Hidden Shame Research Articles

The Unthought Sown: The Ghost of Disavowed Racial Identity and the Failure of Imagination

This paper explores the imprint of slavery and its ensuing intergenerational transmission of trauma. It further explores a biracial man’s shame over the disavowed paternity of his white father. His ambivalence about his identity transmitted a traumatic world to his daughter, in which an imaginative and creative experience was foreclosed. The man’s hidden aspects of self left him with dissociated, deeply ambivalent feelings about racial identity which, transmitted to his daughter, brought into sharp focus the liminality of the Black experience in a White world. His daughter, the author’s patient, was deprived of an imagined realm in which she could see herself as knowable and loveable. Her identity was damaged, not only by her attachment experience, but by generational cycles of racial hatred that came before her. The analytic work generated a search for the father’s love, which had been eclipsed by his hidden shame.

An Ecological Approach to Understanding Pervasive and Hidden Shame in Complex Trauma

Shame has been argued to be a core issue in complex trauma; however, few efforts have been put forth to systematically examine the conceptual and empirical evidence to support this claim. This review, using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory, presents a preliminary map of findings that highlight the pervasive and hidden shame in the ecological subsystems of complex trauma survivors. A psycho-social-cultural perspective was utilized to highlight the manifestation and disguising of shame in various contexts. Our review accentuates the centrality of shame in complex trauma and offers several ways in which mental health counselors can explicitly and systemically address shame in their work with complex trauma survivors. Implications for counselor training and future research are also discussed.

The anxious, the furious, and the annoyed: Hidden shame in the academic library

In March 2018, my manuscript on library shame was published in College & Research Libraries. The paper’s focus is library anxiety, but more accurately it is about the shared experience of normal shame for both the librarian and the user. When shame is misidentified as maladaptive behavior by both the librarian and user, it results in alienation or conflict. When shame is identified by the librarian as normal, it strengthens the relationship with the user.

Depression, Bipolarity and Aggression as Emotion Sequences

This article proposes emotion models of three disorders built upon the sequencing of shame (depression) or anger and shame (aggression and bipolarity). The models are based largely upon a systematic study by Helen Block Lewis of 150 psychotherapy sessions word by word. First described is her use of the Gottschalk method that systematically located words that imply emotions, then three of her findings: the large number of shame episodes, the seeming unawareness of them by both client and therapist, and finally the way that shame events often sequence into either withdrawal or anger. Her emphasis on shame was and still is unusual, since modern societies try to hide shame. If the idea of sequences from shame is expanded to the point of cybernetic feedback loops, it may help explain the causal processes of depression, bipolar disorder and aggression. To the extent that this model is correct, it would suggest that therapy for all three disorders would be similar: helping the patient to locate, discuss and resolve his/her hidden shame.

Hidden Shame as a Cause of Violence

The psychiatrist James Gilligan (1997) contended that shame is a key but completely hidden cause of violence, based on his long experience as a prison psychiatrist. made it a practice of questioning those prisoners who had committed murder. When he asked them why they killed, their answers were often very similar: He dissed (disrespected) me. What did you expect me to do? On the basis of these responses, Gilligan proposed that not only murder, but all violence was caused by what he called secret shame:

Forgiveness as the Working Through of Splitting

This article presents a psychoanalytic formulation of forgiveness seen as the resolution of splitting underlying manifest and vehement retributive states of mind such as resentment, vengefulness, grudge, envy, bitterness, blame, and spite. Clinical examination suggests that these states of mind that are indicative of the presence of splitting are not always in ascendancy. They wax and wane in consciousness, depending on whether or not a shame-filled state of mind is present. Their appearance in consciousness is due to the instigatory role of shame before onlookers and the powerful role of hidden shame dynamics that do not always appear as overt shame. Examples illustrate a clinical impasse posed by the workings of intense splitting, the transformation of a shame experience into a dynamic of guilt in the firing of a very successful football coach after a disappointing defeat, and the working through of splitting in a patient pari passu with his increased bearability of shame. Working through of the splitting underlying the retributive emotions involves the increased bearability of shame, often with the help of an identification with the analyst. Vistas for future investigation include the role of the working through of resentment of the analyst in the analytic process and the relation of that resentment to instigating shame dynamics.

Hidden Shame ‐ A Review of the Needs of Asian Elders with Dementia and their Carers in a Kent Community

This article outlines the findings and general implications of Mental Health Foundation research into the needs of older Asians with dementia and their carers. The project was carried out in an area with an Asian majority population in North West Kent. The focus is on the identification of need and on factors which block access to care and support. There are recommendations for practitioners and commissioners about raising awareness, service development and training.

Is Hatred Formed by Hidden Shame and Rage?

Is Hatred Formed by Hidden Shame and Rage?

L'ortografe Des Dames: Gender and Language in the Old Regime

Research Article| April 01 2002 L'ortografe Des Dames: Gender and Language in the Old Regime Dena Goodman Dena Goodman Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google French Historical Studies (2002) 25 (2): 191–223. https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-25-2-191 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Dena Goodman; L'ortografe Des Dames: Gender and Language in the Old Regime. French Historical Studies 1 April 2002; 25 (2): 191–223. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00161071-25-2-191 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsFrench Historical Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Society for French Historical Studies2002 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Hidden Shame, Working Through, and the Problem of Forgiveness in the Tempest

The problem of forgiveness is considered in the light of an examination of The Tempest. The Tempest illustrates Prospero's struggles to forgive those who betrayed him. The forgiving of an intimate's betrayal is considered as an aspect of working through an antecedent state akin to holding a grudge, blaming, or resenting, or a sense of narcissistic injury due to the betrayal. Working through depends on giving up defenses of withdrawal, omnipotent control, and splitting. These defenses are, in essence, defenses against shame that is felt in fantasy to be unbearable. They are deployed through the workings of signal anxiety (signal shame). For that reason, underlying shame dynamics are central, although manifest shame is not evident in the struggle over forgiveness. Identification of the loving aspects of an object that has been controlled and possessed for a sufficient time, and then has been relinquished and mourned, makes this type of forgiveness possible.

The "Recursive Loop" of Shame: An Alternate Gestalt Therapy Viewpoint

AbstractShame has become the issue "de jour" of psychotherapy—the alleged cause of almost all psychological difficulties. Too much of the Gestalt therapy shame literature appears to have abandoned our integrative worldview—self regulation, field theory, phenomenology, and dialogue. Eclipsed with superimposed "expert" theory and practice, the client's phenomenological experience is frequently overruled in favor of interpretation, for example, of "hidden shame." Many clinical applications are themselves accused of being a source of further shaming. Clinical work that goes beyond the therapist's nonshaming acceptance and/or the expression of unfinished business is discussed. In the waters of shame, these are the views of a Gestalt salmon.