When I was very young, I believed my mother could read my state of mind. When she doubted my honesty, she would say, ‘May I look into your eyes?’ If I was innocent, I would gaze soberly into those maternal eyes. If I was guilty, I would squirm and resist the test. My mother obviously did not need to be a clairvoyant to gauge my truthfulness. All she had to do was look at me. But long after I had given up thinking of my mother as a supernatural being, I found it unbearable to look her directly in the eyes and tell an untruth. She was, I think, my conscience incarnate. My guilt was bound up with her gaze. Infants are not guilty. Like shame and pride, guilt is a social emotion born of our attachments to others, and that form of self-punishment only becomes active once a person is able to see himself as others see him. It is born of reflective self-consciousness. My child self could not bear to be seen as a bad person by my mother because as she looked at me I saw my sorry self through her eyes.