2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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created_at: '2017-09-27T17:19:12.000Z'
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title: 'For Shame: Why Americans Should Be Wary of Self-Esteem (1992)'
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url: https://newrepublic.com/article/90898/shame-why-americans-should-be-wary-self-esteem
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author: chesterfield
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points: 81
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story_text:
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 27
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1506532752
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_chesterfield
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- story_15350015
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objectID: '15350015'
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2018-06-08 12:05:27 +00:00
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year: 1992
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2018-02-23 18:58:03 +00:00
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---
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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This distinction had a twofold effect: it robbed shame of its
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transgressive dimension, now reserved for guilt alone, and it encouraged
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a legalistic understanding of transgression itself. Piers and Singer
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were quite explicit about the first of these effects: “Guilt anxiety
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accompanies transgression; shame, failure.” The second implication
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became unmistakable in Helen Merrell Lynd’s study *On Shame and the
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Search for Identity,* which appeared in 1958. Elaborating on the
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interpretation advanced by Piers and Singer, Lynd associated guilt not
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simply with “transgression of prohibitions” but with “Violation of a
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specific taboo,” a feeling therefore concentrated on “each separate,
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discrete act.” In Lynd’s account, guilt moved away from its old
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association with sin and came to be assimilated to the category of
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crime—and finally to any kind of merely unconventional conduct. In an
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older moral tradition, sin referred not only to violations of the moral
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law, but also to a failure to keep faith with God. It referred not only
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to specific actions, but also to a disposition of the will, a chronic
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state of rebellion against God and the human condition. Lynd’s
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secularized conception of guilt reduced it to the fear of punishment
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that follows violation of community standards, which were themselves
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trivialized and partially discredited as “taboos.”
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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Cultural anthropologists made guilt, the inner voice of conscience, seem
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more weighty than shame; but “guilt feelings,” according to Lynd,
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actually “result from efforts for social adjustment” and carry very
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little “self reference.” Now it was shame that appeared more deeply
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internalized. “The deepest shame is not shame in the eyes of others but
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weakness in one’s own eyes.” Shame called one’s entire identity into
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question, shattered “basic trust” in the world, and thus could “be said
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to go deeper than guilt.” Shame was more disturbing than its cousin,
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more deeply felt, more urgently in need of treatment. “It is worse to be
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inferior and isolated than to be wrong, to be outcast in one’s own eyes
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than to be condemned by society.” This remarkable statement, uttered in
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casual disregard of the accumulated weight of moral and philosophical
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tradition, casts a flood of light on the current preoccupation with
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shame and self-esteem. We fear weakness more than a troubled conscience.
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Indeed, conscience disappears from our conceptual order: guilt becomes
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condemnation by “society.”
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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Helen Block Lewis added a few details to this emerging consensus in her
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*Shame and Guilt in Neurosis,* which appeared in 1971 and is often over
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praised today as a pioneering work in the field. Lewis devoted most of
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her attention to variations in “proneness” to guilt or shame. Men’s
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aggressiveness, she decided, predisposed them to guilty fears of
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retaliation. Women were more inclined to shame, thanks to their
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eagerness to please. “Girls’ self-esteem is neither so objectively nor
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firmly grounded as boys’.” Later commentators would extend this line of
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thinking to underprivileged groups in general. Shame could be
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eliminated, they maintained by improving their collective self-image.
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2018-02-23 18:19:40 +00:00
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2018-03-03 09:35:28 +00:00
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Leon Wurmser resisted such simplifications in *The Mask of Shame,* the
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best of the psychoanalytic studies of shame and quite possibly the last,
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given the probable collapse of the whole psychoanalytic enterprise. By
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1981, when it appeared, the reaction against psychoanalysis was in full
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swing: a chorus of critics denounced Freud’s ideas as unscientific,
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elitist, patriarchal, and therapeutically useless. Within
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psychoanalysis, Heinz Kohut and his followers had shifted the emphasis
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from intrapsychic conflict to the “whole self and its relations with
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others.” The need to counter these tendencies led Wurmser to undertake a
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much deeper analysis of the inner conflicts leading to shame than
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anything offered by his predecessors.
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Thus, although he built on the work of Piers and Singer, he cautioned
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against excessive emphasis on the ego ideal. “A mere falling short of
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ego standards or even of the postulates of the ego ideal does not evoke
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shame.” No less than guilt, shame had to be seen as a form of
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self-punishment, a fierce condemnation of the self that is rooted, in
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the case of shame, in the “absolute sense of unlovability.” If this
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element of self-torture was missing, it was appropriate to speak only of
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a “loss of self-esteem.” Wurmser’s refusal to confuse this with shame
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made intelligible much that otherwise remained obscure.
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Psychoanalysis, as Wurmser understood it, was above all the
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interpretation of inner psychic conflict and the inner defenses against
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it. His insistence on the “centrality of conflict,” in the face of an
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“incessant pull away” from conflict that was making the psychoanalytic
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method increasingly superficial, had the added and unexpected advantage
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of restoring some of the moral and religious associations that once
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clustered around the concept of shame. Wurmser asked himself, in effect,
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how the same word could refer both to the impulse to pry and to the
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impulse to conceal. Mindful of Freud’s dictum that opposites share an
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underlying affinity, he found that his patients were simultaneously
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obsessed with seeing and with being seen.
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One of them, a woman suffering from anxiety, depression, and a consuming
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suspiciousness, told him: “I want to find out the hidden, forbidden
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truth about who creates and who does not create”—a statement worthy of
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Faust or Prometheus. But she was also consumed with the fear” that her
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own secrets would be revealed. Penetrating other people’s secrets (those
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of her parents in particular) became a way of presenting her own. Her
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fear of defilement and dishonor made her wish to defile others—a
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striking illustration of the connection between shameful disgrace and
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the shameless act of exposure. Another patient wished to hide her face
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from the world—the characteristic stance of shame—but also bad a
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compulsion to exhibit herself. It was as if she were saying: “I want to
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show the world how magnificently I can hide.” Here the rage for exposure
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was redirected to the self, in the form of an exhibitionism that “knew
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no shame,” as we used to say.
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Beneath the contradictory wish to hide and to spy, to see and be seen,
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Wurmser detected a deeper set of paired opposites—the “polarity” between
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the “yearning for boundless union” and a “murderous contempt.” Both
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arose out of an underlying fear of abandonment. What Wurmser’s patients
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experience as shameful is the contingency and the finitude of human
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life, nothing less. They cannot reconcile themselves to the
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intractability of limits. The record of their suffering makes us see why
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shame is so closely associated with the body, which resists efforts to
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control it and therefore reminds us, vividly and painfully, of our
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inescapable limitations, the inescapability of death above everything.
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It is man’s bondage to nature, as Erich Heller once said, that makes him
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ashamed. “Anything that is nature about him, ... anything that shows him
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to be enslaved by laws and necessities impervious to his will,” becomes
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a source of unbearable humiliation, which can express itself in
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seemingly incompatible ways—in the effort to hide from the world, but
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also in the effort to penetrate its secrets. What these opposite
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reactions share is a kind of outrage in the face of whatever is
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mysterious and therefore resistant to human control, “Shame,” said
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Nietzsche, “exists everywhere where there is a ‘mystery.’”
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When psychoanalysts reject the temptation to dismiss shame as the
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vestigial remnant of an outmoded prudery, they have much to tell us
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about its moral and existential implications, Wurmser’s study owes its
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power and its clarity not only to his sensitive reporting of case
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histories, but also to his insistence on the philosophical dimension of
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psychoanalysis. He conceives his work as a “dialogue with the best minds
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that still speak directly to us across the abyss of death and time.” It
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disturbs him that “the vast symbolic fields of the humanities no longer
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form the shared matrix in which psychoanalytic work is organically
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embedded.” The newer studies of shame and self-esteem—only a few of
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which will be considered here, a small selection from a huge
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outpouring—owe very little to the best psychoanalytic tradition and
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suffer accordingly.
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The decline in quality is immediately evident. The value of Donald
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Nathanson’s *Shame and Pride,* the most ambitious of these studies, is
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inversely proportional to its pretensions. Nathanson wants to show that
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shame performs certain functions that contribute to psychic equilibrium.
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There may be some truth in this, but it hardly qualifies as an “entirely
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new way of thinking” about shame, an “entirely new theory for the nature
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of human sexuality,” an “entirely new mode of study.” Nathanson’s
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ambitious system often seems to yield more than banalities. “Shame will
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occur whenever desire outruns fulfillment.” “Shame affect is triggered
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any time interest or enjoyment is impeded.” “Life is full of impediments
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to positive affect.” “It seems that nearly everybody needs an inferior.”
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Nathanson thanks Wurmser for unstinting “support and assistance”—a
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tribute to Wurmser’s generosity if not to his judgment. Nathanson’.s
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approach exemplifies precisely the behaviorism that Wurmser cautioned
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against. It treats “shame affect” as a “unique biological mechanism,” It
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aims to “return psychology entirely to biological science” and to banish
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“mysticism.” It rests on a mechanistic model of the psyche as a
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comptiter, a system for processing information. Evidently struggling for
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scientific precision, Nathanson writes much of the time in a barbarous
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jargon in which “startle” becomes a noun and “dissmell” refers to the
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recoil from unpleasant odors. He is deaf to the conversation of the
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ages, and perhaps to his patients as well, since he reports no case
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histories. As for his therapy, it seems to consist largely of drugs. “We
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stopped the medication, and the symptom disappeared,” “All of these
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symptoms vanished when he began to take the drug *fluoxetine.”* “She was
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astonished to see these feelings of shame disappear when she resumed her
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medication.”
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In place of the interpretation of intrapsychic conflict, Nathanson
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offers a mechanistic theory, derived from the work of Sylvan Tomkins, in
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which affect acts as an “amplifier,” informing the organism of unruly
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appetites in need of intelligent management. Shame, an essential
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component in our “basic wiring pattern,” protects the organism “from its
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growing avidity for positive affect.” By forcing us to “know and
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remember our failures,” it acts as a “teacher.” Just what it teaches
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remains a little unclear: to modify our expectations? to pursue more
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realistic goals? Whenever his prose veers too close to clarity,
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Nathanson interjects an explanation that defies explanation: It
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\[shame\] is a biological system by which the organism controls its
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affective output so that it will not remain interested or content when
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it may not be safe to do so, or so that it will not remain in affective
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resonance with an organism that fails to match patterns stored in
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memory. In plain English, shame keeps us from taking ourselves too
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seriously.
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This seems to be the gist of it. Whereas Wurmser pleads for the “heroic
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transcendence of shame” through love and work, Nathanson recommends a
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kind of inoculation against shame—a healthy dose of shame in manageable
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amounts, such as we find in the therapeutic comedy of Buddy Hackett,
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that keeps it from becoming lethal. What he finds appealing, I take it,
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is the lowering effect of Hackett’s bathroom humor. The reminder that no
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one escapes “the call of nature,” as our grandmothers used to put it so
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delicately, serves both to deflate self-importance and to mock false
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modesty—all the more effectively, Nathanson seems to think, when it is
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couched in coarse, uninhibited language. Hackett’s “comedy of
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acceptance” reconciles us to our limitations, according to Nathanson.
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I think it merely encourages us to lower our sights. There is a crucial
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difference between the acceptance of limitations and the impulse to
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reduce everything exalted to its lowest common denominator. “Acceptance”
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becomes shameless, cynical surrender when it can no longer distinguish
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between nobility and pomposity, refinement of taste and social snobbery,
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modesty and prudery. Cynicism confuses delusions of grandeur, which call
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for moral and therapeutic correction, with grandeur itself.
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Cynicism, of course, is the last thing Nathanson intends to promote. He
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wants only to replace shame with what he calls pride—a sense of
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accomplishment based on acceptance of our limitations, but his vaccine
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is worse than the disease. By recommending the deflation of ideals as
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the prescription for mental health, he proposes, in effect, to cure
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shame with shamelessness. This is itself a well-known defense (and, as
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such, hardly a cure)—the strategy cogently identified by Wurmser as the
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“lifelong reversal” of the “‘shameless’ cynic,” the transvaluation of
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values by means of which “narcissistic grandiosity and contemptuousness
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defend against a fatal brittleness and woundedness.” As Wurmser points
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out, this defense now sets the tone of our culture as a whole:
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Everywhere there is an unrestrained exposure of one’s emotions and of
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one’s body, a parading of secrets, a wanton intrusion of curiosity....
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It has ... become hard to express tender feelings, feelings of respect,
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of awe, of idealization, of reverence. It almost belongs to the “good
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tone” to be irreverent. It is no accident that in German and Greek,
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words for shame are also words of reverence. The culture of
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shamelessness is also the culture of irreverence, of debunking and
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devaluing ideals. Trust in life carries the risk of disappointment, so
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we inoculate ourselves with irreverence.
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Even the most obtuse students of shame understand, in principle, that
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shamelessness is a defensive strategy, not a real solution. In *No Place
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to Hide,* Michael Nichols warns that “shamelessness is a reaction
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formation against shame, a defiant, counter phobic attempt to deny and
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overcome a profound inner fear of weakness.” But Nichols and his like
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recognize the affinity between shamelessness and shame only in its most
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blatant form. They can see shamelessness in “defiance” but not in their
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own ideology of “acceptance,” The deflation of “extravagant
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expectations”—Nichols’s favorite remedy for the oppressive sense of
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failure—amounts to a milder version of Nathanson’s strategy of
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existential distrust. Thus he warns against religion, which purveys
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“oversimplified messages about right and wrong” and holds up
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impossible standards—”a vision of righteousness that remains forever out
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of reach.” The old religions preached the sinfulness of sex and divorce,
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discouraged “understanding and acceptance.” Fortunately “today’s
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enlightened ministers and rabbis are preaching a humanistic acceptance
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of the self and the body.” Indeed, they are “more attuned to humanistic
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concerns than most psychiatrists”— surely a backhanded compliment,
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though Nichols intends it as high praise.
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“The story of Adam and Eve,” in Nichols’s retelling, “reflects the
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general awareness that children of nature don’t know shame; they have to
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be taught.” From this Panglossian point of view, we can rid the world of
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shame and many other evils simply by treating children with “empathy,”
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engineering settings in which they can “feel good about themselves,” and
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“validating their right to think and feel whatever they wish.” There is
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some value in the advice to “let them be themselves,” if it helps to
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discourage over management of children by adults. We do children a
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terrible disservice, however, by showering them with undeserved
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approval. The kind of reassurance they need comes only with a growing
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ability to meet impersonal standards of competence. Children need to
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risk failure and disappointment, to overcome obstacles, to face down the
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terrors that surround them. Self-respect cannot be conferred, it has to
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be earned. Current therapeutic and pedagogical practice, all “empathy”
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and “understanding,” hopes to manufacture self-respect without risk. Not
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even witch doctors could perform a medical miracle on that order.
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The early Freudians warned against “prophylactic” misapplications of
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psychoanalysis, as Anna Freud called them. They knew that a superficial
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reading of Freud encouraged the notion that enlightened methods of
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child-rearing could do away with suffering and neurosis. They countered
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this foolish optimism with the reminder that growing up is never easy,
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that children will never achieve maturity unless they work things out
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for themselves. But the helping professions paid no attention to this
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realism. In order to justify the expansion of therapeutic authority over
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the family, the school, and large areas of public policy, they made
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extravagant claims for their expertise. They set themselves up as
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doctors not only to sick patients, but to a sick society.
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By 1937 Karen Horney, one of the first of the Freudian revisionists, was
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already insisting that “neurosis and culture” were problems “not only
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for psychiatrists but for social workers and teachers,” for
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“anthropologists and sociologists,” and for all those professionals,
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indeed, who had become “aware of the significance of psychic factors” in
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social life. Therapy was no longer the business of psychiatrists alone;
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nor could it be confined to individuals. In an influential essay
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published in the same year, the sociologist Lawrence Frank took the
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position that society itself was the patient.
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It is significant that this consensus took shape in the ‘30s, when the
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designers of an emerging welfare state were trying to convince the
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public that poverty and unemployment should not be attributed to lack of
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individual enterprise, that the system (not the individual) was at
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fault, that dependence on public relief was no disgrace, and that
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self-help was an illusion. The first step toward economic recovery and
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social justice, it appeared, was to “absolve the individual from guilt,”
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as Frank put it, To the chagrin of reformers, however, many Americans,
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even those victimized by unemployment, clung to an ethic of self-help
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and refused to acknowledge the state’s responsibility to relieve
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suffering or the individual’s right to relief. For liberals, the debates
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touched off by the Depression and the New Deal appeared to confirm the
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wisdom of therapeutic as opposed to ethical analysis of social problems.
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The “conception of a sick society in need of treatment,” according to
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Frank, was far more useful than conceptions stressing “human volition,
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human autonomy, and individual responsibility.”
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This has remained the dominant view, right down to the present day. It
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has come to be widely shared even by “religious and ethical groups,”
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singled out (along with lawyers) by Frank as bastions of the old ethic
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of individual accountability. As Nichols says, the contemporary church
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is just as “enlightened” as the helping professions. “Pastors ... speak
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out about healthy self-esteem. You wouldn’t have heard this twenty years
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ago.” His description of pastoral speech is accurate enough, but his
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memory is much too short. The clergy began to see the light a long time
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ago. The social gospel, an important influence in American Protestantism
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since the turn of the century, had prepared them for the idea that
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society is the patient. Henry J. Cadbury, a critic of the social gospel,
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observed in 1937 that it had become the “staple diet of American
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liberals,” who “affirm with one voice that society, not individuals
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merely, is the subject of redemption.” Thirty years later the Harvard
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theologian Harvey Cox argued in *The Secular City* that “the achievement
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of health in place of neurosis on the individual level cannot be
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separated from the restoration of wholeness to the entire society.”
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Freud “concentrated on the sick individual in his therapy,” Cox
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complained; but the sick individual could no longer be treated apart
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from the “sick society.”
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Low self-esteem is merely the latest form of social pathology commending
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itself to specialists in the cure of souls. Il should not surprise us
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when the new pathologists of shame announce that a “more articulated
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theory” of shame, in the words of Michael Lewis, has “applicability to
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the social as well as to the individual level.” Lewis readily embraces
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the cliché that blacks and women are “shamed by the culture in which
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they live,” in need of “understanding rather than humiliation.” Raising
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their self-esteem, he thinks, would “eliminate many social problems.”
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“The solution I propose,” he writes, “is a cognitive affective program
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designed to reduce shame.”
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Gloria Steinem, like Lewis, dwells at length on the social implications
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of low self-esteem, especially in women. Feminists have criticized her
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new book as a retreat from political involvements, but it is better
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understood as another plea to the effect that politics and therapy are
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indistinguishable. It is completely consistent with the dominant brand
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of liberalism, a liberalism obsessed with the rights of women and
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minorities, with gay rights and unlimited abortion rights, with the
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allegedly epidemic spread of child abuse and sexual harassment, with the
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need for regulations against offensive speech, and with curricular
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reforms designed to end the cultural hegemony of “dead white European
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males.” “Social justice,” as liberals have come to define it, now refers
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to political therapies intended to undo the unwholesome effects of
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“authoritarian,” “patriarchal” attitudes and to prevent anyone from
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“blaming the victim.” The therapeutic discovery of shame finds its
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political expression in remedial programs administered by caretakers
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professing to speak on behalf of the downtrodden, but concerned above
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all to expand their own professional jurisdiction. Steinem’s “revolution
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from within” does not signal a flight from politics, only a continuation
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of politics by other means.
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Her therapeutic assault on shame requires political action for its
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completion. As a salutary example, she recommends California’s Statewide
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Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. She maintains that although
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journalists and politicians have ridiculed this noble experiment, it
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showed that almost every social problem can be traced to a failure of
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self-esteem. Self-contempt, the task force discovered, was a “primary
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causal factor” in “crime and violence, alcohol abuse, drug abuse,
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teenage pregnancy, child and spousal abuse, chronic welfare dependency,
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and failure to achieve in school”—the “very problems,” Steinem adds,
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that “Americans fear most.”
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She does not bother to explain how the California task force arrived at
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this finding—that is, by ignoring the reservations that were advanced by
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the experts on whose testimony its report was based. Papers prepared for
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the task force repeatedly spoke of the “paucity of good research”
|
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|
|
linking low self-esteem to social pathology; but the chairman of the
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body, John Vasconcellos, dismissed these reservations on the grounds
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|
that they came from “those who only live in their heads, in the
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|
intellectual.” The importance of self-esteem, he said, was confirmed by
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“our intuitive knowledge.”
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Steinem says nothing about the controversy surrounding the Vasconcellos
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report. It is enough for her that California’s dubious example has been
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initiated by other states and by California’s fifty-eight counties,
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almost every one of which now has its own task force on self-esteem.
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She, too, prefers to rely on “intuitive knowledge.” Her book overflows
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with it. Children, she explains, should “feel loved and valued from the
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beginning.” Most of us, however, were ignored or abused as children, and
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since we all “continue to treat ourselves the way we were treated as
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|
children,” we therefore abuse ourselves as adults. But a “unique and
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true self resides in each one of us,” the discovery of which will set us
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|
free. “The moment we find the true reason for some feeling that has an
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irrationally powerful hold over us... the spell is broken.”
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It is hard to see how anyone could take such stuff seriously, but it
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commands automatic assent in many quarters and it provides much of the
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|
rationale for an expansion of the welfare state. That liberal
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“activists,” as Steinem refers to them admiringly, now find themselves
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reduced to such slogans may indicate that welfare liberalism is
|
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|
|
|
suffering from terminal fatigue. Is it really necessary to point out, at
|
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|
|
this late date, that public policies based on a therapeutic model of the
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|
state have failed miserably, over and over again? Far from promoting
|
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|
|
self-respect, they have created a nation of dependents. They have given
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|
rise to a cult of the victim in which entitlements are based on the
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|
|
display of accumulated injuries inflicted by an uncaring society. The
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|
politics of “compassion” degrades both the victims, by reducing them to
|
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|
|
objects of pity, and their would-be benefactors, who find it easier to
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|
|
pity their fellow citizens than to hold them up to impersonal standards,
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|
|
the attainment of which would make them respected. Compassion has become
|
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|
|
the human face of contempt.
|
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|
Democracy once meant opposition to every kind of double standard. Today
|
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|
|
we accept double standards—as always, a recipe for second-class
|
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|
|
citizenship—in the name of humanitarian concern. We hand out awards
|
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|
|
indiscriminately, hoping to give the recipients the illusion of
|
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|
|
|
accomplishment. Having given up attempts to raise the general level of
|
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|
|
|
competence, we are content to restrict it to the caring class, which
|
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|
|
|
arrogates to itself the job of looking out for everybody else. The
|
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|
|
professionalization of compassion does not make us a kinder, gentler
|
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|
|
nation. Instead it institutionalizes inequality, under the pretense that
|
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|
|
everyone is “special” in his own way. And since the pretense is
|
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|
|
transparent, the attempt to make people feel good about themselves only
|
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|
|
makes them cynical. “Caring” is no substitute for candor.
|
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|
If psychotherapy has failed as politics, most recently as the politics
|
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|
|
of self-esteem, it has also failed as a replacement for religion. The
|
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|
|
|
founder of psychoanalysis believed that men and women would outgrow the
|
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|
|
need for religion as they came to depend on their own resources. He was
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|
|
wrong about that, as it turned out. Still, his kind of therapy
|
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|
|
encouraged introspection, and it aimed at moral insight; and it was not
|
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|
|
entirely unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that psychiatry could take
|
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|
|
over the healing functions performed by priests and confessors—performed
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|
very clumsily at that, according to Freud.
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|
For some time now, however, the psychiatric profession has been moving
|
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|
|
toward therapies aimed more at behavior modification than insight.
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|
Whatever it has gained in the management of symptoms, often with the
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|
|
help of drugs, bas been achieved at the expense of introspection. This
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|
|
trend may be regrettable, but it is easy to see why psychoanalytic
|
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|
|
|
therapies, in their classic form, no longer have much of a following in
|
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|
|
the profession as a whole. They cost too much, last too long, and demand
|
|
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|
|
too much intellectual sophistication from the patient. Even the most
|
|
|
|
|
enthusiastic admirers of the psychoanalytic method might be disconcerted
|
|
|
|
|
to read that one of Wurmser’s patients “abruptly” broke off analysis “in
|
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|
|
the 1,172nd session.” Another patient of Wurmser’s remained in analysis
|
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|
|
for eleven years. Still another “eventually killed herself by jumping
|
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|
|
off a bridge.” When psychoanalytic treatment threatens to become
|
|
|
|
|
interminable and often ends in failure, sometimes after years of
|
|
|
|
|
intensive self-exploration, both doctors and patients understandably
|
|
|
|
|
turn to methods promising fast relief, even at the price of deep
|
|
|
|
|
understanding.
|
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|
At its best, psychoanalytic theory exposes the moral and existential
|
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|
|
dimension of mental conflict; but even then it cannot compete with
|
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|
|
religion. Wurmser’s book on shame, a work in the grand tradition of
|
|
|
|
|
psychoanalytic speculation, reminds us that psychoanalytically informed
|
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|
|
|
interpretation can reclaim ageless moral wisdom and deepen our
|
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|
|
|
understanding of it. Reading Wurmser, we see why shame and curiosity
|
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|
|
|
have always been so closely linked in people’s minds, why shame ought to
|
|
|
|
|
evoke feelings of awe and reverence, and why it refers, above all, to
|
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|
|
the irreducible element of mystery in human affairs.
|
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|
|
But this very depth of moral understanding, so compelling at the level
|
|
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|
|
of moral theory, can also render psychoanalysis useless not only for
|
|
|
|
|
therapeutic purposes but also as a guide to the conduct of life. The
|
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|
|
more it infringes on the territory once occupied by religion, the more
|
|
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|
|
it invites unflattering comparisons with its rival. Can psychoanalysis
|
|
|
|
|
really do anything for people who suffer from an inner conviction of
|
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|
|
“absolute unlovability”? Maybe religion is the answer after all. It is
|
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|
|
not at all clear, at any rate, that religion could do much worse.
|