Shame, Ideal Self, and Narcissism

MUCH OF THE LITERATURE ON SHAME begins with the observation that this affect has been ignored, little appreciated, or misunderstood in psychoanalytic writings. This observation has been frequently enough made, in some intriguing and useful accounts, that a substantial body of work on this important subject has accrued, particularly with regard to the differentiation of shame from guilt. Many psychoanalysts have assumed that guilt is the "weightier" subject, and that shame is merely a phenomenon of the ego's response to social disapproval, representing little significance compared to guilt's internal conflicts, the painful war waged between the agencies id, ego, and superego.

With some other authors (Lewis, 1971); (Lynd, 1958); (Thrane, 1980); (Wurmser, 1981) I shall assume throughout this paper that shame is an affect of equal importance, theoretically and phenomenologically, to guilt. I shall also include within the designation of shame those related phenomena of humiliation, mortification, remorse, apathy, embarassment, and lowered self-esteem. While there is good reason to attempt differentiation of these phenomena from shame and from one another, I believe that, for the purposes of this examination, they are closely enough related emotions to be subsumed under "shame" as a signifying affect. Shame has been relegated to second-order importance in classic psychoanalytic literature, I believe, because it relates directly to a construct which until recent writings has not been easily integrated into the mainstream of Freudian concepts—that of the self. Thus, much of the significant work on shame has emerged from writers working within Sullivanian (and other neo-Freudian) perspectives. As we shall see, the classical construct of the ego ideal, a poorly differentiated element of the system superego, has been previously invoked in discussions of shame. That loving function of the superego has traditionally been less accessible than its punitive function, regular