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The relationship between the structure of the self and the emergence of shame is delineated from the point of view of primitive psychopathology, which is characterized by "shame-proneness and a variety of affective and object-relational disturbances." Guilt and shame are discussed, and the difficulties in separating them are outlined. Although one is related to the superego and the other to the ego ideal, the relationship of these two structures, and the mixture of loving and hateful introjects and positive and negative ideals, make intersystemic conflict inadequate to explain these two affects. Four essential characteristics of shame are outlined: (1) shock or suddenness; (2) painful isolation; (3) self-consciousness; and (4) exposure. The experience is related either to loss of pleasure—narcissistic or libidinal—or to loss of the parental or internalized object who is seen as watching and shaming. In childhood it stems from the negative reactions to the child's attempts at attention-getting, mastery, curiosity, and self-display, and leads to feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. A crucial point of Spero's article concerns the loss of privacy in the experience of shame and its relation to the loss of boundaries and/or failure of differentiation between self and other. Spero suggests "that shame occurs in the context of developmentally or traumatically induced self-other boundaries, as a reaction to the threat of intrusion and the disorganizing anxiety caused by unassimilable negative and devaluing self and object representations" that are, in fact, introjects, rather than identifications. The repair comes following separation from the objects, but when this is impossible, because of their fragmentary nature, it results in a "shame personality."