The Legacy of Freud's Writings on Shame

Lansky and Morrison

The goal of the article seems to be to identify the ways in which Freud's writings failed to appropriately deal with shame, and the ways in which recognition of shame could act as a unifying force in the psychoanalytic community.

The authors point to three ways Freud uses shame in his study: shame as a motive for defense, shame as a method of defense, and shame in relation to ideals and aspirations.

Shame functions as a motive for defense when patients do not want to access painful memories, and those incompatible with continued approval of the self by others. As such, shame leads to voluntary concealment, or the active avoidance of shame. Alternatively, shame as a method of defense acts as a safeguard, ensuring that we act in a socially appropriate manner in order to avoid the unpleasant emotion of shame.*

These uses, the article argues, represent a "mechanization of shame." In other words, he uses shame to hold only specific functions in his work, and as such eliminates the varied sources of shame. One of these such places is narcissism. This section was rather dense and I need to go over it again.

The following section details Freud's descriptions of four of his dreams, identifying that they all occurred on nights following days in which Freud experienced particularly humiliating or shameful occurrences. This section, I feel, is a weak point of the article. After devoting the beginning of their article to a discussion of Freud's misuse of the concept of guilt to encompass experiences that were actually shameful, Lansky and Morrison use a wide definition of shame in this section, including examples that could also be identified as irritating or frustrating, rather than humiliating.

*This is confusing to me. My notes say "so the fear is the motive, and the avoidance is the method?"