It's difficult to redeem yourself if you refuse to see the error of your ways.
That's kind of a tautology, you know.
If by "redemption" you mean flagelating yourself until you feel like you've paid for a sin, then obviously there will be no point in self-flagelation unless you're feeling like you sinned.
That's something that used to frustrate Jesuit missionaries about Japan. Jesuits believed that without Christianity, societies would devolve into brutal chaos, yet the Japanese had a well ordered society, and it was hard for the Jesuits to find bad Japanese habits that the Japanese needed to be "redeemed" from.
Part of the problem was, if you could convince the Japanese that they should change a custom, they'd say, "Oh, okay, I guess that makes sense", whereupon they'd simply adopt the new custom, whereas the Jesuits wanted to see them fall down to their knees and start wailing while tearing their clothing apart and pouring ashes over their heads, in order to achieve "redemption".