In Denial of Shame & Altruism: a Case Study Intro and… non-verbal, Freudian Sociology Primer (2025)

Catch-22yh, 2025

Introduction to non-verbal and Freudian communications, sociology and Anthropology, with an introduction by Frits kaal (73), 319pp.

Shame: Embedded in Cultures, Relationships, and the Mind

Psychiatry, 2020

The Social Psychology of Shame in Psychoanalytic Training

The Candidate: Perspectives from an Evolving Psychoanalytic Community

An exploration of the function shame can sometimes play in the training of psychoanalytic candidates with implications for training in other professions as well.

The Complexities of ‘Shame’: An Exploration of Human Connection

2017

This dissertation is about one of the most controversial emotions: shame. The foundational question is: What constitutes the experience of shame as both an emotion and a dynamic of power, with an emphasis on women’s gender roles? The topic is inspired by my lived experience. Expressions of my narratives and those of others are integral to this work. The discussion begins with an overview of the history of ideas on emotions and shame. Shame was considered more important than other emotions because of its evaluative cognitive dimension. The overview highlights the continuum of inherited scholarly and culturally based gender stereotypes. Through exploring current interdisciplinary scholarly research on shame, a common theme emerged: the irrevocable presence of the ‘other’ in the shame experience. Discussions around this theme led to two basic principles: 1) the individual and the social

Shame: Developmental, cultural and clinical realms

Psychodynamic Practice, 2017

The Truth of Shame-Consciousness in Freud and Phenomenology

Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 2000

This paper addresses the philosophical problems posed by shame-consciousness, specifically with respect to the question as to whether the feelings of shame signify an apprehension of truth. After reviewing several methodological problems posed by shame-consciousness, the paper takes up the theoretical treatment of shame in Freud, Scheler, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, in order to show how shame illuminates the constitution of subjectivity by power relations in society. This psychoanalytic and phenomenological account of shame is shown to be confirmed by material drawn from cultural studies of shame, and by contemporary feminist critique.

The Passion of Mediated Shame

The article examines how mediated shame in the reality show The Luxury Trap where individuals with huge debts are being scolded for ‘their lack of economic self- control’ presents a specific kind of information about class played out as intensities, encounters and experience. Drawing on studies on affective reactivity, it extends the argument of reality TV as a site for classed otherness by examining how discordant affects, such as, non-empathic reactions to others’ emotional experiences, are formed, as well as transformed on the show. The shaming process evolves through different transitory phases: the inducing, internalization and (temporarily) reduction in shame. These sequential phases disclose the reliance on the passionate aspects of shame, that is, participants’ desire to re-enter into the common by freeing oneself from that which carries the mark for exclusion. They also provide the premise for the repetitive power of affect operation intrinsically linking class and shame together, giving body and form to the un-named, to that which drive us towards affective judgements and to the un-making of subjects.

The individual and society: the social role of shame

2018

The feeling of shame has a longstanding role in the relations between individual and society. In this article we shall distinguish between shame and shaming and try to understand the social and cultural function of shame. Even though shame is a feeling that has a physiological basis, the way in which we experience emotions differs from culture to culture since it is the meaning that we attach to an event that evokes the emotion rather than the event itself (Ben-Ze’ev 1996). In order to understand the phenomenon of social shaming in the present we must examine the social origins of this phenomenon in Western culture. The methodology most fitting to examine this cultural construct is the genealogical method, by way of which we shall come to see that shaming is not an essentially new phenomenon in Western culture, but only a new mode of expressing old patterns.

Shaming in a Shameless World: The Broken Dialectic of the Self

Political Research Quarterly, 2022

Until recently, shame culture was considered a powerful weapon for maintaining the status quo. Furthermore, it was also considered anti-democratic. Yet nowadays, in the hands of the weak, it has become a powerful weapon for challenging the status quo. It appears that the efficiency of shame has increased in an allegedly shameless society. This article seeks to clarify such conundrums by employing the largely forgotten dialectic of the self to highlight the difference between "being ashamed" within one's inner self and "feeling shamed" in one's outer self, as evinced in the usages of two different words for "shame" in Hebrew and Greek. By contrasting Socrates with Diogenes the Cynic, this approach shows not only why not being able to be ashamed within one's inner self is a sign of a totalitarian self but also why such a self can become more vulnerable to external acts of shaming.

Piper’s question and ours: a role for adversity in group-centred views of non-agentive shame

Continental Philosophy Review, 2019

This paper aims to contribute to 'group-centred views' of non-agentive shame (victim shame, oppression shame), by linking them to an 'anepistemic' model of the experience and impact of human failing. One of the most vexing aspects of those group-centred views remains how susceptivity to such shame ought to be understood. This contribution focuses on how a basic familiarity with adversity, in everyday life, may open individuals up to these forms of shame. If, per group-centred views, non-agentive shame is importantly driven by participation in social practices with others, a better understanding of the impact of adversity on individuals' lives may offer a way of explaining how embodied experience instils in individuals a need for such participation. The upshot is an understanding of the individual's susceptivity to non-agentive shame, which affords it the same legitimacy as more conventional notions of shame.