I find for example the distinction between guilt and shame hard to sustain. In broad, shame is more concerned with appearance, whilst guilt has to do with either 'real' guilt (ie having done wrong) or guit feelings, which may be rooted in all manner of misconceptions and issues of self-image.

And awful lot seems tied up with false expectations that we shouldn't be guilty, and these in turn with a social history of ideas around judgement, divine and otherwise, and damnation.

I think the research on withdrawal and motivation is very interesting and intuitively sounds true to life.

Incidentally if you're interested, my book, Guilt: an exploration comes out in February with O-Books
http://www.o-books.com/product_info.php?products_id=552 Thanks again - Caroline Brazier

On the other hand shame "implicates one's entire self-concept". The upshot being it's much more difficult to 'fix' shame.

I'll buy that until someone convinces me otherwise!

Anon #1: I haven't read A Separate Peace but I just looked it up on Amazon and having read a couple of reader reviews I can see why you picked up on that parallel. Interesting!

Anon #2: I think that's a fair criticism that different emotions probably interact with each other. It's challenging experimentally though.

Any discussion of guilt is devoid of meaning without a discussion of shame and the other innate affects.

It's time for Freudians to step-down and let the real researchers take over.

No offense, but one's intuition, unless it has been hone by many hours of dedicated attention such that your neural pathways have established well-developed patterns (our best guess is that it takes roughly 10,000 of dedication), is pretty much worthless in accurately assessing the social (and personal) environment. As a professor, I am quite skilled in monkeying about with my students' intuition, showing just how misleading it can be (for pedagogical reasons only, of course: I derive absolutely no enjoyment over their cries of protestation :-)

Psychology is based on systematic empiricism, a methodological approach based on repeatable measurements of observable phenomena to try to come to a conclusion as to causal relationship between the observable phenomena.

To do so, as contradictory as it may seem, we must often remove the individual from the equation. The individual is too complex to study, since there are too many variables (personality, history, etc) that comprise the human psychological organism. Our methods require us to examine people in general, and what they tend to do (and from what they do, we attempt to extrapolate what they think or feel, since cognitions and emotions are not directly observable).

The problem with your approach is that there is no systematic empiricism, and so your observations are forever grounded in your own biased perceptions of the universe (note: my perceptions of the universe are just as biased, but I use the tools of science to try to counter those).

For example, you refer to two dichotomies ("thinking:feeling", as well as "artist:scientist"): Are these real distinctions, or one of the categories we create to simplify our complex social world?

Ultimately, I view psychology as having little direct benefit to those who want to understand themselves in any specific sense. As a psychological scientist, there is next to nothing I can tell you about yourself with anything close to definitiveness. The most I can say is that we tend to use mental shortcuts, and we tend to behave in X fashion in Y situations, and it may be the result of Z reasons.

OK, as to guilt:

I have always viewed guilt as a manifestation of arrogance: The internalization of bad feelings grounded in the notion that the outcomes were based on your actions alone. There is no such thing as guilt without accepting a premise of power. Guilt is about the person feeling the guilt, and only that.

I don't think I have ever felt guilt. Of course, I can't be sure since we cannot directly measure emotions, just how they manifest (either biochemically or behaviorally).

Compare guilt to the notion of shame, the internalization of feeling bad grounded in one's relationship with others. Interestingly, there are some who suggest that shame has an evolutionary grounding.

I have felt shame many times in my life.

The difference is not just semantic here: Rather we are taking about a fundamental difference in the operation definition that has some important implications for the research.

When you ask about what I want from psychology, my answer is pretty simple. It's not a case of either or. Psychology gives me intellectual pleasure and it helps me think about personal issues. It would be hard for me to have one box in my brain filled with knowledge about psychology and stop it influencing all the other parts of my life.

Also, psychology studies are interactive - it's just the interactions are often with a number of people rather than just one at a time. Psychologists are generally looking for phenomena averaged over a number of people or within a particular sub-population.

Hang on! YOU feel guilt, I feel guilt, EACH OF US feels guilt...where is the place for personal, subjective insight in all this?
Basically, as a feeling-sided person, I can't hack long dissertations based on generalities; I respond to people and their personal experiences, because these touch me, move me, therefore interest me and hold my attention (emotional attention, I have to say).
To conclude - my position I think would be to say that whilst emotional i.e. feeling-sided people certainly need to be able to think, spirit- (i.e.thinking-) sided people need to be able to feel.
Another thought: this 'scientist':'artist' great divide also seems to be tied up with extroversion and introversion. For the extrovert, the answer is out there, for the introvert, it's in here. My intuitive sense of this situation is that we all lose out -because there is this great gulf, with two mutually uncomprehending groups/factions, camped one on either side and precious little bridge between the two.

To people like yourself with this -as I view it - academic approach, my question would be: what do you want? Is psychology some hobby which gives you intellectual pleasure, or is it about fundamental personal issues such as what goals should I aspire to, what prevents me achieving those goals, and how - if at all - can I deal with those obstacles? The cards which I referred to above are, it seems to me, fundamentally different to what you are doing in at least one important respect: they are interactive - if you really work with them, they are going to challenge you not just intellectually, but emotionally and practically.
Over to you....

Olenka, you're welcome - that's very nice of you to say!