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“Shame is a taboo, expelled to the backyard of the mind.” it is the “Cinderella of unpleasant feelings.” It is also our only inborn moral sense. To feel shame is shameful; to reveal it is as shameful as has earlier been the public display of sexuality.
Sexuality, after all, as psychoanalysis has shown us, is the inborn, passionate longing for reciprocity. More recent research has revealed the earliest forms of all of these inborn longings: the longing for the mother's reciprocal gaze, for her care, for being held in her arms. This has become a central focus of interest in the psychoanalytic study of early childhood. And, just as the realisation and acceptance of the sexuality of the child was very slow, it will take a long time to fully realise the infant's astonishingly complex ability to seek out reciprocity. From the earliest age, the infant's relationship with important others is shaped by the response it receives to its reaching out for reciprocity; this process affects the child's entire later life. It socialises or deforms; it gives shape to life, but it can also kill both the inner, private and the outer, social life. The outcome of the infant's search for reciprocity is what shapes our social mother tongue; afterwards, a new language can be learned, but only through laborious effort.
The origins of shame are easily demonstrated. A film has been shown on American television, of mothers and infants seeking the mother's gaze. The mothers have been instructed not to respond to this gaze with a smile as they normally would, to show no expression. Under these conditions, the infant becomes as it were disconcerted and confused. After a few moments, however, it regains its balance and is ready to again seek for mother's accepting gaze. If she continues to refuse it, the response of the infants is highly consistent; within some thirty seconds the child's face becomes distorted, the integrated self falls apart, movements become uncontrolled, gradually the child regr