Michael Lewis - Shame: The Exposed Self

Contents

Intergenerational and Sex Differences in Shame:
The Oedipus Myth Revisited

This book is more than an intellectual exercise, a continuation of my study of self and emotion development. It is a journey into my own life, a journey that started with a mother dead and a child shamed, who became orphaned, searching for himself and for the meaning of life. For the past thirty years, my wife, Rhoda Lewis, has been my companion on this journey. I have consistently drawn for sustenance on her intelligence and sensitivity, her deep understanding of human behavior and life. Indeed, some of the ideas that follow originated with her, and all were improved by her comments. This book would not exist without the collaboration of Rhoda Lewis.

I wish to thank all my students and colleagues who have helped me formulate my theory, and who have served as a sounding board for these thoughts. I owe particular gratitude to Margaret Sullivan and Linda Michalson Brinker. In the last two years I have lectured about shame to many audiences on three continents. The comments and criticisms of the nameless crowd are here remembered and thanked. Most recently, I spent a week in Australia giving the Westmead Lectures at the University of Sydney, where I received encouragement and suggestions that helped me to finish this work. I also wish to extend my thanks to the lonely pioneers whose work on shame enlightened me, the late psychoanalysts Helen Block Lewis and Silvan Tomkins, both of whom saw clearly the central role of shame in human life. Newton once said that the fate of a good theory was to become the limited case of another theory. If a more articulated theory emerges in these pages, it is because I had broad shoulders to stand on.

I have learned much as a teacher, a psychotherapist, and a researcher. Each of these roles has given me a different perspective on shame. As a teacher I come in contact with a large number of students, varying in age from adolescence to early adulthood. This experience allows me to observe how young people interact with authority and react to standards. As a research scientist interested in developmental questions, I observe childrens development, sometimes through a one-way mirror, but often by interacting with them in talk and play. This experience enables me to explore the origins of shame. Studying the parents of these children allows me to observe the socialization of the shame process and, at the same time, to consider intergenerational shame by means of questioning and interview techniques. Finally, as a therapist, I have been able to explore my patients experiences and to see how maladaptive some ways of coping with shame can be.

I could not have written this book without the untiring help of my secretary, Ruth Gitlen, who received assistance from Stacey Fanslow. She not only typed and retyped the drafts, but in her way, gave meaning to sentences in need of her keen eye. To Barbara Louis, who proofread the manuscript, many thanks. Andrew P. Morrison, Carolyn Saarni, June Tangney, and Lawrence Pervin read an earlier draft of the manuscript. To them, I owe my appreciation for helping me make clearer what I wanted to say and for pointing out what I had forgotten to include. My editor, Susan Milmoe, provided support for my effort and demonstrated intellectual vigor and command of our language while editing my text. My work has been supported by many grants but two foundations have been particularly helpful: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the W. T. Grant Foundation. The latter, headed by Robert Haggerty, has provided my colleagues and me with the resources to conduct our longitudinal studies, from which much of the material of this book was gathered. Finally, I am grateful to David Carver and Norman Edelman for their continued support of my work.

She took of its fruit, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they felt that they were naked.

Emotions, our own and those of others, affect us during every waking moment. It is difficult to construct a sentence or to look at a person without feeling some emotion. While there are many glib references in popular books to the importance of getting in touch with our feelings, we really know little about feelings. Recently, following up the pioneering work of Darwin, systematic research on emotional development, individual differences in the expression of emotions, and the impact of emotions on social behavior has begun. However, progress has been slow and difficult. The primary concern of academic psychologists in the last three decades has been cognition. No doubt, the computer as model is partly to blame. The primary concern of psychiatrists has been clinical problems and, increasingly, their biological substrates. But the study of emotions for their own sake is vital if we are to understand human motivation and behavior.

We all recognize the opening quotation as part of the

The general lack of attention to shame does not reflect its esoteric nature. Shame touches on many themes in contemporary psychological thought. Shame is related to guilt, pride, and hubris, all of which also require self-awareness. Shame bears on narcissism; indeed, the narcissistic personality is the personality of the shamed. Shame underlies many of our relationships with others: marriages, for example, are often environments of shame.

I believe that the species-specific feeling of shame is central in our lives. Shame, more than sex or aggression, is responsible for controlling our psychic course. Shame guides us into depression or antisocial behavior. Our internal struggles are not battles between instincts and reality, but conflicts that typically involve the understanding and negotiating of shame, its elicitors, and its frequency.

Consider a married couple. The husband asks the wife, So when are you going to go on that diet you keep talking about? Or consider a professor who comments to a student, I found much that was good in your paper, but I thought your argument went seriously astray. In both of these everyday exchanges, the speaker causes the listener to feel shame. Shame can be defined simply as the feeling we have when we evaluate our actions, feelings, or behavior, and conclude that we have done wrong. It encompasses the whole of ourselves; it generates a wish to hide, to disappear, or even to die.

Responses to shame can be varied: anger, depression, or withdrawal. The wife, criticized, becomes angry; the student, criticized, becomes embarrassed, loses confidence, and vows to avoid taking courses given by that professor. Cultural differences, past and present, can be viewed as differences in the ways in which shame and self-consciousness are experienced and addressed. Recent theorists of narcissism, those who have informed us of the possibilities of self-actualization and personal freedom, have focused us on ourselves; this focus is associated with an increase in shame. Narcissism is the ultimate attempt to avoid shame.

Shame has an impact on diverse human phenomena, from the level of the individual to that of culture and society. The conflict between self-actualization versus commitment to community involves shame, as well as anxiety. To understand shame is, in some sense, to understand human nature.

Let us consider a few examples that demonstrate shames ubiquity and its chameleon nature.

Angry Donald

I am in an observation room in my laboratory, watching a mother playing with her 3-year-old son. I have asked her to teach the child a game called the Hanoi puzzle, which involves moving doughnut-shaped circles from one stick to another. It cannot be solved by a three year old, but the mother does not know this.