ABSTRACT
This chapter is a mythological/archetypal exploration of the concept of guilt as a sometimes necessary psychological experience in the process of individuation. In differentiating guilt from shame, it brings to light the question of if, and how, freedom from shame in the embrace of one’s guilt in certain situations serves as a “necessary” part of experience that can serve to open the psyche to expansion towards wholeness on the path of individuation. It addresses C.G. Jung’s assertion that embracing, rather than denying and repressing, one’s guilt serves to free an individual to acknowledge aspects of shadow and presents an opportunity for expansion of personality and transformative potential. Addressing James Hillmann’s essay on betrayal and examples of “good guilt” in the likes of the myth of Prometheus or US civil rights legend John Lewis’s call for “good trouble,” it is an attempt to show that guilt, an unavoidable aspect of the human psychic experience, can be freed from shame and turned around to serve a teleogical (and not only destructive, as often is the case) purpose in individuation.
