Comments on “Shame and Shame Dynamics Special Issue, Edited by Benjamin Kilborne

This is an interesting collection of shame papers, edited by Benjamin Kilborne (2003) under the rubric of Oedipal Shame. Some papers with new and exciting theoretical contributions, others offering principally a clinical emphasis, and several written from the perspective of literary criticism, including an interesting reading of the text of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex itself (e.g., Kilborne). As one dedicated to the study of shame, I must start by wondering what is unique about Oedipal shame in contrast with the affect of shame itself? In fact, what is Oedipal Shame? How does this concept advance the study of shame in new and creative directions? I believe that this question reverberates through many of the papers that I read.

Kilborne offers two enlightening perspectives. “Oedipal shame thus expresses an intractable conflict: Oedipus cannot know his fate, for if he does he is doomed. Yet his not knowing brings about the very outcome he has tried to avert; his hubris causes plagues and devastation.” (p. 1); “Oedipal shame frames inevitable unconscious conflict dynamics, dealing with the sense both of hope and of failure, of crushing defeat with respect to parents and ego ideals.” (p. 13). Thus, Oedipal shame is about conflict and about paradox, about highest aspirations and inevitably debasing failure. In his reading of Sophocles, Kilborne differs from Freud's emphasis on sex and aggression, with resultant guilt. Kilborne's is a loftier vision of the tragedy—one of inevitably high and unattainable ideals, of blindness, with crushing failure to attain these ideals leading to despair and