ATTACK SELF
A small boy does something really stupid in class, something that makes everybody laugh at him. How he handles this loss of face will depend a great deal on his previous life experience. If he is “one of the boys,” a “regular guy,” someone everybody likes and respects, his gaffe will be excused as a mere blip on an otherwise smooth curve. He will continue to see himself as a competent person, and those around him will only like him more. When he looks to his fellows as a mirror for his own personality, he will see little change, except that everybody seems to have had a good time. His “stupidity” has presented the class with a pleasant moment of enjoyment–joy and the relaxation that accompanies this affect. Sometimes it is a relief to know that even one of the best can make a fool of himself. To err is human, to forgive is divine.
For anybody who cares to draw a lesson from happenstance, here, in a nutshell, is the art of clowning. In this example, let’s suppose that the boy recognizes immediately their laughter as benign and friendly—indeed, as a potential source of power. Inspired by the moment, he proceeds to doff an invisible hat and bow to the audience, after which the class laughs even more and cheers him. By this gesture he has effectively taken control of what had, only a moment ago, been something unintentional and “stupid.” A brief and quite bearable moment of personal embarrassment has brought pleasure and comfort to an entire group that now views the “jokester” with increased respect. Even if shame did cause him a moment of discomfort and unpleasant isolation, his rueful willingness to accept the laughter of his friends fashioned an even stronger connection to them.
We grow through life with a myriad of such experiences, all capable of teaching us that there are bargains to be achieved from the open acceptance of shame. One of the central tenets of our society is the balance between sin and repentance. The dictionary tells us that the components of rue include sorrow, repentance, distress, and regret all leading to contrition. The Latin root of the word contrition contains the idea of bruising or grinding something until it achieves another form. This steady, grinding quality is an analogue of the innate affect distress. Central to the concept of rue is the idea that something about one’s inner nature is grindingly inescapable.
The whole issue of rue and contrition involves a fascinating study of the relation among three affects: shame triggered by awareness (both of the nature of one’s actions and the nature of the self who committed them); fear of punishment for what one has done; and distress produced by the constancy of one’s shame. There is a continuum, a spectrum of possible responses to self-awareness. At one end sit those who show no discernible signs of conscience, who trample ruthlessly on the lives of others, while at the other end are those so involved with questions of right and wrong that they are paralyzed into inaction. As citizens we require our leaders always to be capable of action, but at the same time do not want their actions to be uninformed by shame.
Conventional, “normal” morality implies a healthy awareness of shame—not too much, not too little. In order to feel comfortable with powerful people, we need to know that they are capable of looking at themselves, that they are willing to accept the shame that accompanies negative self-evaluation, and that they are able to move forward after experiencing shame.
Robert F. Kennedy, attorney general during the brief presidential administration of his brother, John F. Kennedy, made a special effort to disentangle the complex involvement of organized crime in the major national labor unions. One of his special targets was Jimmy Hoffa, president of the Teamster’s Union, who retaliated against the attorney general by calling him ruthless. So successful was Hoffa’s public relations campaign that Kennedy was able to reap gales of laughter and applause when, in a public speech, he quipped, “I guess I’ve got to learn how to be more ruthful.”
In a 1985 motion picture called The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger played the role of an android, an invincible metal-framed robot cloaked in human flesh, animated by a computer programmed only to kill those defined as enemies of its creators. Incapable of emotion, the terminator showed neither enmity toward its targets nor satisfaction at their execution. Contrasted with this central character were the extremely human and attractive young man and woman for whose death it had been designed. During this immensely popular film, Schwarzenegger killed an enormous number of people using a wide range of techniques. Whereas many films of equal violence arouse public outcry for their callous indifference to human sensibility, most viewers described the killings as more like ballet than carnage.
In a number of discussions with people who enjoyed The Terminator, I found that everybody had accepted the idea that this android was constitutionally incapable of anger, hatred, disgust, or fear. The terminator’s actions and its inability to express or experience shame, remorse, guilt, or sorrow were understandable and even excusable because of its constitutional deficiency. An implacable human, however, is an even more terrifying monster because of our intrinsic belief that everybody is capable of empathic response. The film allowed us to think about remorseless, ruthless, implacable humans by focusing our attention on a nonhuman substitute.
The public image of an adult is softened or humanized by the expression of a full range of affect. When a powerful individual like Robert Kennedy is willing to moderate his or her intensity by showing some degree of mild, amused embarrassment, he will usually be viewed with affection. Such a person is not so ruthless and powerful as to ignore the feelings of the masses and of us as individuals within the horde. When those in authority refuse to let the public know that they are capable of feeling shame and distress, they create an aura of fear. We, their subjects, feel safer with someone who is capable of shame.
There is, of course, an enigma here. Look again at the table of shameful ruminations presented in the previous chapter. There’s not a happy thought in the bunch. We need to protect ourselves from these uncomfortable reflections just as much as we need to know that others experience them as well. Shame produces a wondrous double standard in which we want everybody else to express freely what we wish to keep hidden. The paradox is that we may feel a certain kinship or affiliation with one who has been embarrassed, while that other person feels estranged, isolated, extruded, rejected, alone, and unlovable. Anyone who understands this paradox has learned a valuable lesson about living in the real world.
Used with care, the intentional display of shame can make people feel kindly toward us. Overused, pushed beyond the limits of good taste, self-abnegation provokes disgust in the observer. Here we are looking at the range between attentiveness and servility, between appropriately deferential respect and slavish docility. One is reminded of the cartoon in which a waiter, while presenting the check, bows to the diner and says, “I hope I have been successful in treading the fine line between excellent service and fawning obsequiousness.” In the character of Uriah Heep, Charles Dickens created a model of the oily, fawning, spineless, groveling, subservient person for whose otherwise excellent services we can have no respect.
So much depends on the relative importance to us of the categories of shame summarized as Table 5. Those who handle shame by acceptance are willing to admit into consciousness any and all of the thoughts listed in the table. No matter what is revealed by the moment of shame, no matter what defect or incompetence is detected, it will become the stimulus to some form of work on the self. Those who react by withdrawal have also chosen to accept the feeling of shame, but with no way of using it as a source of information for such a commitment. They withdraw in order to evade the eyes before which they have been exposed, to leave the society from which they feel shorn.
Most of us some of the time, and some of us all of the time, actually function in a quite different manner. To a great number of people, the worst part of the shame experience is summarized as category B, the group of thoughts associated with dependence and independence. In Chapter 12 it was noted that we are usually proud to be independent and ashamed of our dependence on others. Furthermore, we came to recognize that any time the child is confronted with a situation in which painful affect is linked with interpersonal distance, the affects dissmell and disgust may become involved as auxiliaries. So for many people, nearly any moment of shame is likely to bring with it thoughts both of utter dependence on others and of the helplessness we might feel were we to be utterly rejected as dissmelling or disgusting objects. For them, there is great relief to be obtained from any strategy that helps avoid this terrifying sense of helplessness and the deadly fear of abandonment.
It is to this group of scripts that I refer as the attack self mode of reaction to shame. Involved is the universe of systems by which we vary the biblical injunction to read instead, “Do unto yourself what you fear others may do to you.” What is it that happens when, intentionally, we put ourselves down in a conversation with others, ridicule ourselves, describe our own actions with disgust, refer to ourselves with dissmell, or exhibit anger toward our own self? Simply stated, such a maneuver permits us to accept a moment of shame during which we anticipate that all of those other affects and ideas will be totally under our own control. We have, for instance, avoided the possibility that others really view us with dissmell or disgust because we gave them the idea in the first place. The much-feared unpleasant affects still exist in the interpersonal interaction, but they have been reduced vastly in significance.
SHYNESS
Is not shyness a form of shame avoidance by which we accept one portion of the shame experience in order to prevent the emergence of the whole? Shyness is a complex system that includes some measure of prophylactic withdrawal. It is a way of keeping a profile so low that no one can reduce it. It says to a world we see as probably shaming that we aspire to no height from which we can be dropped. Shy is timid, bashful, wary, slight of stature, willing to live at a level to which shame might decrease one rather than risk the sudden diminishment that accompanies acute, unexpected shame. In marketing terms, it is a “loss leader,” a way of getting customers into the store by accepting one loss while hoping for a gain in other areas of commerce. Shyness is shame instructed by fear.
The shy person may hold a secret view of the self far in excess of that which is broadcast—shyness need not imply a perceived decrease in personal worth. It says that there is no need to reduce me because I am already lower than you, despite that I have not shown you a fraction of my real self. It enhances privacy (which reduces shame) by advertising that one has nothing to advertise. I live willingly with the shame of being lesser than you, but I have guaranteed that you are unlikely to attack me and will not reject me. Shyness is a form of shame that produces affiliation rather than rejection. Central to shyness is often a disavowal of interest in hopes of decreasing the significance of any impediment to it.
DEFERENCE AND CONFORMITY
As the sociologist Thomas J. Scheff has observed, much of our social system depends on the fact that each of us makes a myriad of careful observations of ourselves and of others that allow us to maximize pride and minimize shame. In our attempt to enjoy whatever degree of power is allowed us while avoiding humiliation as much as possible, most of us develop some sort of balance between arrogance and deference. Scheff describes a system of deference and conformity based on his understanding of shame; unfortunately, however, he ignores the role of positive affect in the formation of social systems and as the precondition for shame.
Sometimes, of course, deference and conformity are legislated, as in the military. If both men are buck privates in the army, it does not matter to their superior officers that Bill is bigger, stronger, wealthier, and from a higher social stratum than John. Their equality is defined by the sameness of their uniform and their rank; they will be ordered about with equal ease. And should John achieve higher rank than Bill, he will command Bill. The man who was once lesser and therefore deferential by conventional standards will now have power over and command deference from him who was previously more powerful.
One of the reasons the military system works is that it provides an easily understandable hierarchy. Merely to remain within the system guarantees sequential elevation in rank, which increases the number of people who will be deferential to you and reduces the number of people to whom you must be deferential. Small wonder, then, that pride and shame in the name of power are matters of central interest to the military. Often in history they have been used as the excuse for war.
Part of the process called “basic training” in the military includes instruction in the rituals of deference. Just as one who has grown up in any large city knows the proper way to address a police officer—including the limits to which one may go in disagreeing with this authority—a new recruit must be taught what now constitutes appropriate respect. The deal is simple: The successful trainee gives up his or her lifetime accumulation of pride and power from such sources as beautiful hair, physical strength, sexiness, or such, in trade for the sense of affiliation derived from the feeling of being part of a powerful group. Those who cannot accept the shame inherent in this new system are removed from it in one way or another; they become defined as proper objects of dissmell and disgust and live in shame until their departure.
Cultural anthropologists often discuss the myriad of ways that systems of deference can clash. In many areas of the rural South, it was common for African-American men to be brought into the local hospital emergency rooms for treatment of scalp lacerations inflicted by the truncheons of the very policemen who had brought them there. In each case, when addressed initially by the officer, the subject had dropped his gaze from the policeman’s face in apparent inattention, started to shuffle his feet, and begun to giggle. In our society, such behavior might easily be taken as some pattern of insubordination and disrespect, and perhaps understandable as the trigger to punitive rage on the part of the arresting officer.
Nonetheless, there was a subtext to this script. Anthropological investigation revealed that, in the region of Africa from which the forebears of these particular people had been ripped more than a century earlier, deference to authority had always been expressed by the gestures of polite gaze aversion, the giggle of helpless immaturity, and the shuffle of incoordination. Casual review of Southern literature during the era of slavery reveals innumerable references to similar incidents between slaves and masters. What read out only as arrogance and disrespect in the culture of the policeman had earlier been ingrained within the root culture of the people involved as a measure of intentional acceptance of shame through the system of attack self.
Such stories serve to illustrate the range of situations in which this mode of shame avoidance may be used. Attack self appears as the good humor of the pleasantly self-effacing adult, the friendly little laugh that uses enjoyment–joy to mitigate the significance of an aggressive move, the kind of joke we call “my most embarrassing moment,” and the comedic art of the clown. People of my generation still chuckle at the vaudeville routines of Jack Benny, who pretended to play the violin very badly but constantly offered to give benefit concerts for worthy causes. His feigned surprise at the refusal of those organizations was understood by everybody as a humorous attack on his own broadcast image, and we loved him for it.
The process of getting through adolescence is made immeasurably easier by the adoption of some of these techniques. One must have a certain degree of self-esteem to tolerate the attack self system, for it is difficult to give away anything when one has nothing. Yet the happiest teen-agers I know all seem to be able to tolerate banter, the give-and-take of normal adolescent conversation. They learn to trade compliments and put-downs with equal facility.
MASOCHISM
Yet there is a dark side to the system of attack self, for some people are so willing to accept shame in order to guarantee the stability of their link to others that they become quite masochistic. The conventional view of masochism represents it as a system of interpersonal activity in which one person seems to take delight in being dominated by another, even to the extent of pain or cruelty.* I know of no episode of masochistic behavior that is free of shame; indeed, among those of us who have written on shame, Wurmser is the most eloquent in his description of masochism as the theater of shame. What passes for delight in the suffering of the masochist is the anticipatory positive affect masking the pain experienced during an activity that is intended to assure bonding.
In sexuality, of course, attack self is seen over an astonishingly wide range of behavior and inner experience. As we discussed earlier, Stoller feels that most of what we fantasize during sexual excitement are scenes designed to repair previous humiliations. Whereas there is no obligatory link between the sexual drive mechanism of the generative system and any particular ideoaffective blend, it certainly does seem as if Stoller’s empirical data from the psychoanalytic study of adults are correct. In our culture, sexual fantasy—especially the ideation that accompanies sexual arousal—seems to be one of the favored realms within which we seek repair or revenge against those before whom we have been embarrassed. It is instructive to look briefly at the masochistic side of this equation.
At the mildest end of the spectrum lie those fantasies in which we experience ourselves as powerful merely because the much-desired other shares our sexual excitement. Either participant may see deference and submission as the ticket allowing entry to the game—a move as innocent and as choreographed as a dance step. Courtship rituals, in which a man brings flowers, goes to varying degrees of expense to woo his partner, pledges undying interest and guarantees his fidelity, may be understood both within the system of idealization leading to love and as symbols of deference that allow a woman to feel some sense of triumph despite the fact that they may have been offered more in the spirit of seduction. That a sturdy and athletic young woman will dress for a date in a manner that suggests frailty is one example of the female version of this interplay.
Nearer the midrange are those scripts in which we triumph over hidden and past adversaries while treating with respect and affection the partner with whom we can enjoy these secrets. And at the farthest reaches of behavior are the Grand Guignol of sexual madness, the horror show of masochism beyond the imagination of most adults. At each level of severity, these fantasies take the form of scenes within which people visualize themselves playing with or working through some form of deference and submission. No matter what the level or intensity of shame being detoxified within these scripts, masochistic sexuality draws together and bonds partners whose intolerance of shame is high and who will reward each other accordingly.
One of the reasons that masochism is so difficult to treat in a clinical setting is that it represents the end result of a complex and long-standing attempt to reduce deep and painful shame. The people involved in such activities are far less concerned about the pain brought by their masochism than about the profoundly secret shame that causes them even more distress. Furthermore, the attack self mode of defense is undertaken in order to prevent the helplessness of abandonment and isolation. Any action taken by the therapist that tends to reduce behavior that is really meant to guarantee safety will be viewed with suspicion by the patient.
Great relief is obtained by the masochistic patient when therapy is aimed initially at the demonstration of the relation between the attack self system and the general nature of shame. I try to explain that what now appears to be a significant degree of psychopathology started out as a creative solution for an as-yet-unidentified problem. Together, the patient and I learn how the process of attacking self has come to feel better than the experience of having somebody else do it. Each time we find another example of hidden shame the patient is likely to be mortified or guilty, so much patience and perseverance are required of both.
Over time, we learn to identify this as a consistent pattern, usually one that began in childhood. Even the therapeutic relationship will appear to take on aspects of the earliest parent-child relationship that cannot be verbalized easily. This, of course, is an example of transference within therapy and comes to be interpreted as such. Nevertheless, each time we find an example of this pattern of behavior, we handle it as a clever developmental acquisition—the brilliant intuition of a child—rather than a black mark on the patient’s record.
Central to this therapeutic work is the attempt to determine the nature of the relationships within which the patient learned the definition of self that is so connected with shame. Giving up chronic masochism means giving up the shaming parent, which implies abandonment unless the patient feels safe within the therapeutic relationship. All efforts at therapy will cause initial pain because the therapist is asking the patient to give up a defensive system that prevents, or at least mitigates, the experience of shame. Yet this must be done in order to find and heal the pain that lurks beneath the surface.
Another problem that makes the masochistic personality so difficult to treat in psychotherapy is the degree to which the core problem with shame is complicated by the addition of auxiliary affect mechanisms. Admixtures of distress and fear will produce the clinical picture of depression. Unfortunately, unless the underlying shame sensitivity is dealt with as such, these patients tend to experience more disabling side effects from medication than any other I have treated. Indeed, to the extent that self-disgust and self-dissmell are fused with shame, these patients often feel that they should not get better—that their illness is richly deserved.
The masochistic patient seems to operate in a topsy-turvy frame of reference, where it is good to feel bad. Nowhere in human existence is it as important to understand how shame figures into the birth of the self, and how our system of good and bad is formed. The system of reaction to shame that I have called attack self is usually a benign mode of defense leading to friendly forms of affiliation. But in certain family systems it can achieve malignant magnification, leading to deadly configurations far beyond what is amenable to the systems of treatment currently known.
The attack self system offers a hedge against shame in which one bargains with the devil. It works pretty well, even though one can learn too many variations on the theme and too many ways of attacking oneself in the name of bonding with others. There are many who refuse even to consider it as a reasonable alternative to unintentional, uncontrolled shame, which they try to prevent by a number of techniques. It is to these systems of avoidance that we now turn our attention.
*Glick and Meyers (1988) edited an excellent review of the classical psychoanalytic views of masochism.