Shame

The Exposed Self

Michael Lewis

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 1995
• Print ISBN: 9780684823119
• eBook ISBN: 9781439105238
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Emotions in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Shame, the quintessential human emotion, received little attention during the years in which the central forces believed to be motivating us were identified as primitive instincts like sex and aggression. Now, redressing the balance, there is an explosion of interest in the self-conscious emotion. Much of our psychic lives involve the negotiation of shame, asserts Michael Lewis, internationally known developmental and clinical psychologist. Shame is normal, not pathological, though opposite reactions to shame underlie many conflicts among individuals and groups, and some styles of handling shame are clearly maladaptive. Illustrating his argument with examples from everyday life, Lewis draws on his own pathbreaking studies and the theory and research of many others to construct the first comprehensive and empirically based account of emotional development focused on shame. In this paperback edition, Michael Lewis adds a compelling new chapter on stigma in which he details the process in which stigmatization produces shame.

Notes

CHAPTER 1. Shame in Everyday Life

1See, for example, Lewis, H. B., 1971; Morrison, A. P., 1989; Nathanson, D. L., 1987a, b, c; Tomkins, S. S., 1963.

2New York Times, 1/29/89.

3Fromm, E., 1941, p. 107.

CHAPTER 2. Our Emotional Lives

1James, W., 1890.

2Bard, P. A., 1928; Cannon, W. B., 1929.

3Some have located this state in the soma (for example, James, W., 1890), in the autonomic nervous system (Wenger, M. A., Jones, F. N., & Jones, M. H., 1956), in the central nervous system (Cannon, W. B., 1929; Olds, M. E., & Forbes, J. L., 1981), in the endocrine hormonal system, and in all three (Izard, C. E., 1972). Following Darwin (1872/1969), who observed external manifestations of these presumed internal emotional states in the facial, vocal, and postural behavior of men and beasts, people more recently have looked at facial expressions as a direct measure of these states (see Tomkins, S. S., 1962, 1963; Izard, C. E., 1977; Ekman, P., Friesen, W., & Ellsworth, P., 1972).

4R. Zajonc (1980) has most clearly articulated the idea that emotional states need not require cognition.

5 Freud, S., 1915/1959.

6 See Lewis, M., & Michalson, L., 1983.

7See Plutchik, R., 1962, pp. 41-42.

8Izard, C. E., 1977; Tomkins, S. S., 1963.

9Moreover, and perhaps even worse, we have little empirical research to inform us about the relationship between them. The relationship between these forms of expression may be important. It may be the case that inhibition of one expressive system leads to the accentuation of a second. For example, if children who have stranger anxiety are forced to sit in a chair and watch the approach of a stranger without being able to move away, they are more likely to show more intense and prolonged facial expression than if they are not placed in a physical restraining situation and the same condition occurs. This should not be surprising. If one of the features of emotional expression is its communicative value, then the inhibiting of some feature of that communicative message—in this case, running away—should result in the accenting of other features.

As we will see, the occurrence of language, which is a feature of emotional expression unique to humans, may serve in and of itself to dampen the expressive behavior found in the face. Thus, one interaction between expression systems may be a reciprocal one, such that suppression of one leads to the accenting of others. Alternatively, expression in one modality may enhance expression in another. One can think of the training of soldiers in this regard. To enhance physical violence or bodily expression of anger, soldiers are taught to use vocal behavior, that is, to scream and yell obscenities at the “dummy” enemy. It is assumed that the yelling enhances the motor expression of aggression and anger.

10The exact number and type is open to considerable discussion. The reader is referred to other sources for more elaborate discussions concerning children’s and adults’ ability to produce faces and to understand and discriminate the meaning of faces (Lewis, M., & Michalson, L., 1983).

11Consider the following observations.

Benjamin is a 1-year-old child who has been left alone in his room. His mother closes the door and walks out. Unbeknownst to him, we are photographing his behavior and we notice the following behavior. Benjamin cries. A simple, short whinelike sound. He stops and pauses and looks to see whether the cry brings his mother to the room. Hearing no sounds of approach, he cries again.

Contrast this behavior with that of another child, who, when left alone, starts to cry and does not pause to listen to the effect of her cry. We would argue that these two children are using vocal expression for different purposes. For Benjamin, the cry represents an instrumental response designed to get his mother to return to the room. It may or may not index his internal state. The cry of the second child, however, is a measure of the child’s internal distress since the child does not appear interested in the effect of her cry. The second example occurs in a somewhat older child.

Felicia is 20 months old and she is playing in the yard by herself while her mother watches her from her study window where she is preparing her teaching lesson. During the course of play, Felicia stumbles and bangs her knee. She starts to cry but, looking around and seeing no one there, stops crying and resumes her play. She continues to play happily for the next 10 minutes. She then stops her play and, skipping and running, moves toward the entrance to the house. She enters the house through the back door and walks to her mother’s study where, upon opening the door, Felicia starts to cry.

Here again, facial and vocal expression appear to represent the child’s instrumental action rather than reflecting her internal state. From her mother’s viewpoint, her internal state for the past 10 minutes appears to be that of a happy and playful child. That the child cries upon seeing the mother cannot represent the child’s emotional state at that moment. At best, it represents a communication about some event in the past. These, and many more examples, can be presented to show that expression does not bear a one-to-one correspondence to our internal emotional states, even in early life.

12Lewis, M., Stanger, C., & Sullivan, M. W., 1989.

13Ekman, P., & Friesen, W. V., 1975; Saarni, C., 1979.

14Davidson, R. J., & Fox, N. A., 1982.

15Recently, P. Ekman (1984) tried to find a relationship between the autonomic nervous system responses of heart rate and skin temperature and particular emotions. He reports rather exciting findings that show, for example, that high skin temperature accompanied by high heart rate is associated with anger, whereas low skin temperature with high heart rate is associated with fear and sadness. These findings suggest that, in the future, we may be able to map specific emotions, such as shame, with specific physiological responses. However, at the moment, this is not the case.

16Scherer, K. R., 1979, 1981.

17Lewis, H. B., 1987; Tomkins, S. S., 1963.

18McDougall, W., 1923.

19Tomkins, S. S., 1962, p. 23.

20Nathanson, D. L., 1987a, b, c.

21Geppert, U., 1986.

22Izard, C. E., 1971, 1977, 1979; Rutter, M., Izard, C. E., & Read, P., 1986.

23Geppert, U., 1986; Heckhausen, H., 1984; Schneider, K., Hanne, K., & Lehmann, B., 1989.

24Barrett, K. G., & Zahn-Waxler, C., 1987.

25Lewis, M., Sullivan, M. W., Stanger, C., & Weiss, M., 1989.

26Buss, A., 1980; Geppert, U., 1986.

27 Lazarus, R. W., 1982.

28Darwin, C., 1872/1969, p. 325.

29Darwin, C., 1872/1969, p. 327.

30Darwin, C., 1872/1969, p. 345.

31Tomkins, S. S., 1963.

32Tomkins, S. S., 1963, p. 123.

33Tomkins, S. S., 1963, p. 194.

34It is hard to know the direction of the causal chain between interrupt and shame, because careful sequential analysis of facial patterns prior to or during shame has not been seriously undertaken. It seems reasonable to think of shame as causing an interrupt of excitement and enjoyment and being caused by the interrupt of excitement and enjoyment. I suspect the former causal chain is closer to the truth, especially given the results of our studies on the interrupt of learning and the resultant emotions of anger and sadness (see Alessandri, S., Sullivan, M. W., & Lewis, M., 1990; Lewis, M., Alessandri, S., & Sullivan, M. W., 1990).

35Lewis, H. B., 1971.

36Izard, C. E., 1977, p. 389, italics added.

37Erikson, E. H., 1950; Klein, M., 1975.

38The exception may be the drive reduction theoris...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Shame in Everyday Life
• Our Emotional Lives
• The Self and Its Development
• Self Thoughts and Shame
• The Origins of Shame
• The Socialization of Shame From Parent to Child
• Reacting to Our Feelings Felt and Unfelt Shame
• Prolonged Reactions to Shame Humiliation Depression and Rage
• Pathologies of Self Narcissism and Multiple Personalities
• Individual Differences and Shame Fights Between Couples
• Stigma
• Shame Across Time and Place
• Notes
• References
• Index