shame

shame

The emergence of shame in the course of analysis and in life occurs in the context of the relation with the analyst or with people. the emergence of the feeling, as it happens with telescoped childhood memories, is the result of extraordinarily complex processes the nature of which cannot be ascertained without considering its genetic, structural, dynamic and transferential components organized as present shameful perceptions of something happening in the analytic moment itself.

Freud discussing the sexual theories of children, says that , once they become aware that the father inserts his penis into the mother, their ignorance of the vagina leads them to believe that /if the baby grows in the mother's body and is then removed from it, this can only happen along the one possible pathway

Before referring to gender difference in the evolution of the sense of shame, it seems important to re-emphasize that the anal organization and the way it develop is strongly influenced by the oral organization that precedes it, and neither the origins of shame nor of disgust can be considered without reference to that earlier phase.

Freud speaks of  the role of shame and disgust in the inhibition of sexuality, and thought this took place earlier in little girls than in boys. Whatever the truth of the matter, the cloacal concept of the genitals may, in girls, be anatomically reinforced, may have a strong bearing on the close tie with shame, and has been subject of repeated comments in the literature.

Intensity of shaming parental and social influences, the recognition and awareness of physical and psychological disabilities and insufficiencies and since the body may be said to have started it all - childhood illness felt to be of shaming or disgusting kind.