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ONE OF THE LABORS OF HERCULES was to wrestle with Proteus, the monster who kept changing shapes from serpent to lion to bear. Hercules managed to hang on and hold the monster despite the transformations. Those who would write about shame are in a similar predicament: they must hang on despite the anxiety over metamorphoses. Attempting to grasp shame in the consulting room is very much like wrestling with Proteus: it keeps changing shapes. Elizabeth Carr struggles valiantly to hang onto the subject of shame and thereby provides us with an opportunity to consider her process notes. Mine is only one reading of the paper she has generously provided, which, I hope, will be complemented by other readings in this issue.
In the first part of this paper, I will focus on the clinical picture and on a few of the clinical interactions that can be used to illustrate shame manifestations in the transference and countertransference. In the second part, I will discuss these shame manifestations freely with respect to literary and philosophical examples.
The question of the centrality of shame in the disorders of the self can be approached in many ways. I hope to be able to show that one does not necessarily have to subscribe to a particular view of the disorders of the self in order to view shame as extremely useful clinically. While much of the recent literature on shame would appear to equate an emphasis on shame with a self-psychological or interpersonal,