It’s a few days since I wrote about Milton Rokeach’s book The Three Christs of Ypsilanti and something is lingering with me still.  It takes a while to trace it back to Rokeach’s book and then, in turn, to its final pages.  Nor do I find it all in one place with a neat quote to share.  It is the difference between the feelings of shame and guilt.

Rokeach, sharing conclusions towards the end of the book, highlights the difference between two (whom he names Clyde and Joseph) whose feelings of shame seem to be linked to a sense of incompetence.  The third (whom he names Leon) has feelings of guilt which seem to be linked to forbidden impulses and the striving for goodness.  Something about this distinction is sitting with me.

Perhaps the quote I seek is contained in the final paragraph of Rokeach’s Afterword.  He says:

“I found out from my “teachers”, the three Christs of Ypsilanti, exactly in what sense they were trying to be God-like.  They were striving for goodness and greatness, and such strivings, I came to understand, are really the strivings of all human beings.  The main difference between the three of them and the rest of us who are also striving to be God-like is that whereas the rest of us can bring ourselves to admit the impossibility of our ever becoming absolute or infinitely moral or competent, the three Christs found it difficult to admit such an impossibility.  Nonetheless I learned that what all of us have in common with the three Christs is that we all strive to maintain and enhance our self-conceptions and self-presentations as competent and moral.  This is one of the major ways in which humans who would be Christ or Christ-like are distinctively different from other human beings”.

As I write I reflect on the implications of what Rokeach says.  It seems to me, for example, that having made this distinction, our feelings of guilt and shame can guide us to our deepest yearnings towards goodness and greatness.  And when the emotional charge is high, there is scope for us to understand the underlying beliefs we impose on ourselves and perhaps the disproportionately high expectations.

Equally, as leaders, observing such feelings in others, we are able to make finer distinctions for understanding that feelings of guilt reflect yearnings to do good, whilst feelings of shame reflect yearnings to be competent.  If we know what our staff may be telling themselves, including those things of which they may not be consciously aware, we know better how we might respond.

More deeply still, I notice that reflecting on this distinction stimulates compassion in me for self and others.  For surely such feelings reflect not only our yearnings and strivings, but also a lack of acceptance of – and compassion for – our fundamental human nature.

I wonder, what does this posting stimulate in you?