Mother-Infant Attachment and Psychoanalysis

The Eyes of Shame

Mary Y. Ayers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317762973
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicoanalisi

Winner of the 2004 Gradiva Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

The issue of shame has become a central topic for many writers and therapists in recent years, but it is debatable how much real understanding of this powerful and pervasive emotion we have achieved. Mother-Infant Attachment and Psychoanalysis argues that shame can develop during the first six months of life through an unreflected look in the mother's eyes, and that this shame is then internalised by the infant and reverberates through its later life. The author further expands on this concept of the look through a powerful and extensive study of the concept of the Evil Eye, an enduring universal belief that eyes have the power to inflict injury. Finally, she presents ways of healing shame within a clinical setting, and provides a fascinating analysis of the role of eye-contact in the therapeutic encounter.
This book brings together a unique blend of theoretical interpretations of shame with clinical studies, and integrates major concepts from psychoanalysis, Jungian analysis, developmental psychology and anthropology. The result is a broad understanding of shame and a real understanding of why it may underlie a wide range of clinical disorders.

Chapter 1

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The eyes of shame

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We should keep our eyes on eyes themselves

Eyes to see how they see.

(Gracian, 1642)

To those who can see them, there are eyes,

Leopard eyes of marigolds crouching above red earth,

Bulging eyes of fruits and rubies in the heavily-hanging trees,

Broken eyes of queasy cupids staring from the gloom of myrtles.

I came here for solitude

And I am plucked at by a host of eyes.

(Amy Lowell, 1874–1925)

Shame defined

Shame is a concept that has only fully entered the vocabulary of psychological inquiry within the last 25 years. People are ashamed of even experiencing shame, so that the emotion which produces hiding due to a fear of exposure has until relatively recently hidden itself from psychologists. Shame is not a word in the general index to Jung’s 20 volumes of Collected Works, nor in the index to Klein’s Envy and Gratitude (1975), Love Guilt and Reparation (1975), or a glossary of her working terms. The index to The Standard Edition of Freud’s work contains 36 references to shame, compared with the 140 references to guilt (Wharton, 1990: 284). In Interpretations of Dreams, shame is connected with embarrassment, as in dreams of being naked (Hultberg, 1986: 159).

Prior to the recent surge of interest, theorists subsumed shame under other emotions, mainly guilt, whereas shame as an independent affect was overlooked and underestimated. A few theorists who included shame as a concept only touched on its myriad facets lightly, never able to fully explicate its phenomenology. Wurmser (1997) has commented on the tendency to treat shame in a splintered way “as if viewed through a prism” (p. 51). He states that the broad spectrum of shame feelings had previously been divided into fragments to be considered separately: social anxiety, sense of inferiority, narcissistic injury, embarrassment, or dread. Though not always synonomous with shame experience, all of these affects at least touched on it or formed some segment of the spectrum. Nathanson (1996) has criticized many writers for the nonsense they have made of shame. He states that “everybody has a different definition of shame, embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, the experience of another’s contempt, or the experience of being put down; every single writer made it clear that their personal experience of shame incorporated universal truths” (p. 4).

As the study of shame has evolved, the word has come to have multidimensional and far-reaching connotations. It is difficult to know at this point what one is talking about when the shame word is used. Numerous writers have looked at it as a defense or as the affect behind the defense. Wurmser (1997) suggests that we consider as cognates the many words by which shame experience is described. This leads to the concept of a “shame family of emotions,” inclusive of embarrassment, humiliation, shyness, or modesty, as well as the put-down feelings of disgrace, degradation, and dishonor. As he puts it:

Shame in its typical features is complex and variable, a range of closely related affects rather than a simple, clearly delimited one. It shades into moods on one side, into attitudes on the other. Moreover, it is clear that anxiety is a cardinal part of it. Yet evidently shame is more than anxiety, and anxiety is more than shame.

(Wurmser, 1997: 17)

Extensive articles have been written to differentiate shame from guilt (Piers and Singer, 1953), shame from anxiety, contempt from shame, aggression from shame, actual shame experience or being ashamed from a sense of shame. It has been pointed out that shame functions at a number of different levels or acts differently within the context of various pathologies. It is believed that hidden dimensions of shame underlie clinical phenomena as widespread as narcissism, social phobia, envy, domestic violence, addictions, identity diffusion, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dissociation, masochism, and depression (Lansky and Morrison, 1997). Shame is also implicated in complex affective states such as rage, envy, despair, and hopelessness (Morrison, 1989; Wurmser, 1997), pride, conceit, and ambition (Broucek, 1982; Nathanson, 1992). Nathanson (1996) states that “the study of shame teaches much about everything that is beautiful and everything that is ugly within the human soul; this study is central to the development of competence as a contemporary psychotherapist” (p. 13). Broucek (1991) writes, “in my clinical work I have come to the conclusion that if one knows shame one knows psychopathology (and also something about health)” (p. 5). I concur with this, and will add that knowing shame also leads to a deeper understanding of what it means to be a human, vulnerable self.

Several authors in the clinical literature make a distinction between types of shame, although these types differ according to the writer. Lewis (1971) delineated three types of shame experience: overt, consciously experienced shame; unidentified or unacknowledged shame, where it is obvious shame has been experienced but the individual remains unconscious; and bypassed shame, where shame has obviously been experienced but where it is circumvented into obsessiveness about the self in the moment of shame. Kaufman (1992), on the other hand, distinguishes between primary and secondary shame. For example, the shame that 12-step programs deal with is called secondary shame – that is, the shame of being an addict. Beyond this, he states, are the core feelings of shame that may have caused an individual to become an addict in the first place. Levin (1967) also discusses primary and secondary shame. Primary shame is intrapsychic and internal, whereas secondary shame is described as “feeling ashamed of reacting strongly with shame” (p. 357). The cycle goes something like this. A sexual inclination leads to primary shame; this kind of shame results in inhibition of the impulse, or in regression (or both), and this results in secondary shame, which may lead to a denial of the inhibition and an acting out; this enactment (depending on its nature) can lead to further shame.

Wurmser (1997) distinguishes between the affect of shame and shame anxiety. He postulates that the affect of shame always involves the superego, and therefore is developmentally possible only after the formation of the superego system, which is to say after the resolution of the Oedipus complex. The more archaic, primitive form of shame – its anxieties – come long before the oedipal stage. Shame anxiety is the fear of a total object loss and self loss. He further differentiates shame by dissecting its layers: “an important phenomenological aspect of shame is that it may affect the functions of self exposure or looking or merely a particular content that is exposed” (p. 56).

Societal and personal issues intersect in the affect of shame. Shame is both an intimate feeling of self-conception as well as a social conception of facing others. Most languages have at least two words for our English word shame: one to denote the feeling, one to denote the healthy attitudes that define a wholesome character. For example, French pudeur refers to the admirable qualities of modesty, chastity, shyness, a sense of shame, and in biblical uses the genitals. The emphasis in this form is on the inner, personal experience. The words schande in German and honte in French refer to disgrace, scandal, criminality, and the shame of crisis. The emphasis in this meaning is on social customs and standards.

A functional distinction is made by Hultberg (1986) between one form of shame that is directed at the environment (the object) and serves social adaptation, and a second form referring more to the subject which protects one’s integrity or self. One guarantees – by conformity – the individual’s belonging to the society; the other takes care that the collective does not intrude too deeply into the personality. Shame is closely linked to both the persona and the shadow, that is to say to both the social personality and the personal experiencing of the integrity of the self. To illustrate his point, he offers an example from Heller’s work on a New Guinea tribesman who knows that shame is either “skin shame” or “deep shame.” A person who is observed when urinating or having sexual intercourse feels “shame on the skin,” but the one who hurts the spirit of his or her forebears suffers from deep shame.

Despite the broad range of meanings and numerous attempts at definition, experience reveals that every instance of shame is a time of painful incapacity, an endless moment when one is overcome with the existential feelings of defect and unlovability. There is the momentary, fleeting kind of shame in the normal range of human experience that will affect everyone to some degree throughout the life cycle as an inevitable part of growing up. This kind of shame is easily overcome. With some individuals, however, these feelings may conceal some deeper aspect of shame, a fundamental notion involving the whole self that one is in some way defective and unlovable down to the core of one’s being. An individual burdened with this type of shame goes far beyond the normal, everyday kind of shame with which anyone can readily relate; one stops being a human being and is petrified by the movements of life. Early infancy is the place where this type of shame, which I will call absolute shame (a term first used by Wurmser, 1997), develops, and, if solidified into a sense of self, will only complicate secondarily the shame experienced at progressive developmental stages and moments in life. Shame at this level is more than just a momentary reaction; it is a way of being that is plagued by the polarized feelings of nonexistence and the fear of having one’s existence destroyed by a glance. Although shame is an innate, normal feeling, an excessive amount of it considered maladaptive and a developmental pathology, while missing it altogether also points to an even deeper disturbance (Lowenfeld, 1976). One lives in a crippling space of alienation, craving to be seen in the eyes of the world beyond the false protection of shame.

Although the scope of shame is broad, the focus of my exploration into shame will be very narrow and precise. Like looking at a tree in the forest, my selective attention will be limited to the internalized form of shame where the whole self experiences on a chronic basis the kind of paralysis that others experience only in isolated moments of exposure. For these individuals, normal experiences of shame prompted externally end up massively amplified by inner shame, with the result that at a very deep level what gets obstructed is the ability to show oneself. This results in a feeling of nonexistence and the inability to see that because of this one is actually rejecting the world, imposing a punitive self-exile. Absolute shame requires no audience, but occurs through the observations made by a staring, critical internal eye that objectifies and poisons the other parts of self being scrutinized. The shaming other exists within, although it does get projected and populates the world with staring eyes that magnify and distort one’s self-image, and from which one frantically seeks escape. One pictures oneself in the eyes of the other through a scrupulous study of facial expression, and is turned to stone by her gaze. These intrusive, internal eyes make it hard to realize oneself mirrored through another’s eyes. The only reflection one gets back is one’s own vision of oneself staring back. This individual perishes through her own persecuting eyes, annihilating a lively and feeling self through the power of the Gorgon’s stare. Morrison (1996) emphasizes this internal self aspect of shame when he states that “shame is fundamentally a feeling of loathing against ourselves, a hateful vision of ourselves through our own eyes – although his vision may be determined by how we expect or believe other people are experiencing us” (p. 13). Shame becomes most pathological, yet can take on its symbolic qualities, when it becomes intrapsychic. Internalized shame is far more menacing, primal, and compelling than shame instigated by an external situation. This idea is a pivotal one that will be amplified throughout this work.

A phenomenological description of shame

Shame has been described in many ways and with many faces. This phenomenological consideration of shame will reveal when, where, why, and how we feel when we are ashamed. The experience of shame is explored as an individual experience that contributes to a sense of self as well as a collective one, a fact of social existence which serves adaptive functions.

It may appear contradictory that while the focus of this inquiry is on the primitive, internal states of being in shame, the phenomenological descriptions focus primarily on its more common, external aspects within the normal range of human experience. The development of shame has been analyzed in the earliest months of life theoretically, and through infant research and observations, but shame experienced at this infantile level has not yet been phenomenologically described at any length in the literature (with the exception of Wurmser’s 1997 book entitled The Mask of Shame, where he provides vivid clinical material on what he calls archaic shame). This type of shame is unimaginable and nameless, beyond speech. The most infantile aspects of shame are masked and dissociated, hence reside almost completely within the domain of the unconscious. In a therapeutic process, it is at first difficult to communicate, residing at a preverbal level. Being preverbal, it is difficult to put into words and inevitably becomes disconnected. It only reveals itself through an exploration of the deepest levels of inner life (or poetry and other evocative forms). Its articulation requires the language of the innermost self, a regressed, infantile part of the patient speaking and acting through an adult ego, as well as the therapist’s holding response, eye contact, and interpretations of the vivid impressions left by the patient’s raw and “unmentalized” material (Mitrani, 1996). Mitrani offers this definition of an unmentalized experience:

Elemental sense data, internal and external, that have failed to be transformed into symbols (mental representations, organized and integrated) or signal affects (anxiety that serves as a signal of impending danger, requiring thoughtful action), but are instead perceived as concrete objects in the psyche or as bodily states that are reacted to in corporeal fashion … Such experiences are merely “accretions of stimuli” that can neither be used as food for thought nor stored in the form of memories. These experiences, which have not been kept in mind, cannot be repressed. Instead, they are isolated as if in quarantine, where they remain highly immutable. These unmentalized experiences therefore represent one of the most challenging aspects of our work.

(Mitrani, 1996: 207)

Shame at this level is hard to understand other than through experience and working with it in order to help the patient find words to fit what is unthinkably horrible. At this point I only hope to bring the reader into the flavor of the kind of experiences with which we are dealing and make it clear that, regardless of what dimension of shame is examined phenomenologically, the eye is consistently central to its experience. It is hoped that this material is sufficiently graphic to involve the reader at an experiential level.

The individual’s experience

Prominent in the experience of shame is the sense of profound, inhibiting alienation from the world and ourselves – shame makes us want to hide from others. These moments of painful incapacity break communicative bridges of open exchange with others (Broucek, 1982; Kaufman, 1992). Shame and its inexpressible, dissociative elements interrupt, paralyze, take over, inconvenience, trip up, and make incompetent anything that had previously been felt as pleasurable (Nathanson, 1992). Whatever communication has only shortly before been produced by interaffectivity is severed, and speech becomes impossible. One moment you can feel like a worthwhile human being, and the next second banished to oblivion, your total identity disintegrated. It can be an all-encompassing experience, obliterating all other thoughts and feelings. Continuity and coherence are forfeit, and you are suddenly unpleasantly self-aware. Shakespeare’s Richard III articulates these feelings of alienation in his opening soliloquy. Once the glory of the wars are over, Richard III, an isolated figure starkly exposed against a bleak backgro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The eyes of shame
• 2 Mother’s eyes
• 3 Mother’s eyes as false mirrors
• 4 The Evil Eye and the Great Mother
• 5 The eyes of the Terrible Mother
• 6 The look
• 7 The eyes of love
• Epilogue: Clinical implications for the field of depth psychology
• Bibliography
• Index