ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to provide a theoretical overview of different approaches to the problem and to direct contemplation of the nature of emotional experience, its socio-cultural function, and the inter-relation of the domains. Ritual cleansing and ablution serve not only the function of ridding the individual of the sinful blemish but reinforce for the social group the sometimes ambivalent pole of the Sacred and Profane. In the Catholic faith, the relationship of God and Man is mediated by the church. Whose provenance and privilege it is to observe the rituals of the sacrament and by delivering absolution through confession restore the individual to grace. The numerous cultural manifestations of the experience of guilt, particularly in their religious form, have been alluded to; it is perhaps obvious that many of the rituals and practices of expiation which are given formal structure in the faiths derive from the need to achieve reparation.
