in a very poor, poor cultural and low-level
Richard: way of putting things. The area. It's like we've... It's
Cláudia: an entropy. It's
Richard: an entropy. I was saying to the students, you know, we live so much in a horizontal world. We have a horizontal relationship. So we're really developed in food, in sexuality, in money.
We're really developed, so-called developed in those areas, you know, the horizontal relationship. But we have almost no verticality, if that's even a word in English. We don't have any sense of higher purpose. This
Cláudia: is happening in Paris. This is happening in other capitals of the world where people are really in entropy. Now, let me tell you something, Richard. When we take care of money, food, sex, material goods, if we really take care of this, we would not be in such an entropy as we are now.
We are even in lower level. We are not in an horizontal. We are in a descendant level.
Richard: The bottom of the well, sort
Cláudia: of. Yes, we are gravitational now in humanity. We are not in the neutral point, like equilibrium. No, we are in gravitational energy, and we are in a very high speed going down and down and down.
Richard: There's no ascensory
Cláudia: to lift us up.
No energy in that way. So as we abandon all spirituality, and we are abandoning it day by day, we go down. We don't stay horizontal. We go
Richard: very deep. Even worse than horizontal.
Cláudia: We are worse than horizontal. So
Richard: I was capturing that in a partial way, not completely understanding. Because
Cláudia: we are not really good in food. Right. We used to be. Right.
We are not good in sex anymore. True.
Richard: We used to be much better. The only technique of sexuality, but we don't have any… But
Cláudia: the enjoyment went away. Yeah. The enjoyment, the romance.
Richard: There's even paranoia in sexuality now.
Cláudia: Yes. And that's because humanity got an attitude of its governors or the powerful. People who govern the people are very much psychopaths, very much psychopaths.
And people got very much psychopaths also.
Richard: So what
Cláudia: does it mean to be a psychopath? It's an absolute egotism. The world must work for me and serve me. I use the world. It's a utilitary relationship. I use the world as it is like what is best for me. It doesn't mean that it's the best in itself, but what I think it's best for me.
Relationships. I use the other. What I think, it's for my pleasure, for my interest.
Richard: My success, my development.
Cláudia: Whatever. So in this egotism, in this self-centered movement, people lost empathy, mercy, love, romance. People lost all sense of romance. And so this made life much, much poorer.
Richard: Without
Cláudia: color, without arts, without feeling. And one of the characteristics of people now is the psychopath characteristic, which is the incapacity to feel.
Yeah, no empathy anymore. And to feel feelings. So people, if they don't feel anymore, any feelings, they don't feel gratitude, they don't feel happiness, they don't feel satisfaction. They don't feel nothing which is good. They can't feel either. They feel hatred. It's more an emotion. Frustration. Frustration. But the good feelings went away in
Richard: this attitude. What a wise comment. I was imagining it like, I was thinking as you were speaking of individuality.
It's one of the dialectics in Malachi Martin's book about exorcism. And one of the cases of exorcism in his book, Hostage to the Devil, he has five cases in there. One of the, I'm calling it a dialectic he has in there is that there's an extreme individuality, much beyond personal. It's like you can't interfere with my desire, what I want to do.
If you interfere with that, I have the right to do whatever it takes to stop you from that. It's like an individualism much above the normal idea.
Cláudia: And this is the disintegration, disaggregation, disintegration.
Richard: Of the human soul, isn't it? Of
Cláudia: humanity. Of humanity, okay. Yeah, and human soul as well. Yeah, yeah. So people don't have any connections any longer. They don't connect.
You know, in Greek, the word Satan or devil means that one, the one who entered in the middle to separate, to split, to divide. So the devil, diabolos, diabolic, means the one who enters in the
Richard: middle to
Cláudia: separate. So that's what Satan did. To us and God, to Adam and Eve,
Richard: and since then, we don't belong anymore to each other as the same flesh as it should be.
We're fractured somehow. Yeah.
Cláudia: Split apart. And women and men, they are very much like in, they are rivals more than friends. This rivalry is present in all relationships, men and women. So that's where Satan takes his advantage because then he can control better each one and he relieves his envy. He can't stand seeing anyone loving each other or having fun or having a good life, you know.
So all that we do now leads us to have a horrible life, horrible quality of life,
Richard: no enjoyment. Look
Cláudia: at that. We were
Richard: talking last time about how these demonic ideas have infiltrated. And there's one, this idea of rivalry.
Cláudia: They put it in companies now. They think that if the company has competition between the people in the department, they're going to have more productivity.
It's built. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's unbelievable. All upside down. All upside down. Now, something that a psychopath can't stand is feeling their guilt. They can't stand feelings of guilt.
Richard: Do they have feelings of guilt, actually, does a psychopath have?
Cláudia: It's impossible for any human not to have the notion of their sins or their wrong or evil deeds. It's impossible. But they can and they do deny the chance to feel, to suffer the feelings of guilt.
They have them, but you know what happens? Because they can't stand feeling the guilt, and they get very much anxious because of this, they project the guilt onto others. That's what Satan did to us. We are the guilty ones for everything he has to suffer.
Richard: His decision.
Cláudia: We and God are the guilty ones. So he blames us and God all the time for our stupidity of not being able to make him happy.
But putting this in a more human level of relationships, Richard, what usually happens? People don't want to feel their guilts. Right. We have feelings of guilt every day, all the time, because we do many things that are wrong and that are ill-intentioned. They are nasty. We can be nasty. We can hurt people. We can be dishonest. We have lots of feelings of guilt that we should feel every day.
Richard: We can be cowards. We can be many things.
Cláudia: Yeah, we lie. Yes. We deceive. Yes. We cheat.
We betray friends. We cheat people.
Cláudia: That's how human beings are. We are merciless. We see people suffering around us and people don't care. We don't
Richard: we don't
Cláudia: forgive. Yeah all those
Richard: areas you mentioned are exactly what human beings do. Yeah and then we project that.
The the reason for
Cláudia: that is we don't as people don't human beings can't stand feeling the guilt. What happens in practice? They project and put the blame on others. And those who are near or nearest them or those who they have more some kind of link, emotional or any kind of link, they tend to blame and to dump their guilt and their garbage, the inner garbage on others.
So imagine. And this is a speciality of women. They have, in their daily lives, they have their feelings of guilt. Because everybody has. But they don't want to feel them. And more and more humanity doesn't want to feel them. So they feel anxious. So they feel guilty. They feel anxious. They hide from their own consciousness, the thing. And this discomfort, not being able to relax, to feel happy, then they start looking around them who they are going to blame, who's to be blamed.
Who is doing this to me? The
Richard: guy who steps
Cláudia: inside the house and enters the door and say, hello, dear, how was your day? Finally,
Richard: you've arrived. Oh,
Cláudia: my God. And then dumping on the husband, sometimes on the children, many times on the children. But now, let me tell you, this poor guy, he had a very difficult time in his work. And everybody suffers in the world to stay alive, to make the living.
So they come tired and they suffered during the day. But women have the idea that they don't have anything to suffer, any reason to suffer. They have a wonderful life. They have an incredible time. They are like having fun all the time, but they, the women, don't. They have to suffer because they have to bear the problems with the children, and they have the problems in the house, and sometimes also the problems in their jobs.
Their work, yeah. So they think, my life is miserable, and my husband's life or my boyfriend's life is incredible.
Richard: He's having fun. He has it easy.
Cláudia: Yes. He has it easy and I have it
Richard: difficult. Why? Because generally they
Cláudia: have like a smile or they have an intention to have a nice time coming back home. But when they come, they step inside their houses.
They step in. The fight starts. Or the silence, the heavy silence, the angry silence, the resented silence, and that resentful look. So, what do I want to say? That poor guy that has plenty of problems and feelings of guilt himself, because he's also miserable. Sure. He comes with his misery, and then the woman dumps her misery and accuses him of what she's suffering.
So, how can he bear this? He has his own feelings of guilt because he has his problems. But then she doesn't accept her own. And when she dumps, the guy can't stand, he can't bear that dumping onto him. So the result is he's going to drink, he's becoming alcoholic, he's becoming violent because then, hey, come on, stop. I can't bear this any longer.
Or they move. They run away.
Richard: I wanted to say that for the men it's guilt, but it's also many times a feeling of inadequacy already. The man already feels,
Cláudia: I'm not doing enough, I'm a loser. And this is a feeling of guilt?
Richard: Yes, okay. Not
Cláudia: normal, I mean, not really guilt, but they feel guilty. They feel bad for that. Yeah.
Richard: And so women, and maybe this can happen in families too, start to sort of accuse the guy of his inadequacy.
You're a loser. In a
Cláudia: sense, it's like this. You're not a man. You don't know how to be a man.
Richard: You've never been. So
Cláudia: all her guilt that she's not feeling of her own inadequacy, her incapacity, her wrongdoings, all this that she doesn't feel in herself, she dumps onto him all the time. So women accuse much more than men. They blame other people.
They blame their husbands. They blame their children. They blame their family, their friends. They blame everybody. Now, man may blame the world or society, but when we speak about relationships, it becomes unbearable to have someone accusing you all the time. If you have your own burden to carry, then you have to carry your own burden and the other person's burden.
Richard: And the excuse the women use is they have to do everything, right?
That I have to work and then I have to clean the house and I have to look after the kids and the guy comes home and watches his football game.
Cláudia: But who supports generally the House, in majority?
Richard: I don't know about modern times. Certainly my generation is much more the men, but I don't know about today. I don't know the statistics about that.
Cláudia: We should look for the statistics.
Richard: It's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. I think women are paying their way much more, obviously, than in the past. I shouldn't say they're paying their way. They always paid their way at looking after the
Cláudia: House and stuff. But in terms of paying the bills, I think women are shouldering much more of that burden today. But still there's this idea that women have it easier.
This resentment that women have. That men have it easier.
Richard: I'm a saint. I'm a victim. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
Cláudia: And we don't realize our unsatisfaction and our anxiety comes from this unwillingness of feeling our guilt.
Richard: That is so interesting because we don't want to feel. You said it before. We're not feeling because of this, what did you say, this movement down. We're very gravitational.
We're being
Cláudia: pulled down beyond the horizontal, below the horizontal. Below, below.
Richard: Dr. Keppe said in his book, his new book, Sociotherapy and Exorcism, we've debased ourselves to the level of animals, destroying almost all that's spiritual within ourselves.
Cláudia: This is what I was feeling on Sunday. And you may ask, what are so much guilt that women can have, for instance? I can name a few, but one of the most frequent is the impatience with their children.
They scream and they get very much emotional against their children a lot of the time. And so they want to have children, but they don't want
Richard: to have the
Cláudia: problems and the difficulties in having affection to raise children. It's not easy. So they scream and they blame and they fight. And they
Richard: feel bad about that. Oh sure,
Cláudia: sure. But then they can't stand seeing this negativity in themselves.
So they come with the excuses. No, I am nervous because of other people, because of my husband, because of this and that and that and what happened. If this serves to the man also, it will be very good.
Richard: We can't stand seeing our difficulties in ourselves. So we project out to spouses and children and everything else around us. How could that not be beneficial to women and men?
It's a basic psychological principle, isn't it? But the point here that our bad feelings are linked to our unacknowledged guilt feelings, that's something new, isn't it? Important consciousness. Let me know if that's making sense for you. Love to hear back. Rich at richjonesvoice.com. Well, that's our program for this time. The program is Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. We're on the Stop Radio Network.
Look forward to talking to you next time. Bye-bye for now.
Our work on the Stop Radio Network is based on the landmark psychological and philosophical science of Analytical Trilogy, developed by Brazilian psychoanalyst and social scientist, Norberto Keppe. This is a comprehensive science that offers perspectives on every area of human endeavor.
We expand on this extensively in our flagship program, Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. And we offer many other resources for your development, including radio and TV programs, an extensive library of books, psychoanalysis sessions worldwide, teleclasses, conferences and lectures, and volunteer social programs.
In a world where women have struggled to discover themselves and their true purpose, she started to reject herself,
Cláudia: her essence.
She started to see in herself, in her femininity, something inferior. Comes a book that frees them to be what they were destined to be. A woman is a link between man and God because of the intuitive and
spiritual aspect and the feeling. Cláudia Pacheco's Women on the Couch, an incisive analysis of women's psychology that lays out what's gone wrong. We have this big inversion
Cláudia: inside of ourselves that lead us to think that being a woman is not good, is inferior.
We don't want to serve. We don't want to be submissive to God, to beauty, to truth, to goodness. And how women can get back on track. But I understand that the only way for us to free ourselves is to serve, to be useful,
and to grow. Cláudia Pacheco's Women on the Couch.
