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In his introduction, Dr. Etezady gave a brief overview of the psychoanalytic, phenomenological and cultural implications of shame. He noted that universally shame is defined as an aversive affective experience containing somatic, experiential and fantasy elements that, along with other essential affects including anxiety and guilt, serves a signal function in self and interactive regulation, empathy, mentalization, maintaining narcissistic homeostasis and adaptive or defensive mechanisms.
Shame is first observable, in its objective, behavioral, facial and body-language, after differentiation and not before the end of the first year, at the dawn of the emergence of intersubjectivity. This roughly coincides with the practicing sub-phase of separation-individuation process and the beginnings of upright locomotion. After the resolution of rapprochement, followed by consolidation from age 24 to 36 months, by the end of the third year, the attainment of the beginnings of self-and-object-constancy pave the way for triangulation and the passing of the oedipal complex. This leads to the formation of superego and ego-ideal as intrapsychic structures responsible for maintaining moral inhibitions as well as boosting ambitions and ideals. Fantasy content in shame is associated with the dread of being regarded as worthlessly deficient and humiliated in the eye of the observer. The observer is initially the mother, whose gleam in the eye affirms and supplants primary narcissism. By the time of latency, the critical eye can be internal and a source of conflict and neurotic compromise formation. Shame implies falling short of expected standards regarding whom one is, while guilt by distinction is related to atonement and punishment for transgression against others, in deed or wish, consciously or unconsciously.
Dr. Etezady left to the panel the task of addressing, in universal or culture-specific terms, questions of gender, social and moral boundaries, as well as matters of private ve