Looking Shame In The Eye

What is shame and where does it come from? How can we break free and help others held in its vice-like grip? And what is the gospel when shame is the problem? Shame, humiliation and stigma are all around us. Online shaming reminds us of the power of shame, the crisis of self-worth, the weight of judgement and the need for freedom. At the same time, people are becoming less responsive to gospel messages about guilt, morality and sin. If we want to reach those around us and bring healing to their hurts, we need to speak their language: the language of shame. This book helps Christians to introduce 'shame thinking' into their own lives and the lives of those they disciple and evangelize. Above all, it shows how God's freedom can release anyone suffering from the debilitating grip of shame. Introduction: Reputation ruined - what shame looks like 1 Identity, perception, judgement, and the horizontal nature of shame - case study from Genesis 2 Shame examined - what exactly is shame and how does it relate to guilt? Helpful emotion but also profoundly destructive 3 Who do you think you are? Shame in relation to identity: fig leaves and Instagram 4 Shame and the cross - flipping the script; putting shame to shame. How Jesus dealt with shame 5 'Disposing' of the shameful body - hiding, distancing, laughter, etc. Cultural perceptions 6 A new life. The role of the church - a brand new social community for the shamed 7 Putting our house in order before we help others: practical application 8 Reaching out to the shamed: practical application

Offers a complex analysis of the psychodynamic role of shame in Melville's work, with detailed readings of Moby-Dick, Pierre, and "Billy Budd."

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.

Explores the role of shame as an important affect in the complex psychodynamics of literary and philosophical works.

This edited volume provides new perspectives on how shame is experienced and transformed within digital worlds and Industry 4.0. The editors and authors discuss how individuals and organisations can constructively transform shame at work, in professional and private contexts, and with regard to socio-cultural lifestyle changes, founded in digitalisation and Industry 4.0. The contributions in this volume enable researchers and practitioners alike to unlock the topic of shame and its specifics in the highly dynamic and rapidly changing times to explore this emotion in depth in connection with remote workplaces, home office, automated realities and smart systems, or digitalised life- and working styles. By employing transdisciplinary and transcultural perspectives, the volume further discusses shame in the context of new lifestyles, religion, gender, sexual suppression, mental illness, and the nature of citizenship. Researchers, practitioners and students in the fields of industrial and organisational psychology, positive psychology, organisational studies, future studies, health and occupational science and therapy, emotion sciences, management, leadership and human resources will find the contributions highly topical, insightful and applicable to practice. Fresh, timely, thought-provoking with each turn of the page, this impressive volume explores shame in today’s world. Moving beyond the simple “guilt is good; shame is bad” perspective, authors from diverse disciplines examine adaptive and maladaptive aspects of shame in the context of contemporary issues (e.g., social media use, COVID-19) via multiple cultural and social lenses. Aptly named, Shame 4.0 is a treasure trove of rich ideas ripe for empirical study – a blueprint for the next generation of research on this complex and ubiquitous emotion. Bravo! --June Tangney, PhD, University Professor and Professor of Psychology, George Mason University, USA Uncovering Shame - To a much greater extent than other emotions like anger, grief, and fear, until recently most shame in modern societies has been hidden from sight. The text you see in this book is one of the steps that is being taken to make it more visible and therefore controllable. -- Thomas Scheff, Prof. Emeritus Department of Sociology, UCSB, Santa Bararbara, Ca.

The question of affect is central to critical theory, psychology, politics, and the entire range of the humanities; but no discipline, including psychoanalysis, has offered a theory of affect that would be rich enough to account for the delicacy and power, the evanescence and durability, the bodily rootedness and the cultural variability of human emotion. Silvan Tomkins (1911-1991) was one of the most radical and imaginative psychologists of the twentieth century. In Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, a four-volume work published over the last thirty years of his life, Tomkins developed an ambitious theory of affect steeped in cybernetics and systems theory as well as in psychoanalysis, ethology, and neuroscience. The implications of his conceptually daring and phenomenologically suggestive theory are only now--in the context of postmodernism--beginning to be understood. With Shame and Its Sisters, editors Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank make available for the first time an engaging and accessible selection of Tomkins's work. Featuring intensive examination of several key affects, particularly shame and anger, this volume contains many of Tomkins's most haunting, diagnostically incisive, and theoretically challenging discussions. An introductory essay by the editors places Tomkins's work in the context of postwar information technologies and will prompt a reexamination of some of the underlying assumptions of recent critical work in cultural studies and other areas of the humanities. The text is also accompanied by a biographical sketch of Tomkins by noted psychologist Irving E. Alexander, Tomkins's longtime friend and collaborator.

Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma is a guide to recognizing the many ways shame and pride lie at the heart of psychotherapy with survivors of relational trauma. In these pages, readers learn how to differentiate shame and pride as emotional processes and traumatic mind/body states. They will also discover how understanding the psychodynamic and phenomenological relationships between shame, pride, and dissociation benefit psychotherapy with relational trauma. Next, readers are introduced to fifteen attitudes, principles, and concepts that guide this work from a transtheoretical perspective. Therapists will learn about ways to conceptualize and successfully navigate complex, patient-therapist shame dynamics, and apply neuroscientific findings to this challenging work. Finally, readers will discover how the concept and phenomena of pro-being pride, that is delighting in one's own and others' unique aliveness, helps patients transcend maladaptive shame and pride and experience greater unity within, with others, and with the world beyond.

Bataille’s first novel, published under the pseudonym ‘Lord Auch’, is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacreligious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille’s obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.