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In her fine exploration and examination of current thinking about shame, Susan Miller has attempted to present major themes and contributions from the burgeoning shame literature, comparing differing perspectives and evaluating salient issues regarding this seminal affect. Miller writes clearly and vividly, with felicitous phrasing that frequently captures the particular flavour of a given construct or clinical moment. She is generous in her acknowledgement of, and respect for, the contributions of contemporary writers on shame, and is indefatigable in her attempts to sort out differences, implications and problems with specific theoretical positions.
In addition to several published articles on shame, Miller has contributed a previous book on the subject (1985). The current work reflects her continuing struggle to put shame into an appropriate perspective. She expresses concern that the plethora of writings on shame tends to extend it too much prominence in the pantheon of human experience, and this book seems as much an effort to ‘cut shame down to size’ as it is to promulgate any particular theory.
Miller approaches her task in orderly fashion. After first setting forth some major issues regarding shame, she offers three clinical contexts from which to study the subject, with a separate chapter following each one providing detailed clinical examples. First, she examines shame's role in obsessive-compulsive conditions followed by studies of shame ‘in the background’ (her conceptualisation of narcissism and narcissistic disturbances), and then shame ‘in the foreground’ (represented by masochism—moral and otherwise). While acknowledging other clinical conditions from which to consider shame, she utilises these categories well to explore the themes that are to her of most pressing concern.
In her first chapter, Miller sets out some basic shame issues, including the sense, running throughout the book, that shame has been put forth too globally as a fundamental source of