(De)Formed by Feelings: The Self in Love, Guilt, and Shame

1. (De)Formed by Feelings:The Self in Love, Guilt, and Shame Conference: Feeling and Form Institute of Philosophy and History of Ideas University of Århus, May 23, 2008 Claudia Welz Center for Subjectivity Research Copenhagen

2. The structure of this talk • I. Feeling and form • II. Nothing more than self-deformation? Empirical studies on shame in contrast to guilt • III. Ambiguities of feeling and the transformation of the self-other-relation

3. I. Feeling and Form 1. Why are feelings important? Feelings are our affective bonds to the world: not only inner states, but our connection with ’the outer.’ What happens ’outside’ has an impact on what we feel ’inside’ – and turns this very distinction ’inside out.’

4. Feelings have a hermeneutical and practical function: They establish patterns of significance and nets of meaning by which we orient ourselves in the social world. Feelings as pre-reflective forms of judgments display a normative capacity of discrimination.

5. In feeling, we are not only moved to experience the world and others in a certain way; we are also moved to experience ourselves through our feelings. Feelings are self-disclosive and self-expressive.

6. On the one hand, we are giving forms to our feelings when expressing what we feel. We express our feelings by bodily gestures, linguistic articulation, and inter-subjective interaction. We form our feelings and ourselves in them. Feelings are not to be mistaken as ’agents’ independent of us. On the other hand, feelings already have the forms in which they are felt. Whether we want it or not, our feelings express ourselves. On the long run, our feelings also form us. We cannot completely control our feelings, but can at times be overwhelmed by them. Forming feelingsand becoming formed by feelings

7. Feeling shame • The Self in shame feels to be defective, degraded and diminished: not in good shape. Shame seems not only to form, but also to deform the self or at least the self-image.

8. Feeling shame involves a visual element. It introduces the notion of an audience and a reversal of perspectives: One feels eyes upon oneself and ends up observing oneself as if one would see oneself from outside, identifying with the audience, shifting viewpoints and comparing oneself with others.

9. Yet, despite the strong and devastating self-reflexivity, the ashamed self seeks to hide before itself and to avoid the reflection that mirrors itself.

10. While the content of the feeling refers back to oneself • even when one is ashamed on behalf of someone else – its ’self-centered’ content appears in ’centrifugal’ forms like lowering one’s eyes, covering the blush in one’s face, trying to turn away and to withdraw from the ’stage’ that oneself provides, being simultaneously the judge and the accused.

11. This mode of manifesting and at the same time concealing oneself in shame is to be distinguished from one’s mode of appearing in and through another feeling that seems to display itself in similar forms, namely guilt.

12. June Price Tangney et alii Self-Conscious Emotions. The Psychology of Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride, ed. J.P. Tangney/K.W. Fischer, 1995. Shame and Guilt, ed. J.P. Tangney/R.L. Dearing, 2002. The Self-Conscious Emotions: Theory and Research, ed. J.J. Campos/J.L. Tracy/R.W. Robins/J.P. Tangney, 2007. II. Nothing more than self-deformation?Empirical studies on shame in contrast to guilt

13. Main theses: • Prototypical shame and guilt experiences Features shared: Both are - ’moral’ emotions involving self-attributions - negatively valanced - experienced in interpersonal contexts - connected to similar events, e.g. failures and transgressions

14. Key differences DimensionShame Guilt Degree of more painful than less painful then shame distress guilt Experience of shrinking, feeling small, of tension, remorse, worthless, incompetent, regret exposed Motivational Desire to hide or escape, Desire to confess, Features or to strike back apologize and repair

15. 2. Interpersonal interaction DimensionShameGuilt Concern vis-à-vis Concern with others’ Concern with one’s others evaluation of oneself effect on others => motivates an => motivates avoidance response corrective action and or defensive, keeps people con- retaliative anger, structively engaged aggression and hostility in the relation => likely to externalize => likely to accept blame responsibility => ’egoistic drift’: => other-oriented self-oriented distress empathic concern response

16. 3. The role of the self DimensionShameGuilt Focus = global self: = specific behavior: (”I did that horrible thing”) (”I did that horrible thing”) Operation of Self ’split’ into observing Unified self remains intact self and observed Impact on Self impaired by global Self unimpaired in its Self devaluation: defective, core identity objectionable, condemned

17. Guilt between the burden of the past…

18. …and a better future?

19. Tangney’s Conclusion:Guilt serves a number of important relationship-enhancing functions;but shame brings with it a heavy burden to our relationships with friends, colleagues, and loved ones.

20. Problems with this account: 1. Regarding the assessment of emotional experience - Due to the overlap between guilt and shame, which frequently co-occur, the assessment of shame- and guilt-proneness and their differentiation by self-report scales involves a number of methodological difficulties. - Many individuals show descriptive confusion when attempting to distinguish between the two. - Before being full-fledged emotions, shame and guilt can be there as partly un- or pre-conscious or repressed affects.

21. The theoretical definition of shame seems to guide the evaluation of the interviews: by this definition, when a person feels devaluated, that person is primarily ashamed – even if the basis for his or her feeling is a bad deed condemned by an internal standard. • Because the intense guilt that plays an important role in psycho-pathology involves negative self-feelings that are classified as shame by the TOSCA scale (Test of Self-Conscious Affect), it might underestimate the role of guilt.

22. 2. Regarding interpersonal interaction: • Feeling shame is not in any case a shame… • We should at least distinguish between • Shame of discretion and self-respect (skam, pudeur) which is part of the need for sheltering one’s self and signifies a protective warning in relation to what makes one bashful • Shame of disgrace (skændsel, honte) which is connected to guilt and refers to the pain after misbehaving

23. 3. Regarding the role of the self: • It might be too one-sided to focus on the negative sense of shame that makes a person want to disappear or sink into the ground • ’Shamelessness’ would not be a better alternative to ’shame’ – thus, its negativity points beyond itself to its positive potential, which remains to be explored!

24. III. Ambiguities of feelingand the transformation of the self-other-relation Guiding question: What can shame reveal about the self in its relations to others ?

25. An alternative, non-reductionist account of shame... ...should take into account what the Tangney group has overlooked: 1. The forms and the content of shame can change when it is not only seen in opposition to guilt 2. Shame also fulfills vital functions in interhuman relations 3. Shame is crucial for one’s becoming oneself

26. Phenomenology of shame – a feeling in many forms • Shame as emotional feeling: is a suddenly evolving, active-passive movement < motio directed at a specific intentional object, the product of a complex set of cognitive activities • Shame as mood: is a long-term attunement and equiprimordial disclosedness of the world, of others and one’s own existence • Shame as attitude: is a disposition and trait of character • Shame of existence: precedes shame as emotional feeling, is connected to one’s contingent ’naked being’ that is not at one’s own disposal

27. Two controversial questions 1. Is there one affect [ad-ficitur] that lies at the core of shame in its distinctive forms (Tomkins)… • Discouragement = shame about temporary defeat • Embarrassment = transient shame about performance before an audience • Shyness = shame in the presence of strangers • Inferiority = global shame about the self • Exposure fear = prospective fear of losing one’s good reputation or position, anxiety about disqualification …or can and should shame clearly be distinguished from its ’familiy resemblances’?

28. 2. Is shame pathological? It might be connected to • Addictions and eating disorders • Sexual abuse, impotence • Schizophrenia, paranoia, phobic syndroms • Borderline syndroms, multiple personality • Narcissism • Depression Caution! Shame-based syndroms include the tendency to be ashamed about one’s shame and lead to strategies of its covering and transferring => By-passed shame (Lewis)

29. However, in itself, shame is normally neither a sign of health, nor of an illness. Decisive is its role in inter- and intra-personal dynamics. It is pathological only in its lack or overdose, i.e., when a person can in no way dispose of it and can not form this feeling, but feels to get destroyed by it.

30. Shame without guiltEmmanuel Levinas: De l’évasion (1935) • Shame does not derive from the consciousness of an imperfection in our being from which we take distance. • On the contrary, shame is grounded in the impossibility of evasion, of fleeing and hiding from ourselves. • What appears in shame is our being’s incapacity to move away from itself, “the fact of being chained to oneself, […] the intolerable presence of the self to itself.” • The nudity of our body is the nudity of our entire being. To be ashamed means to be consigned to what cannot be assumed: it is nothing external, but what is most intimate in us, e.g. our physiological life. • It is, as if consciousness collapsed and, seeking to flee, were simultaneously summoned to be present at its own defacement. • “What shame discovers is the Being that discovers itself.”

31. Giorgio Agamben: Remnants of Auschwitz (1999) • Literature written by survivors: < Robert Antelme’s account of the march from Buchenwald to Dachau, when the SS shot down any prisoner who seemed to slow the march, sometimes random. A young Italian student was picked, he flushed and turned pink. Shame in this context cannot refer to any act or omission, nor to any defect in character, nor to the feeling of being unjustly chosen to survive, for it was he who would die. • Shame is the fundamental sentiment of being a subject – in two apparently opposed senses: to be subjected and to be sovereign. Shame is produced in the concomitance of subjectification and de-subjectification, self-loss and self-possession to be attained, agent and patient in auto-affection and saying ‘I.’

32. The perpetrators’ shameful lack of shame shows that it can be a mistake not to feel ashamed

33. 2. Shame in interpersonal interaction – a ’gentle morality’ Without shame we would run the risk of intruding the zones of intimacy of others. Shame regulates and protects the borders between I and Thou, Mine and Yours. Shame signals difference and (non-)identity.

34. Shame is a marker of our relatedness and of the distance between us. Without shame we would not respect what we cannot understand...

35. ... and could not keep the secrets and respect the mystery of the persons we encounter.

36. Together with tact… < Latin: tangere to touch, to reach = the empathic perception of others’ needs and limits and the ability to say or do the right thing without making them unhappy or angry …shame protects our being-in-con-tact When all participants of a relation are tactful, they are ’together in tact’ and share their intuitions about harmony or disharmony, appropriateness or incongruity.

37. By contrast, the shameless person aggessively ignores others’ feelings or hurts them deliberately. (S)He is inconsiderate in the sense of not caring about the effects of his or her doing on other selves. (S)He provokes shame in others by - objectifying looks that judge, condemn, or at least look down on another - subjectifying looks that (without any on-looking-taboo) suggest giving up oneself - forbidden gazes into others’ privacy Cf. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943)

38. Beyond boundaries and human limits? • Shame retrospectively refers to boundaries transgressed. • The embodied memory of shame refers to our responsibility for the consequences of transgressions. • Shame prospectively warns of wanting to be limitless.

39. 3. Shame, love, and selfhood • Shame is pivotal to the development of - personal identity - self-esteem and self-evaluation • Only human beings flush! < Darwin: “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals“ (1872) • Shame is a form of feeling oneself, which involves a self-reflexive move: ‚Rückwendung auf ein Selbst‘ – also in reaction to approval and compliments < Scheler: “Über Scham und Schamgefühl“ (1913)

40. Sartre:”J’ai honte de moi devant autrui”I am ashamed of myself vis-à-vis the Other • The ’I’ is the experiencing subject of the sentence • Je is contained in moi: as perceived by autrui => the Other is implied as another subject • While the ’I’ is looking outwards into the world, the reflexive pronoun is turned inwards to the ’I’ • Thus, the subject becomes itself in being constituted as self-relation vis-à-vis another; without the Other outside of itself the subject could not find itself

41. Shame and self-consciousness Günter H. Seidler, Der Blick des Anderen, 1995 • - Shame in its positive sense indicates • the discovery of the Other than oneself – • and of the Other in oneself. • Denn niemand kennt sich, • insofern er nur selbst • und nicht auchzugleich • ein anderer ist (Novalis) • Shame indicates the interiorization of another’s look and its transformation into a function of self-observation • and self-evaluation. o

42. As ’Schnittstellen’-Affektshame is the affective junction where the foreign is encountered in the familiar, and where the outer is distinguished from the inner. • As such, it is the situation of non-coincidence with oneself, in which self-consciousness is constituted, and the reciprocal process in which one realizes one’s self-relation. Total incommensurability just as total identity of subject and object would annihilate self-consciousness.

43. Yet, is it shame alone that has this positive potential - Or is it shame in the context of love, the quality par excellence of being and feeling for and with another?

44. Narcissus and Echo Ovid, Metamorphoses III Aesop • Echo, a nymph, falls in love with a vain youth named Narcissus. • According to the seer Teiresias, Narcissus "would live to a ripe old age, as long as he never knew himself [si se non noverit].” Self-knowledge means meeting another

45. One day when Narcissus was out hunting, Echo followed him through the woods, longing to address him but unable to speak first. When Narcissus finally heard footsteps and shouted "Who's there?" Echo answered "Who's there?" • And so it went, until finally Echo showed herself and rushed to embrace the lovely youth. He pulled away from the nymph and vainly told her to leave him alone.

46. Narcissus left Echo heartbroken. • She spent the rest of her life in lonely glens, pining away for the love she never knew, until only her voice remained.

47. This indicates that rejected love can also induce shame and isolation. Thus, love is not the easy solution that in any case helps to bear the heavy burden of shame. Nor is ’self-less’ love alone the cure for ’selfish’ shame. Self-acceptance seems to depend on the reciprocal look of love, on loving and being-loved,.

48. Narcissus became thirsty and went to drink from a stream, but he wouldn't touch the water for fear of damaging his reflection, so he eventually passed away, staring at his own reflection. The Narcissus flower grew from where he died.

49. Variation: He became entranced by his own reflection and tried to seduce the beautiful boy, not realizing it was himself, until he tried to kiss it. However, he could not grasp himself in the water and drowned. Caravaggio

50. Echo’s problem: • She has her own desires, but she can only be another’s voice, repeat another’s words. She cannot begin by herself and she cannot respond, but she preserves and expresses another’s past . Thereby she loses herself to another, blurring the borders between’I’ and non-’I.’