Michael Cohen has lied and threatened others in covering over the transgressions of his former boss Donald Trump but more recently has attacked that same boss and become part of an effort to bring him to justice. How can we understand this very contradictory behavior?

I call this phenomenon an animating relationship to guilt, by which I mean a transformation of feelings of intense self-condemnation into a sense of responsibility toward combating the destructive forces one has been part of.

I came across this psychological process in Hiroshima in 1962, while I was conducting my study of atomic-bomb survivors. One of those survivors, Ichiro Moritaki, was a prominent activist who developed a policy of sitting zazen style at the Cenotaph (the monument to the victims of the bomb) whenever any country tested nuclear weapons. During World War II, Moritaki had been a professor of philosophy and ethics, loyal to the Emperor and to the........

© Psychology Today