GUILT DERIVED FROM FAILURE TO MEET PARENTAL EXPECTATIONS
Infantile guilt provides the basis for two other types of guilt, guilt at failing to meet specific parental expectations and guilt at failing to meet societal expectations.
As an adult, you may experience guilt feelings just because you fail to please an authority figure or a person who is emotionally or otherwise important to you (infantile guilt). But you might also feel guilty for not living up to the specific expectations placed upon us by your parents or caretakers. Hence if your father was a meticulous gardener and instilled in you the value of maintaining a garden of the highest quality, as an adult, you might feel guilty, when you allow the weeds to take over your garden. Somewhere in the back of your mind your father’s voice (your superego) reminds you that you have failed to complete your gardening duties.
In some cases survivor guilt can be intensified by guilt for not having lived up to certain parental dictums or expectations. For example, Mr. Chan brought his son a motorcycle for his 21st birthday. Two weeks later, his son was in a motorcycle accident that lead to nine months of hospitalization and several surgeries. Mr. Chan blames himself for his son’s pain because he bought his son the motorcycle in the first place.
However, Mr. Chan is also experiencing some infantile guilt because in purchasing his child an expensive gift like a motorcycle, he violated two of his father’s admonitions. The first admonition was against "spoiling children" by not having them earn the money to purchase their own clothes and luxuries. The second was against spending money for luxury items under almost any circumstances. Mr. Chan’s father firmly believed that every extra penny should be saved for the future and in his own life, he barely spent money on anything except necessities.
Everytime Mr. Chan went to see his son at the hospital, he could hear his father’s voice saying, "Spending money on fancy cars and toys is foolishness. See, I told you so. I warned you that it was wrong to spend money on expensive items and luxuries. If you had saved your money for the future, like I taught you to do, this would have never happened."
Camry, a military nurse, suffers from double guilt also. She was on the front lines nursing a wounded soldier when the enemy attacked again. A speeding bullet grazed her face and killed a soldier next to her. She then used the soldier’s corpse as a shield against the continued fire. To this day, decades later, she feels she should have died with the soldier ( a form of survivor guilt).
But Camry also suffers from guilt for violating her father’s repeated admonitions about respecting the dead. Her father had been a soldier during WW2. He had served under a general who insisted that his troops respect not only their own dead, but enemy dead. Soldiers under this general were harshy punished if they mutilated the bodies of the dead. Camry’s father had instilled in all his children the value of consecrating the remains of the dead. As a result, Camry feels as if she betrayed her father and all that he stood for, when she used the corpse for protection.