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Joseph D. Lichtenberg, (2008). The Analytic Press, Psychoanalytic Inquiry Book Series, New York, pp. 160, ISBN: 978-0-88163-475-1, Paperback £21-99
Claire Pajaczkowska and Ivan Ward, Routledge, Sussex and New York, pp. 242, ISBN 978-0-415-42011-9, Paperback, £19-99
These two books are a useful addition to a subject neglected within psychoanalysis, particularly in Britain. Shame is a topic that has attracted more interest in the U.S.A. and France (Sartre and Lacan being a powerful influence). When I first took an interest in shame in the 1980's (I was working with young criminals who seemed to be entirely occupied with issues of shame and ‘saving face’), a search revealed only a handful of psychoanalytic papers on shame. This is no longer the case but it is still rare to find major emotional disturbance attributed to chronic shame. It is quite possible to make a case that Oedipus does not have an Oedipus complex (he bypasses it) and instead has a shame-driven personality disorder. Shame has been extensively studied outside of psychoanalysis by counsellors, anthropologists, neuroscientists and psychologists. The neglect within psychoanalysis is most likely due to several factors: Freud made no systematic study of it (but a search of the Standard Edition reveals that the word ‘shame’ occurs much more often than ‘guilt’). Freud's self-analysis was unlikely to reveal shame because it is activated by the presence of another person. Psychoanalytic orthodoxy following Freud emphasises guilt and its vicissitudes. Western, Judaeo-Christian culture also emphasises guilt (which allows the masking of more painful shame).
Shame has begun to emerge from the shadows as it becomes recognised as powerful in its contribution to both the constructive and destructive aspects of humanity. Both of these books indirectly pose the question ‘what is useful and what needs to be revised in t