Utilizing clips from the feature films "Ali" and "Magnolia," Dr. Tobin emphasizes the importance of regret in adult development. When pursued in psychotherapy, regrets a patient experiences serve as a bridge into vital aspects of emotional development, mourning, and self-integration. Further, Dr. Tobin introduces the notions of "otherness" and "non-meaning" and characterizes their relevance for personal and existential experience.

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2.  a negative cognitive/emotional state that
involves blaming ourselves for a bad outcome
 feeling a sense of loss or sorrow at what might
have been
 wishing we could undo a previous choice that
we made
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4. 1. I wish I had the courage to live a life true
to myself, not the life others expected of
me.
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5. 2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
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6. 3. I wish I had the courage to express my
feelings.
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7. 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my
friends.
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8. 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
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9.  Women seem to have more difficulty
disengaging from past relationships.
 Overall, 44% of women surveyed had
romantic regrets vs.19% of men.
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10.  Regret is much more commonly experienced
and reported to have more positive effects
by young people in the U.S.
 In contrast, people in collectivist cultures,
which de-emphasize individual choice, have
less of a basis for blaming themselves for
negative outcomes.
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11.  Proximally, people are more likely to regret
actions taken (commission) and mistakes
made.
 Distally, people are more likely to regret
actions not taken (omission), such as
missed opportunities for love or working too
hard and not spending enough time with
friends and family.
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12.  Neal Roese of the Kellogg School
of Management at Northwestern University
found that younger people rate regret more
favorably than unfavorably, primarily
because of its informational value in
motivating corrective action.
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13.  Regret was rated highest of a list of negative
emotions in fulfilling five functions:
(1) making sense of the world;
(2) avoiding future negative behaviors;
(3) gaining insight;
(4) achieving social harmony;
(5) improving one’s ability to approach desired
opportunities (regret often revolves around
passivity or withdrawal).
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14.  Regret has a learning/insight function.
 It can also promote negative ruminations,
depression, self-contempt, and a damaged
self-esteem.
 Anecdotally, most people have an easier
time forgiving others than themselves.
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17.  Numerous therapeutic interventions are
directed toward reducing the negative effects
of regret (e.g., self-compassion and
mindfulness
approaches that
emphasize the
here-and-now).
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21.  Regret, like grief, is transformed by
“working it through, which is lingering
with it long enough to experience it
deeply, emotionally and intellectually.”
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22.  We are a people who do not want to keep much
of the past in our heads, " Lillian Hellman once
wrote. "It is considered unhealthy in America to
remember mistakes, neurotic to think about
them, psychotic to dwell upon them." Yet who in
their lifetime has never regretted a lost love, a
missed opportunity, a path not taken? Although
poets and novelists have long probed the
complexities of regret, little has been written
from a scholarly perspective.
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23.  Now, in Regret: The Persistence of the
Possible, Janet Landman takes a lively and
perceptive look at this perhaps universal
experience. Landman addresses key
questions about the nature of regret - what it
is, how you experience it, how it changes
you.
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26.  http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=magn
olia+film+clip+regret&FORM=VIRE1#view=d
etail&mid=3B03F40459EF16EC23223B03F4
0459EF16EC2322
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28.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFr0JC
qxb4
"Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Ali
and Foreman in1971
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30.  Regret is a psychic process involving conscious
suffering, mourning, and assimilation; regret
becomes a capability once it occurs and is
processed in therapy.
 It is an internal/intrapsychic achievement
fostered by the “ ‘reciprocal resonance’ (Foxe,
2002) and intimate experience” (Kavaler-Adler,
2006, p. 342) the therapist and therapeutic
situation offer.
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31.  Regret warrants a trauma approach
designed to ultimately “forge a sense of self”
(Buechler, 2009, pg. 435) in the patient.
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32.  In “Failure, Mistakes, Regret and Other Subjugated
Stories in Family Therapy” (Journal of Family
Therapy, 1996, p. 201), Spellman and Harper argue:
Their [White and Epston’s (1990)] conception of
experience as it is ‘lived’ and as it is ‘storied’ may
be of use in exploring how we, as practitioners,
deal with failure and mistakes. They argue that
we cannot have direct knowledge of the world
except through our lived experience, but it needs
to be given meaning ... [it needs to be] storied.
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33.  Psychotherapy is the venue where lived
experience has the potential to become
storied.
 As meaning and non-meaning emerge,
one’s engagement with the world and with
others is enhanced.
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34.  A. Traumatic event (narcissistic injury)
 B. De-idealization and disintegration
 C. “Otherness”
 D. Contacting fate
 E. Atonement
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35.  Lived experience and the regret it prompts
create a “split in ego continuity” (Shabad,
1987, p. 189).
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36. “When a traumatic occurrence creates a
break, or what Balint (1979) called a
‘basic fault’ in ego development, we often
see a compulsive urge to restore the
relatively satisfying state prior to the
trauma” (Shabad, 1987, p. 189).
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38.  The therapist must speak of the lived
experience as traumatic and anticipate
directly to the patient his/her tendency to
resist or deny it, or move toward repetition
(regression) in order to defend against it.
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39.  The idealized or fantasized self is fractured
(“self-disgust”).
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40.  One’s idealized self is disintegrated; many
patients attempt to retain an idealized self
by attempting to sequester the realized,
disgusting self to an external appendage,
i.e., “a tail,” “a mole,” etc.) they then try to
remove.
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41.  The therapist must emphasize the patient’s de-
idealization and disintegration and validate the
need for the sequestering.
 Must avoid countertransferentially falling into
platitudes, intellectualization, or rescue/feel-
better interventions.
 Must not accept the patient’s “it is what it is”
and “everything happens for a reason.”
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42.  The other person or persons involved is/are
formidable, unpredictable, and ultimately
differentiated from the self.
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43.  Force of will, earnestness, and attempts to
control, manipulate, appease or seduce are
ultimately incapable of establishing the
response desired.
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44.  C, in tandem with A and B, constitute shame,
in my view.
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45.  A, B, and C form a loop the patient may
perpetually repeat to resist the deep
psychological processing and working
through of regret (to inhibit assimilation).
 The therapist tolerates the looping, bears
the patient’s shame, and entertains the
patient’s typical pursuit of rationalization,
intellectualization, and, often, self-
destruction, depression, and repetition.
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46.  Fate may be conceived as “a coldly
indifferent reality [that] imposes its
necessities and limitations upon the
individual; the hopeful wait for the
realization of an impossible dream
gradually gives way to a spiritless
disillusionment” (Shabad, p. 197).
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47.  Meaning is, ultimately, only partial.
 Reparation is not possible.
 Humility emerges and represents the
beginning of an erosion of pathological
narcissism that continues across the
lifespan.
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48.  Being “at one,” i.e., an integration of one’s
self with the reality of experience.
 This stage involves taking personal
accountability along with the accurate
recognition of what one is not
responsible for and could not affect (this
is “letting go” but also “holding on”).
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49. “Perhaps she would not have left you if you
hadn’t been talking to other women.”
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50.  Kavaler-Adler, S. (2006). From neurotic guilt to
existential guilt as grief: The road to interiority,
agency, and compassion through mourning.
Part II. American Journal of Psychoanalysis,
66, 333-350.
 Kavaler-Adler, S. (2004). Anatomy of regret: A
developmental view of the depressive position
and a critical turn toward love and creativity in
the transforming schizoid personality. American
Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64, 39-76.
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51.  Shabad, P. (1987). Fixation and the road not
taken. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 4, 187-
205.
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53. James Tobin, Ph.D.
 Licensed Psychologist PSY 22074
220 Newport Center Drive, Suite 1
Newport Beach, CA 92660
 Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology
The American School of Professional Psychology
at Argosy University
Email: jt@jamestobinphd.com
Website: www.jamestobinphd.com
949-338-4388
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