Dissertation on shame. Chapter 9.4. Shame and communal relationships

9.4 Shame and communal relationships

Isen (1984/1994) argues that communal relationships (built on common interests) between people seem to have unspoken rules which involve concern for the well-being of others. A consequence of this is that people in such relations do certain things simply because they wish to help each other, without anticipating the return of a good deed. This contrasts with partners in exchange relationships which build on the expectation of reciprocity in order to maintain a balance in the relationship. People seem to be ready to act together, even with strangers, in such a situation because they anticipate the possible development of a communal relationship. They respond to each others’ needs, even though nothing can be done to meet these needs there and then; they help their partners; they feel better after giving help (both in terms of mood and in a self-evaluation), and are more aware of their partners’ emotional condition.

Clark, Mills and Corcoran (1989) explain the connection between communal and exchange relationships in their article Keeping Track of Needs and Inputs of Friends and Strangers. They state that many relations are not pure communal or exchange relations, but a combination of both of these and therefore that guilt and shame in all relations primarily come from the communal component. Describing guilt and shame as interpersonal phenomena can mean very different things depending on whether one is speaking of a communal or an exchange relationship. Freud (1930/2005) argues that the social basis of guilt is totally explainable in terms of exchange relationships. He considers guilt to be a product of human habituation to life in a civilised society. The meaning of such habituation is that all members must give up certain inclinations and needs so that everyone can be protected from being offended by others. Guilt says Freud, is a result of an internal mechanism which makes each individual obey group rules and therefore makes exchange relations possible.

If one analyses guilt and shame in communal relations, the expense-gain analysis may have a different meaning. One might see that guilt and shame are formed to strengthen the common interests of communal relations, and to protect the interpersonal bonds between individuals. Upholding and restoring the function of guilt can therefore strengthen relations. It also seems that people want and perhaps also need communal relations, so that they sometimes react according to the strictures of communal norms, just because the other is a potentially accessible social relation. Many people will adopt an accepted form of behavior, simply because they believe that the person they have just met may perhaps become part of the relation. This is important in order to understand why some people react with feelings of guilt and shame with apparent strangers; these feelings would otherwise be reserved for more intimate partners. An example of this is when people visit the Incest Centre in Vestfold for the first time, without knowing a single person there. Even though they are all strangers, people still react with shame and guilt when they first arrive. Ruth describes the situation, first in the focus group interview and later in the in-depth interview as follows:

Ruth:               It’s connected with shame just to walk in the door here. Are you capable of saying hallo? I understand if you not able to touch me.

Ruth_1:           It’s so hard to come here the first time. I just don’t understand how you were capable of meeting me, as ugly and disgusting as I am.

Ruth describes the shame many feel when they expose themselves to the Incest Center. Just coming in the door is enough. Treating people with respect and recognition in this stage seems in my opinion to be very important.

Kaare T. Pettersen

Reference:

Pettersen,Kaare Torgny, 2009: An Exploration into the Concept and Phenomenon of Shamewithin the Context of Child Sexual Abuse. An Existential-Dialogical Perspectiveof Social Work within the Settings of a Norwegian Incest Centre.  PhD 2009 Department of Social Work and HealthScience Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management. NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Doctoral theses 2009: 184

Dissertation on shame. Chapter 9.3. Shame and intersubjectivity

9.3 Shame and intersubjectivity

Kemper (2006) is concerned with “the power-status theory of emotions” and argues that we feel shame/embarrassment when we sense that we are inadequate. He builds his theory on the works of Goffman, especially The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman 1959) and Behavior in Public Places (Goffman 1963). When we have done something we are ashamed of, the result is often an experience of lost honour. The way out of this shame is not through punishment, but through compensation:

An act or actions that reinstate the person as one who deserves the amount of status originally claimed that has been lost. Thus, if someone acts in a cowardly manner and has thus brought shame on himself or herself, the solution usually is to engage in immoderately risky behavior to show that the act of cowardice was an aberration and not characteristic (Kemper 2006: 100).

When someone else is insufficient, this is

Because one is not conferring it in adequate amounts. This can lead either to guilt or shame/embarrassment, or both. If the reason for the deprivation of the other is a power tactic by the self, it will lead to guilt…If the reason, on the other hand, for the deprivation is an inadequacy of the self, then the emotion is shame/embarrassment (Kemper 2006: 101).

Guilt, in this theory, is “concerned with doing wrong to another via excess power, frequently in violation of a moral standard” (Kemper 2006:100). One feels guilt because of a wrong doing which makes one feel that “one does not deserve to receive the amount of status one has claimed for oneself” (Kemper 2006: 100). A person can feel both shame and guilt in the same situation, but according to Kemper it is important to keep them separate. They come from different forms of relationships and the methods needed to cope with them will also differ.

Some investigations into shame and guilt argue that they should be understood as social emotions that appear between people (Scheff and Retzinger 1997; Tangery and Dearing 2002; Turner 2002, 2006; Turner and Stets 2005, 2006). In social constructionist terms one can say that shame and guilt are social constructions that are defined by culture through learned vocabularies of emotions (Turner 2007). The concepts of shame and guilt seem to be found in many different forms of human activities, not just in transgressions but also where we find clear differences between people.

Baumeister, Stillwell and Heatherton (1994) state that shame and guilt serve many unifying functions, including motivating people to treat colleagues well in order to avoid transgressions, minimize differences and make it possible for less powerful colleagues to make their own decisions and to redistribute emotional despair. Both shame and guilt are common forms of despair and have an effect on many of our actions. Some may use them to excuse their offenders, to express sympathy, to manipulate others, to decline having sex, in the upbringing of children, as a support to self-control, and much more. We may avoid a surprisingly large number of behaviors because of the expectation of shame or guilt.

Shame and guilt are emotions that may be found between people as interpersonal reactions (Baumeister et al 1994). This indicates that they are interpersonal phenomena which are both functional and causally tied together with fellowship relations between humans. Their origin, function and development all have important interpersonal aspects. They can work in social relations so that social bonds are strengthened by producing confirmation of care and obligation. They are also mechanisms for smoothing out imbalances and differences in emotional despair within a relation and for exercising influence on others. Their social nature goes much further than the common understanding of moral standards. They appear throughout the lifespan, primarily in interpersonal relations. Some experiences of shame and guilt will naturally occur in the private sphere; in one’s mind and in social isolation. But still, most of these will be drawn from interpersonal processes carried out by well adapted individuals with internalised reference groups.

Attempts to construct clear and unambiguous definitions of shame and guilt often fail because the terms are used in many different ways, often disregarding the fact that they really are two different emotions, connected to different kinds of experiences. Baumeister et al. (1994) argue that psychologists are mainly interested in subjective feelings of guilt. Approaching guilt as a subjective state of being entails that other important and influential ways in which guilt is used become irrelevant. Judicial guilt e.g., has technical definitions that are quite independent of subjective feelings or even feelings of responsibility for past actions. Judicial guilt is based on violations of judicial rules, even though the technical meaning of judicial guilt has developed; it does not depend merely on the quality and quantity of the evidence. Lewis (1971) writes that people can be guilty without feeling any special emotion, as with the judicial definition of guilt. This is discussed further by Ortony (1987) in his article Is Guilt an Emotion?.  He is of the opinion that there are at least two forms of guilt; one that is socio-judicial and the other that has an emotional meaning.

Baumeister et al. (1994) understand guilt as an individual’s unpleasant emotional state of being in connection with possible objections to his or her actions, lack of action, circumstances, or intentions. Guilt is an emotional despair, which is different than fear and anger, and based on the possibility than one may have done something wrong and that others may believe that you have transgressed as well. Guilt differs from shame especially because guilt relates itself to a special action, and shame relates itself to the whole self (Lewis 1971).  Guilt can be differentiated from a fear of punishment since the despair relates to the action rather than to the expectation of the action. One can naturally feel guilt in situations where there is little chance of punishment and therefore little fear. Knowledge of having offended another person can be enough to create guilt, even if the offended person is not able to retaliate against the transgression. On the other hand, it may be difficult to fear punishment from others without feeling some kind of guilt, except when the other person reacts with hostility rather than feeling offended. When guilt is understood as a subjective emotional condition, this means that intra psychic processes are also present. Baumeister et al. (1994) argue that these intrapsychic reactions are significant because of their intrapersonal character.

From an interpersonal perspective, the most common cause of guilt would be causing injury, loss, or despair to a person one has a relationship with. Even though guilt is often tied to close relationships, it is not restricted to them. Proneness to guilt can be generalised from other relationships, including group relationships. Well socialised persons will probably also have learned to feel guilt about causing injury to strangers. An interpersonal perspective, however, means that reactions to guilt will be stronger and more common and meaningful in close relationships than in weak or distant relationships.

Kaare T. Pettersen

Reference:

Pettersen,Kaare Torgny, 2009: An Exploration into the Concept and Phenomenon of Shamewithin the Context of Child Sexual Abuse. An Existential-Dialogical Perspectiveof Social Work within the Settings of a Norwegian Incest Centre.  PhD 2009 Department of Social Work and HealthScience Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management. NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Doctoral theses 2009: 184

Dissertation on shame. Chapter 9.2. A working concept of shame

9.2 A working concept of shame

Lewis has constructed a working concept of shame (table 4) and explains the concept through six categories: stimulus, sexual desire, consciousness, self in the field, hostility, and defences (this table can be compared to a similar table for guilt in appendix 3). Her working concept shows that the concept of shame is complex and one should be careful not to fall for the temptation to use simple or superficial definitions.

Table 4: Working concept for shame

	Shame
1. Stimulus	1. Disappointment, defeat or moral transgression
	2. Deficiency in self
	3. Involuntary, self unable
	4. Encounter with “other”
2. Sexual desire	1. Specific connection to sex
3. Consciousness	1. Painful emotion
	2. Autonomic reactions
	3. Connections to past feelings
	4. Many variants of shame feelings
	5. Fewer variations of cognitive content (the self)
	6. Identity thoughts
4. Self in the field	1. Self passive
	2. Self focal in awareness
	3. Multiple functions of the self at the same time
	4. Vicarious experience of “others” view of self
5. Hostility	1. Humiliated fury
	2. Discharge blocked by guilt and/or love of “other” discharge on self
6. Defences	1. Denial
	2. Repression of ideas
	3. Affirmation of the self
	4. Affect disorder: depression

(Adopted from Lewis 1971:  90-91)

I asked Ruth if they experience shame at the Incest Centre in Vestfold and she gave an example of the complex nature of shame and how this shame is related to one’s self-image. Several of the above mentioned elements in the working definition of shame can be found in Ruth’s’ statement.

Kaare:             Have you experienced shame here?

Ruth:                          Uh-huh ((Nods her head)) Very often. Especially when they have experienced pleasure during the abuse. That makes them guilty. They try to explain that the abuser isn’t the only guilty person involved. I was there and I liked (.) it… And then they place the responsibility for the abuse with themselves (.) or they feel that they are ugly and horrible and filthy. Their whole body is shamed. They feel shame just coming through the door here, and saying hi. Does anyone here want to say hi back again? I can’t understand why anyone would say hi to me… They come in and sit down with the others here and they experience that the others can’t see that they’re dirty and filthy, there’s nothing strange about them. They change their self-image in the meeting with other users. Shame disappears when they expose themselves to new experiences. They challenge themselves and dare to experience umm that they might have to re-evaluate their self-image.

Ruth mentions here the difficult situations of sexual abuse experience in feeling pleasure while being sexually abused and the guilt and shame that is felt afterwards, and that their self-image changes through the meetings with others and through new experiences. This seems to be a significant part in the way the Incest Center in Vestfold helps other; receiving people as they are and starting a changing process there by giving them new experiences together with others.

Kaare T. Pettersen

Reference:

Pettersen,Kaare Torgny, 2009: An Exploration into the Concept and Phenomenon of Shamewithin the Context of Child Sexual Abuse. An Existential-Dialogical Perspectiveof Social Work within the Settings of a Norwegian Incest Centre.  PhD 2009 Department of Social Work and HealthScience Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management. NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Doctoral theses 2009: 184

Dissertation on shame. Chapter 8.2 Moral codes

8.2 Moral codes

But what is morality? Turner and Stets (2006) say that from a sociological point of view “morality ultimately revolves around evaluating cultural codes that specify what is right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable” (Turner and Stets 2006: 544). Moral codes vary at the different levels of society where values are important; at the level of broad institutional domains (family, economy, education, science and so forth) where ideologies about what is right, proper, and appropriate are important for individuals; at the level of specific institutions, for example a worker in a factory or a student at school, have expectations to live up to; and finally there are face-to-face interactions where norms say something about respectful conduct and are therefore moral (appendix 2). It seems common in my opinion for people to feel shame when they violate an expectation in a face-to-face interaction. The shame felt can have different levels of intensity, from embarrassment to humiliation, and people may claim to experience shame without feeling guilt. Some may not have lived up to their own expectations or the expectations of others in a specific situation, and this may result in a feeling of shame. This does not necessarily mean that a person has done something wrong; guilt may be induced all the same. But the less situational and the more ideological the norm becomes, the more guilt will also dominate the person involved. People may also feel both shame and guilt when an institutional norm or societal value is broken.

Shame, like other moral emotions, connects a person to a social structure and culture through self-awareness. Turner and Stets (2006) argue that:

An individual’s transsituational self-conception and more situational identity are both cognitive and emotional constructs. They involve conceptions of who a person is, how others should respond to self, and valenced emotions about the characteristics of self in several or particular parts (Turner and Stets 2006: 548).

Our self-conception involves conceptions of who we are and how others respond to us. This self-awareness consists of a relation where the self relates itself to itself, or as Kierkegaard puts it in Sickness unto Death (1849/1980):

A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way, a human being is still not a self. (1849/1980: 13) 

These two quotes describe in my opinion different ways in which the self consists of layers upon layers of constructs, conceptions and characteristics, which all relate to each other in a very complex way. The self is both a process and a relation, both in relation to itself and in relation to others. Because the self is powered by emotions, it can become a moral self. These emotions can be seen in individuals who give the impression of having the moral identity of being caring; they say that they feel both shame and guilt when they feel that they have not helped others in the way they should or could have. Shame can be especially painful because of the way it involves the self. 

Kaare T. Pettersen

Reference:

Pettersen,Kaare Torgny, 2009: An Exploration into the Concept and Phenomenon of Shamewithin the Context of Child Sexual Abuse. An Existential-Dialogical Perspectiveof Social Work within the Settings of a Norwegian Incest Centre.  PhD 2009 Department of Social Work and HealthScience Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management. NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Doctoral theses 2009: 184