Sharing a feeling of guilt, and thereby being less alone with it, is a motive force in both art and joke-telling while it is also possible to "borrow" a sense of guilt from someone who is seen as in the wrong, and thereby assuage one's own. Alternatively, not the guilt, but the condemning agency itself, may be projected onto other people, in the hope that they will look upon one's deeds more favorably than one's own conscience (a process that verges on ideas of reference). It may take the form of blaming the victim: The victim of someone else's accident or bad luck may be offered criticism, the theory being that the victim may be at fault for having attracted the other person's hostility. Projection is another defensive tool with wide applications. If the defence fails, then (in a return of the repressed) one may begin to feel guilty years later for actions lightly committed at the time.
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