ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with consideration of “regret” by delineating its phenomenological characteristics and differentiating it from the related affect of remorse. It traces the origins of regret and attempts to demonstrate the intricate scenarios of ontogenesis and “actual” missteps of adult life that undergird it. The chapter offers a brief sociocultural foray and addresses the clinical implications of the proposals made so far. The emotion of regret with its characteristics of hand-wringing and masochistic self-laceration is a captivating theme for fiction and poetry. Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past might have a greater dose of mourning and nostalgia but does contain a dollop of regret as well. Chronic regret includes intricate disturbances of ego and superego functioning. The impaired ego functions are evident via loss of flexibility in considering matters of the inner world and external reality and disturbances in the subjective experience of time which seems to have stopped, and masochistic submission to a life in bondage.
