RonPrice
New Member
Prelude
The Piano Teacher was on SBSTWO last night.1 I had seen part of this 2001 film before and I saw part of it again. It won many awards and was based on the 1983 novel Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. The film is a realistic representation of a disturbed personality, of fanaticism, of sadomasochism, of the deepest feelings, where eros and murderous rages can easily mingle with transcendent exultation. The movie raised issues for me about the concepts of shame and guilt, both in society and in my own life, as well as about sociological theories of deviance and abnormal psychology. I was moved, therefore, to write this prose-poem, a poem that may well turn out to be more prose than poem.
I have been a student of abnormal psychology and deviance since my university days in the mid-1960s. But, being a generalist academically and teaching many subjects in the humanities and social sciences, I have only had a casual acquaintance with these sub-disciplines, sub-sections, of psychology and sociology. This piece of writing will not dwell on these sections of the social sciences but, rather and entirely, about shame.
PART 1:
I remember first experiencing shame in about 1949. The fear of shame and ridicule was so strong that the flight mechanism prompted me, at the age of 4 or 5, to run several miles away from the situation. I am told that people will risk serious physical injury or even death to avoid shame. I can understand this. This is because shame can result in serious damage to one’s social acceptance and a breakdown in one’s social relationships. In that situation in 1949 this was true—potentially. The evolutionary root of shame is in a self-focused, social threat system related to social acceptance and competitive behavior. These factors were certainly present for me in that 1949 family experience which, thankfully, did not become serious or explosive in any way.
There is now evidence, in studies that readers can examine for themselves, that shame can act as an inner warning signal of threats and challenges to the self. Automatic defences are triggered: the desire to escape from the situation or submissive behavior. Shame has functioned for me since 1949 as a warning signal that: (a) I need to avoid doing something,(b) I need to increase my positive affect on others, or (c) I need to avoid having negative effects on others like anger, disgust, or contempt. Due to this feeling of shame there have been times when I did not reveal things about myself to others in case they would then define me negatively and I would, as a result, feel bad in their eyes. In my several decades of living I have preferred a moderate confessionalism.
PART 2:
I can also capture this experience of shame very closely when I see my inner experience of self is as an unattractive social agent. What matters here is the sense of personal unattractiveness, my being in the social world as an undesired self, a self that one does not wish to be. Shame is an involuntary response to an awareness that one might lose status and be devalued as a result of one’s behaviour. My sense of shame has led to my dissociation, my asocial tendency, and a turning away from were formally social responsibilities. This has happened on my new medications in recent years. Shame is ultimately about punishment, is self-focused and "wired into" one’s defence system.
I am conscious that due to my sense of shame I can potentially behave immorally, but not reveal my immortality, in order to court favour with my superiors or significant others and, in the process, avoid being rejected for not complying with requests or orders. Prestige seeking, seeking the good name of others, and shame avoidance can also lead to destructive behaviours.
PART 3:
The opposite of shame is self-revelation, warts and all. Self-exposure melts shame away. In order to keep shame at bay using the technique of self-exposure, we need to constantly expose more. Madonna was one of the first performers to discover this. By openly declaring in 1983, “I have no shame,” she made a career out of pushing the envelope. “Where there is an unrestrained exposure of one’s emotions and of one’s body, a parading of secrets, a wanton intrusion of curiosity, it has become hard to express tender feelings, feelings of respect, of awe, of idealization, of reverence. The culture of shamelessness is also the culture of irreverence, of debunking and devaluing ideals.” If we run from shame, one analyst put it, we may successfully avoid humiliation but, instead, become dogged by a deep sense of anxiety instead. Shamelessness creates excitement and captures our interest, particularly when we experience it on TV. But it has a down-side which often eludes our consciousness and results, as I say, in anxieties.
PART 4:
There are many positive aspects of shame. The fact is that most of us do not have the psychic makeup of Madonna, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern or any other celebrity who thrives on self-promotion. Self-promotion is not everyone’s cup-of-tea. Many prefer a quiet humility in life. Most of us are not like the people on reality shows who are carefully selected for their lack of inhibition. The only shame is to have none,” wrote the philosopher Blaise Pascal centuries ago. We ought to keep his words in mind.-Ron Price with thanks to 1SBSTWO, 10:15 p.m. 9/11/’11, and Wikipedia and internet sites on The Piano Teacher.
Yes, without doubt, I was protected
or, rather, ran from the threat to my
self-image and I was only five then!!
At the age of 12 that protector kept
my libido in control throughout my
teens and again, on reflection, at the
age of 50 it deterred me and guarded
me against what was unworthy and
unseemly. Shame was part of some
hidden social threat system related
to my need to prove myself to myself
as well as be acceptable to my life’s
significant-and-insignificant others.1
1 Baha'u'llah, in His The Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, says, "...there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame." He also says that “The fear of God hath ever been a sure defence and a safe stronghold for all the peoples of the world. It is the chief cause of the protection of mankind, and the supreme instrument for its preservation. Indeed, there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame. This, however, is confined to but a few; all have not possessed and do not possess it.-Ron Price with thanks to SBSTWO, 8 November at 10:15 pm. In Kalímát-i-Firdawsíyyih(Words of Paradise), Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, 1978 ed., p. 63.
"That which is of paramount importance for the children, that which must precede all else, is to teach them the oneness of God and the Laws of God. For lacking this the fear of God cannot be inculcated, and lacking the fear of God an infinity of odious and abominable actions will spring up, and sentiments will be uttered that transgress all bounds…."-Bahá’u’lláh: Bahá’í Education: A Compilation, p. 6, compiled by the Universal House of Justice.
Ron Price
9 November 2011
The Piano Teacher was on SBSTWO last night.1 I had seen part of this 2001 film before and I saw part of it again. It won many awards and was based on the 1983 novel Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004. The film is a realistic representation of a disturbed personality, of fanaticism, of sadomasochism, of the deepest feelings, where eros and murderous rages can easily mingle with transcendent exultation. The movie raised issues for me about the concepts of shame and guilt, both in society and in my own life, as well as about sociological theories of deviance and abnormal psychology. I was moved, therefore, to write this prose-poem, a poem that may well turn out to be more prose than poem.
I have been a student of abnormal psychology and deviance since my university days in the mid-1960s. But, being a generalist academically and teaching many subjects in the humanities and social sciences, I have only had a casual acquaintance with these sub-disciplines, sub-sections, of psychology and sociology. This piece of writing will not dwell on these sections of the social sciences but, rather and entirely, about shame.
PART 1:
I remember first experiencing shame in about 1949. The fear of shame and ridicule was so strong that the flight mechanism prompted me, at the age of 4 or 5, to run several miles away from the situation. I am told that people will risk serious physical injury or even death to avoid shame. I can understand this. This is because shame can result in serious damage to one’s social acceptance and a breakdown in one’s social relationships. In that situation in 1949 this was true—potentially. The evolutionary root of shame is in a self-focused, social threat system related to social acceptance and competitive behavior. These factors were certainly present for me in that 1949 family experience which, thankfully, did not become serious or explosive in any way.
There is now evidence, in studies that readers can examine for themselves, that shame can act as an inner warning signal of threats and challenges to the self. Automatic defences are triggered: the desire to escape from the situation or submissive behavior. Shame has functioned for me since 1949 as a warning signal that: (a) I need to avoid doing something,(b) I need to increase my positive affect on others, or (c) I need to avoid having negative effects on others like anger, disgust, or contempt. Due to this feeling of shame there have been times when I did not reveal things about myself to others in case they would then define me negatively and I would, as a result, feel bad in their eyes. In my several decades of living I have preferred a moderate confessionalism.
PART 2:
I can also capture this experience of shame very closely when I see my inner experience of self is as an unattractive social agent. What matters here is the sense of personal unattractiveness, my being in the social world as an undesired self, a self that one does not wish to be. Shame is an involuntary response to an awareness that one might lose status and be devalued as a result of one’s behaviour. My sense of shame has led to my dissociation, my asocial tendency, and a turning away from were formally social responsibilities. This has happened on my new medications in recent years. Shame is ultimately about punishment, is self-focused and "wired into" one’s defence system.
I am conscious that due to my sense of shame I can potentially behave immorally, but not reveal my immortality, in order to court favour with my superiors or significant others and, in the process, avoid being rejected for not complying with requests or orders. Prestige seeking, seeking the good name of others, and shame avoidance can also lead to destructive behaviours.
PART 3:
The opposite of shame is self-revelation, warts and all. Self-exposure melts shame away. In order to keep shame at bay using the technique of self-exposure, we need to constantly expose more. Madonna was one of the first performers to discover this. By openly declaring in 1983, “I have no shame,” she made a career out of pushing the envelope. “Where there is an unrestrained exposure of one’s emotions and of one’s body, a parading of secrets, a wanton intrusion of curiosity, it has become hard to express tender feelings, feelings of respect, of awe, of idealization, of reverence. The culture of shamelessness is also the culture of irreverence, of debunking and devaluing ideals.” If we run from shame, one analyst put it, we may successfully avoid humiliation but, instead, become dogged by a deep sense of anxiety instead. Shamelessness creates excitement and captures our interest, particularly when we experience it on TV. But it has a down-side which often eludes our consciousness and results, as I say, in anxieties.
PART 4:
There are many positive aspects of shame. The fact is that most of us do not have the psychic makeup of Madonna, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern or any other celebrity who thrives on self-promotion. Self-promotion is not everyone’s cup-of-tea. Many prefer a quiet humility in life. Most of us are not like the people on reality shows who are carefully selected for their lack of inhibition. The only shame is to have none,” wrote the philosopher Blaise Pascal centuries ago. We ought to keep his words in mind.-Ron Price with thanks to 1SBSTWO, 10:15 p.m. 9/11/’11, and Wikipedia and internet sites on The Piano Teacher.
Yes, without doubt, I was protected
or, rather, ran from the threat to my
self-image and I was only five then!!
At the age of 12 that protector kept
my libido in control throughout my
teens and again, on reflection, at the
age of 50 it deterred me and guarded
me against what was unworthy and
unseemly. Shame was part of some
hidden social threat system related
to my need to prove myself to myself
as well as be acceptable to my life’s
significant-and-insignificant others.1
1 Baha'u'llah, in His The Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, says, "...there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame." He also says that “The fear of God hath ever been a sure defence and a safe stronghold for all the peoples of the world. It is the chief cause of the protection of mankind, and the supreme instrument for its preservation. Indeed, there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame. This, however, is confined to but a few; all have not possessed and do not possess it.-Ron Price with thanks to SBSTWO, 8 November at 10:15 pm. In Kalímát-i-Firdawsíyyih(Words of Paradise), Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, 1978 ed., p. 63.
"That which is of paramount importance for the children, that which must precede all else, is to teach them the oneness of God and the Laws of God. For lacking this the fear of God cannot be inculcated, and lacking the fear of God an infinity of odious and abominable actions will spring up, and sentiments will be uttered that transgress all bounds…."-Bahá’u’lláh: Bahá’í Education: A Compilation, p. 6, compiled by the Universal House of Justice.
Ron Price
9 November 2011
