This book introduces an entirely new way of thinking about shame and pride. The ideas involved lead inescapably to new theories about love, about sexuality, and about the emotional intensity of our present era. The reader will find novel explanations of rape, police brutality, and a wide range of violent behavior. We live in times made more dangerous by our misunderstanding of shame.
For many, it will be a first presentation of the new theories of emotion made possible by two generations of research. Even the word “emotion” will be replaced by the more versatile term “affect.” Since the midpoint of this century there has been an avalanche of experimental data about the nature of feelings and mood. Our cupboards are filled with medications capable of turning off and on a wide range of affects as if by a switch; daily, the physician sees people with medical illnesses characterized by specific alterations of affect. Psychotherapists, novelists, and filmmakers have observed, described, and depicted the effects and range of affect. Yet this is the first book that connects into one coherent system all of this information. Without such an approach, both shame and pride remain mysterious and confusing.
One does not attempt such a synthesis lightly. Many friends and colleagues have protected and supported me during these years of study and deliberation. Early in this work, feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information requiring assimilation, I asked some of them to join me in a study group. Psychiatrist Vernon C. Kelly, Jr., came to my assistance and has remained a powerful ally throughout. Our teaching efforts have been materially assisted by Robert E. Desmond, Karen Miura, Andrew M. Stone, James Pfrommer, and Shelley Milestone.
A small coterie of friends devoted so much of their time and energy to my project that I am, in retrospect, embarrassed to have asked so much of them. Michael Franz Basch, whose attempt to bring to psychoanalysis a new understanding of emotion proved of great importance to my own, has been essential to my work. Not only did he read and offer critical comment on every chapter, but he also made it possible for me to speak at a number of public gatherings where I would learn to handle the equally daunting experiences of criticism and praise. Psychoanalytic psychologist Johanna Krout Tabin also went over every line from her perspective, helping me explain the older theories and making sure my own ideas were clearly stated. Psychiatrist and lifelong friend Joseph M. Dubey also contributed a tremendous amount of time to my project. Robert J. Stoller discussed my new theory of sexuality and made many cogent suggestions.
Most new scientific ideas are presented first at professional meetings. Often my own budget was inadequate to support extended travel to the meetings that counted. At critical moments I was helped by Layton McCurdy, then psychiatrist-in-chief of the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, and now dean of the Medical University of South Carolina. Everybody’s ideas seem a little easier to express in the company of this great educator.
The serious writer on shame joins a club filled with kind, gentle, helpful colleagues. It was Léon Wurmser who first declared that my singular approach deserved attention; he has been unstinting in his support and assistance. Francis J. Broucek, Gershen Kaufman, Andrew P. Morrison, and Carl D. Schneider have helped at every turn, both by their important writings and by their personal attention to the myriad of questions I raised at odd moments and in peculiar locales. The death of Helen Block Lewis robbed all of us of her friendship, wisdom, and guidance. David Cook and I have spent innumerable hours discussing the fine points of theory and their application to his highly original test for “internalized shame.”
Some friends helped make other parts of life easier during this period of writing. I mention them in a rush rather than embarrass them more specifically: Stefanie and L. Donald Tashjian, Diane and Alan Chase, Ileen and Gilbert Abramson, and many, many more. Ronda Throne and D. Craig Althouse conspired to keep to a minimum the distraction provided by an aching back; it is far easier to think when free from pain. Others, like James Hinz and Christopher Wolfe of F. Thomas Heller, Inc.; Joseph, Madelaine, and Michael Fox of the Joseph Fox Bookshop; John Gach of John Gach Books; Sue Davis; and Walter Bacon McDaniel, showed me books that made a difference. Paul J. Sherman, as both lawyer and agent for Buddy Hackett, made possible my work with that great but busy entertainer. I would not have dared to offer some of the linguistic speculations that appear herein without the assistance of Patricia Furey. Werner Gundersheimer, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, opened to me that vast treasure house of Renaissance literature and advised my historical survey with his characteristic kindness and erudition.
There is a section in every preface where the writer expresses gratitude to the secretaries who turned scribbles and dictation into typescript. In my case, however, the “secretary” is a bunch of electronic marvels—computers, word-processing software, printers, and other machines that make writing possible for me. David Rothschild has made sure my equipment is current and choice. But it is Jeff Goldberg I must thank most, the astute and patient technician who makes house calls day and night, teaches me the arcane new software he insists I learn, and who turns these mysterious machines into household friends.
The relationship between writer and editor is dynamic and tenuous; no one knows the tender art of criticism better than the great editors. If you read psychology books then you know about W. W. Norton’s Susan Barrows Munro. Everybody thanks her all the time, few of us really communicating how good it feels to have an empathic editor who is truly capable of making us better writers. Candace Watt’s gentle assistance toward clarity has been most welcome. Books also require a link between the worlds of scholarship and commerce. Anyone who has had the opportunity of working with John A. Ware knows how important it is to have so intuitive and capable an agent act as interface between the two worlds.
A little girl some years ago when I began to study shame, my daughter Julie has not only read and studied every page of this book but also tested many of its ideas on her then high school cronies. Some of them have accosted me on the lacrosse field or at play rehearsal to ask the kind of intelligent questions that reveal remarkable understanding. Her love and support have buoyed me greatly during these years of struggle.
Empathy, support, love? No one could ask for more than what I have always received from my beloved wife, Rosalind. Time to write this book was carved, stolen, from our shared life, making more precious each moment we spent together. Rarely did she complain when speaking engagements pulled us away from home during the busiest parts of her real estate season. Whoever writes on shame knows as much about pain and failure as about the healing balm of love. How lucky I am to have her beside me!
But of all those whose efforts have assisted my work, one stands so far above the others that it is to him I dedicate this book. Silvan S. Tomkins, to whom so many refer as “the American Einstein,” developed his affect theory nearly 40 years ago. Only now is the scholarly world beginning to understand what was to him obvious long ago. (Nothing places greater demand on our mental equipment than the need to unlearn what we have always taken for granted.) In a lifetime of exposure to the greatest and most celebrated minds in many areas of science, never have I met his equal. Tomkins made available to me unlimited amounts of time—at his home in Strathmere, New Jersey, over the telephone, and in his meticulous attention to every page of this book. Every aspect of his theory discussed or described here has been negotiated to our mutual satisfaction. I am honored that he accepted the many additions to his work described herein. That Tomkins did not receive the kind of national or international award that might have saluted appropriately his contribution and its genius is the shame of our era.
Those who have come to understand Tomkins’s contribution ask again and again why, in this era of rapid dissemination of scientific knowledge, it has taken so long for his ideas to “catch on.” A recent meeting of my local astronomy club provided some intriguing answers:
A group of astronomers noticed that certain basic concepts, no matter how carefully taught, never got integrated into the minds of their students. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, they caught on film some of the reasons for the persistence of incorrect science. Resplendent in caps and gowns, twenty graduating Harvard College seniors were asked why it is cold in winter and warm in summer. Nineteen replied that the earth is further from the sun in winter and closer in summer.
To us as audience, the astronomers explained that heat and light do, indeed, vary in proportion to distance from their source. That is why Mercury and Venus are too hot to sustain human life, Neptune and Pluto too cold. But even though the Earth’s orbit around the sun is slightly elliptical, the alterations in distance involved are relatively trivial and insufficient to account for our weather. (The Earth is actually nearest the sun during the first week of January, and furthest during the first week of July!) Our planet just happens to be tilted 23½° from true vertical (from the plane of its orbit around the sun), and it carries that orientation in space no matter where it happens to be. As a result, the slant of the Earth-sun line changes as the Earth obeys its orbit. The energy contained in a beam of light will be distributed most compactly, most efficiently, during summer, while the same amount of energy will be spread over a much wider swatch of ground during winter. There is more than one way to control the amount of energy reaching a target.
That sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? Next, the astronomers were shown teaching this material to a group of talented high school students, each of whom had also believed that seasonal variation in weather depends on distance from the sun. As you might expect all of them were fascinated to learn about the tilted earth, and all of them did well on the quiz that followed. Only a couple of weeks later, when asked to explain the seasons, the brightest among them drew the solar system correctly—earth tilted just right, our moon placed appropriately—and discussed the way heat varies in proportion to distance from its source. It is extraordinarily difficult to teach the simple geometric truths on which our weather is based because nearly all of us formed our own homemade theories about the seasons when we were children. We are incapable of learning anything new until we give up the old.
One is reminded of the Zen teaching story in which a European professor asked a Zen master for instruction into his philosophy. Before each man was a full cup of tea. Picking up the teapot, the Japanese sage poured more tea into the cup of his guest until so much had spilled onto his lap that the astonished European exclaimed for his host to stop. Replied his teacher: “You must empty your cup before it can accept anything new.”
Tomkins deserves honor both for the incisiveness of his thinking and the willingness to open his mind to the implications of those observations. Let us try to do the same.