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As Dr Jacoby's book will show, shame is the most painful shadow which haunts those with problems of self-esteem and is to be found wherever there is narcissistic wounding. Jacoby states at the outset that he will write from his ‘personal equation’, but this perspective is both expansive and clinically profound. It draws from diverse sources, including the Book of Genesis, fairy tales (Snow White), experimental research, and both Jungian and psychoanalytic literature. This is then continually integrated with clinical experience.
The book begins with some meditations on the structure of shame as a form of anxiety in which there is a sense of failure and loss of face. Although shame and its cousin, guilt, can occur together or conceal each other, shame is a pain that tends to cut deeper. A further reflection, which recurs throughout the book, is that shame can be a response to the rejecting face of others or a response to the failure to be true to one's self. From the therapeutic view, of course, it is crucial that this distinction becomes differentiated and that the analyst align with the patient's self rather than the internal persecutors which deform the ego.
Jacoby also discusses the protective function of shame, which seems to be its archetypal meaning. Shame helps preserve the social fabric by discouraging deviance from the norm, but it also supports personal integrity by inhibiting behaviours which would lead to social humiliation and by supporting that which maintains personal values. Jacoby goes to some length to illustrate the archetypal structure, or natural meaning, of shame, including its relation to physical nakedness. I found an especially interesting reflection in Jacoby's discussion of the story of the Fall. He suggests Adam and Eve's sewing fig-leaves to hide their nakedness, that is, their attempt to conceal and rise above their nakedness, was the first creative act. This myth also suggests that shame emerges with awareness. It is the experience of our