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The content of this book is strictly psychoanalytic. That is to say that the author uses first Freudian quotes and concepts and then embellishes these references to both shame and narcissism with quotations from Kohut, Piers, and other analytic writers. From this base he proposes and aptly illustrates with clear clinical material the relation between shame and narcissism.
The principal issue seems to be whether shame arises when an individual fails to reach some externally determined goal or whether he or she could respond with the affect of shame in response to strictly internal failure to obtain whatever goal has been learned as essential. As the reader may anticipate, both aspects come out well in the continued discussion of this exciting subject.
A further thesis expounded in detail is the question of which comes first, almost in a chicken and the egg manner. On the one hand Dr. Morrison proposes the possibility that shame may serve as a defense against narcissism and exhibitionism and on the other hand that shame may be a totally internal affect experience having to do with interpsychic conflict and self-deficit. This was the primary thrust of the book and of the clinical examples. He very wisely does not pretend to solve the problem but presents his views and more views of other writers than the reader may wish to read. However, the exercise of reading this book will be a salutary one for analytically trained persons.