You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
WE HAVE JUST READ A VERY CONVINCING DESCRIPTION of a case of a man in whom the various aspects of shame played symptomatically and phenomenologically a crucial role. For Aaron, as for so many other patients who are filled with symptomatic shame, the answer to our issue's question “Is shame the central affect of disorders of the self?” has to be yes. Disturbances of self-esteem, of self-respect, of self-cohesion and the sense of integrity—in brief, of narcissism in the widest sense—all these terms describe a set of problems we encounter in most of our patients, and with that we also encounter with great prominence the affect and the state of shame, the anxiety of shame, and the protective attitude of shame.
It is, however, also true that we see with great frequency in those clusters of problems other affects, like narcissistic rage, resentment, often generalized panic, and certainly almost always guilt, but still it seems as if those different aspects or forms of shame that I have just enumerated are like a funnel into which all emotions flow or out of which they erupt, indeed, a kind of central group of affects tyrannically ruling the inner lives of them.
A few preliminary remarks: I just spoke of three main forms of shame: the two “negative” forms of shame as anxiety and shame as depressive affect and the third “positive” form, shame as a protective