Shame

Mixed emotion

Shame is a mixed emotion, i.e. a mixture of simple emotions (fear, anger, sadness) and feelings (impotence, rage selected, sad despair, empty…).

It is about an emotion more antiquated than the culpability with the direction where it is often less verbal and more sensory than the latter. It appears émotionnellement (embarrassment, faintness, fear,… or exubérance, aggressiveness.), corporally (lowered eyes, low head, reddening,… or head high,…), cognitivement (internal devaluing or aggressive speech…) and comportementalement (inhibition, paralysis or ambition, exhibitionnism,…).

Synonyms

humiliation: dishonor, ignominie, infamy, opprobrium, turpitude, affront, fading, abjection, lowness remorse: embarrassment, embarrassment, culpability, repentance, regret, shame, decency, scruple Another synonym exists but it is an expression used in the south of France: tanned (to be validated!!)

Positive aspects

The positive aspects of shame are about education, of the training of the social life, humanism. Shame controls the social relations. It protects each one by announcing the good limits not to be exceeded. The eskimos use for example shame to learn how to the children not to cross the ice-barrier, risks mortal for them. When a child crosses the ice for the first time, the eskimos make him shame to learn how to him to pay attention to this danger which can cost him the life.

According to the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, the Culture S can be classified according to the importance of the use of shame or the Culpabilité to socially control the activities of their members. The Asian cultures , such as for example the China or the Japan, are regarded as cultures of shame . The European cultures and American modern are regarded as cultures of the culpability . The traditional Japanese company and that of the Old Greeks are sometimes rather regarded as based more on shame than on the culpability because the social consequences “to be caught” are seen like more important than the individual feelings. Nevertheless no culture is based that on only one of these feelings. The anthropologists nowadays reject this type of classification of the general cultures.

Shame is positive when it limits our behaviors without deteriorating our identity. With small amount and punctually, shame shows the right way to us towards the respect of the others and oneself. She teaches us humility and the equality between the men. Like all the emotions, it informs us on us, and invites us to place us nor in " under-homme" (tender, position of victim) nor in " on-homme" (domination, position of saver or persecutor). Excesses of shame and absence of shame are prejudicial. The people who do not feel any more shame often express arrogant behaviors, invading, violent ones which harm the quality of the social life.

Shame is also seen as positive because it can avoid with the victims of humiliations and violences to sink in their turn in cruelty and chaos. Many humiliated or scorned people told that they remained deeply human thanks to their shame which retained them as regards Man, preventing them from falling into animal violence.

Negative aspects

Shame has negative aspects when it is excessive at an individual. It is then source of individual suffering….

Excesses of shame come from humiliations, the contempt, the mockeries, the illegitimacy, the secrecies, the social regression, the competition, the lie,… or of the messages of pride, ambition, desire… that the individual receives others (the expressions " to make honte" , " to carry the honte" show that shame is external on the subject at the beginning). Shame passes sometimes initially by the behaviors for then weakening and damaging the Being. It digs its furrow in the personality by successive passages. It functions in spiral by pushing the subject at the same time to the bottom (" ego" broken, narcissistic deficit, form of tender) or to the top (" ego" oversize, narcissistic excess, form of domination, form reactional and defensive). Shame enracine not in the conscience to have badly acted (it is culpability), but in the feeling to be unworthy, like human being in a social context. Once installed and enkystée in the personality, excessive shame undermines the ego (or oversizes it by defensive reaction). In film of David Lynch " Man" elephant; , the main character (Man Elephant, newborn with a physical malformation, symbol of the monster), do not do anything evil, and yet he suffers from shame. He saw hidden, humiliated, and he says the suffering of shame when he shouts " I am not an elephant, I am a being humain". Shame leads the subject to believe that it has something which does not go, as Gainsbourg which sings " I am the man with head of choux". Shame can generate a bad regard of oneself, and even a hatred of oneself.

Body image

Shame has a body dimension. It is related on the body border, the skin and the hygiene of the body. It is very often associated with the topic of the sexuality and the image of oneself by the body. Sometimes shame modifies the body image and is anchored in the false feeling to be dirty, ugly, monstrous, deformed…

Shame has a visual dimension. It occurs when one is visible in an aspect of oneself which one judges very negatively.

Narcissistic wound

Hidden or shown in excess, of subjected or defensive form, shame signs a deep narcissistic wound. It wraps the subject corporally as a ball which that is to say reddens, is emptied, remained fixed,…. that is to say inflates in a defensive way to take all the place like proud frog of Jean of the Fountain.

Shame is often associated with others turbid: alcoholism, addictions, depression, the social phobia…. A feeling of shame persisting can even lead to the depression with the Suicide. Indeed, an excessive shame generates an important loss of energy and a strong feeling of despair. In such a case, to leave the social withdrawal and to ask for the assistance of an health professional are vital.

Social dimension

On this subject, Michelle Larivey says to us: " One never tests shame only vis-a-vis oneself. Shame is a feeling which is always lived " devant" others and " by rapport" with their judgment. Shame is made up of a reaction of humiliation in front of the judgment of the other and the negative judgment which one carries oneself on this aspect. It makes it possible to note that we do not assume what makes us shame. It also makes it possible to identify the judgment which we carry ourself on the subject. (It is precisely this judgment which makes difficult to assume it). Lastly, it informs us of the importance of the people in front of whom we live this honte".

Shame is propagated easily, it is communicated in a vertical logic of superiority-inferiority. It falls us above in contact with the others, and we let us leave there with the others.

Spiritual dimension

Shame informs us on our value and our place of Man in the community of the Men. It returns to dignity, the identity and the relational accuracy of each one in the human community.

See too

Site on shame, emotion

References

"The honte" , Serge Tisseron
" Sources of the honte" , Vincent de Gaulejac
" To release itself from the honte" , Patricia Potter-Efron-Ronald Potter-Efron
" Power of the émotions" , Michelle Larivey
" Fear of the autres" , Christophe André

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