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The 11 essays of this collection are all on the relatively new topic of shame, with a strong emphasis on literature and philosophy. All of the contributors except three (Benjamin Kilborne, Joseph Lichtenberg, and Léon Wurmser) are professors of English and/or Comparative Literature. The book makes large use of the theories of Léon Wurmser (who also contributes a long essay on Nietzsche), especially from his book, The Mask of Shame (Wurmser, 1981). There are more references to Wurmser recorded in the Index than to anyone else, including Freud. Scenes of Shame attempts to establish the importance of shame and its related affects for psychoanalytic theory and practice.
The purpose and method of the book is most forcefully developed in the essay by Barbara Schapiro, “‘The Dread and Repulsiveness of the Wild’: D. H. Lawrence and Shame.” Schapiro begins with a paradox: that Lawrence as a writer was “best known for his celebration of sexuality and uninhibited bodily expression in his art,” but “was in many respects quite puritanical and fastidious in his life” (p. 147). Lawrence became a very active proponent of free sexual expression despite the fact (or perhaps because of the fact) that sexuality was bound up for him with “a profound sense of shame over bodily, passionate life and a concomitant narcissistic rage” (p. 147). Thus sexuality proves at once to be “a source of terror, of dread and repulsiveness, while simultaneously representing the locus for narcissistic repair, for idealization and salvation of the self” (p. 147).
Lawrence's real concern is not with sex but with identity and relationship. In other words, sexual expression conveys a feeling of being fully alive and authentic. Schapiro connects Lawrence's shame with a deep empathy and identity with his mother's shame.