Shameful (Taboo)

Contents:

  • The S-Word is Taboo: Shame is Invisible in Modern Societies
  • How I turned around the shameful taboo of debt
  • Review summary
  • The S-Word is Taboo: Shame is Invisible in Modern Societies | OMICS International
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    • It was never on the bestseller lists; it stands currently around the 30 thousandth mark. According to Google Scholar, it has been cited times, which is 24 times a year since its publication. For a open statement about the cause of all violence, it seems that it has receive only modest notice by the public or by scholars.

    If the word shame had appeared in the title, it might have fared much worse. With a different title and approach, perhaps it would have been more popular. The actual title, Violence: The publisher may have not allowed the use of shame in the title, as sometimes happens [ 1 ]. Perhaps Dissing and Violence would have had more appeal.

    But if Gilligan had wanted to have the word dissing in the title, he might have had to stick with the dissing-disrespect thesis, not even mentioning his notion of secret shame. The s-word would be not appealing, even repulsive.

    The S-Word is Taboo: Shame is Invisible in Modern Societies

    One could ask the same question about the f-word, since it also is only a word. It is clear that the f-word was usually repulsive for the sixty years before , at least in print. According to the Google Ngram, there was not a single occurrence of the word fuck in books in the English language between and It appears that printed books were fussy about this matter, since when I was in basic training in the Army in , it was almost every other word out of the mouths of trainers and trainees alike.

    Oddly, with the f-word getting more exposure beginning in , the s-word has been getting less. The N-gram shows that the frequency of use in English language books has been decreasing steadily for two hundred years To see if this decline was in English only, I checked the Ngrams for French honte , German schande and Spanish verguenza equivalents. The decrease has been occurring in these languages also over the two hundred years. What is going on? I learned that this book was about shame only by a chance meeting with him on a lecture tour in England. From his study of five hundred years of European history, the sociologist [ 7 ] proposed that shame and its close kin embarrassment and humiliation have become the dominant emotions in modern societies, even though they are taboo.

    Most of these studies however, assume that this sequence causes violence only in traditional societies, where shame is out in the open. It is not considered to occur in modern societies. Although the word honor has gone out of style, the emotion of shame has not. If it is biologically based, it is also ahistorical and cross cultural. The taboo on shame has many weakening effects on knowledge, because it cordons off into separate groups what ought to be a single field, reinforcing the existing taboo.

    It also slows down the process of replicating studies that support it [ 8 , 9 ] and testing a broader hypothesis extending to causes of both violence and silence [ 10 ]. In his study he analyzed etiquette manuals in three languages. Two key findings [ 5 ], as physical punishment decreased, shame became dominant as the main agent of morality [ 11 ]. As shame became more prevalent, it also went underground, becoming virtually invisible.

    How can shame become invisible? Modern audiences cannot accept this idea, since they conflate emotion and feeling. A similar argument can be made about fear: It may be that recklessness, particularly, arises from this process. Similarly, perhaps a person can be in a bodily state of shame without feeling ashamed. Elias interpreted invisibility in terms of taboo: As sex and especially the f-word were taboo then, so the s-word has become taboo now. The psychologist [ 12 ] is one of several writers who have argued that shame is taboo in our society:.

    How I turned around the shameful taboo of debt

    American society is a shame-based culture, but …shame remains hidden. Since there is shame about shame, it remains under taboo… taboo on shame is so strict that we behave as if shame does not exist [ 12 ]. In addition to Elias, another early discovery of the taboo on shame was made by Helen Lewis , a research and clinical psychologist. She used the technique to locate emotion episodes in the transcriptions, and then analyzed the reactions of both client and therapist to each episode.

    The device is now available as software, the Picard [ 13 ]. First, shame episodes were by far the most frequent, outnumbering all the other emotions combined. Secondly, unlike the other episodes, such as anger. The shame episodes were not commented on. Neither therapist nor client seemed to notice them. Since Lewis was a practicing psychoanalyst as well as a researcher, she later questioned her own clients when they used words that indicate shame.

    She found them to be unaware of the shame that their wording implied. The most frequent sequence was what seemed to be varying degrees of withdrawal by the client.

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    Lewis called this a sequence from shame to depression. The client would begin to speak less and more slowly with less clarity. There was, however, also another response, a sequence from shame to anger, sometimes at the therapist.

    The anger reaction was less frequent than withdrawal. These two sequences may turn out to be quite important. Such a sequence did not occur in any of the sessions.

    Lewis proposed that shame is mostly hidden both from others and from self. She found that shame goes unacknowledged in two different ways. The client is in pain, but it is referred to indirectly, at best. As [ 13 ], there are hundreds of words and phrases in English that can be used to refer to shame without naming it. Many of these cognates have been listed [ 14 ] OU shame is usually marked not only by pain, but often by confusion and bodily reactions: One may be at a loss for words, with fluster or disorganization of thought or behavior, as in states of embarrassment.

    Many of the common terms for painful feelings appear to refer to this type of shame, or combinations with anger: Shame and its siblings are much less discussed than other emotions, not only by the public, but also researchers. How could that be? There have been many studies of shame, but most of them use what Elias called circumlocutions.

    An illustrative example is found in a recent study of doctor-patient relationships [ 15 ]. Although the reader will understand what is meant, the phrase cuts the authors and the readers off from an understanding of shame dynamics that are available in the literature on shame and its siblings. Studies of the facial expression of emotion, a huge field, were based on the foundational descriptions of basic emotions [ 16 ]. But for many years until quite recently, these studies did not include shame, even though Tomkins gave more attention to it than any other emotion V.

    Another example is stigma. There are thousands of studies in the social, behavioral and medical sciences of this topic. The idea is that police arrest or illness diagnosis may carry with it an unintended consequence: These studies virtually never use the term shame in the title, and in most cases, even in the body of the study. This case illustrates the taboo the most emphatically, since shame is the actual dictionary meaning of stigma.

    Clearly equated stigma with shame [ 17 ] pp. But by , when articles on stigma started appearing, the term shame had disappeared. This absence is particularly noticeable in an attempt to conceptualize stigma [ 18 ]. This essay used a systematic method to locate hidden shame studies. We have used this method and the update [ 14 ], Chapter 3 to locate a random sample of studies in the many fields that directly study shame, but use alternative names for it. The first example does use shame to analyze the material studied, and, the only one of the six; it also references the shame literature.

    The Injuries of Hidden Class: Neoliberalism and the Crimes of Inequality. Mentioning the Marxist perspective, Adair mentions reasons inequalities of income and opportunities are built into the wage system of a capitalist system.

    The S-Word is Taboo: Shame is Invisible in Modern Societies | OMICS International

    Additionally, due to the marketing technique of introducing products higher in the social ladder which eventually trickle down to the lower levels, workers are caught in a cycle of trying to reach an income of living with the commodities of the social class above them. Through contemplation and time did he come to discover what he felt at that moment was humiliation, a strong pain of shame in his chest, and recounted how he attempted to mask whatever he believed he was feeling at the time. Back to the main point, Adair declares, currently, the lower classes in the social hierarchy may in fact feel ashamed of themselves in their situation; thus, shame may bring about responses such as physical violence, addiction, depression and isolation.

    The next five examples are much more typical: Warren, Charlotte et al.

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    Due to financial and geographical barriers, access to skilled birth attendants is rare in developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa; therefore, it comes as no surprise pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of death for women of reproductive age in these disadvantaged areas. As a result of inexperienced birth attendants, disrespect and abuse is common and may take several forms: Additionally, little is being done about the issue though policy makers, program staff, civil society groups and community members are well aware of these behaviors.

    The study, seeking to ultimately reduce disrespectful and abusive behavior towards woman in labor, observed seven health care facilities in total and included several independent variables, which involved a client interview to measure their perceptions of working conditions, respect, empathy with and prejudice against clients, and awareness of policy and service delivery guidelines concerning respect, dignity and client rights. Although this study has not taken place yet, as it is only a protocol of proposed ideas, the proposal implies the many manifestations of disrespect and abuse, ranging from neglect of dignity to physical violence, create an strong enough impact in female clients that it may play a critical part in the birthing process, aside from limited staff and little knowledge of health rights, in health care facilities of developing countries.

    Both mentions of shame were from one title in the references section , Embarrassment: No references to shame literature. Testimony, Evidence, and the Practice of Anonymization in Research. Focusing on the problems research participants may have with anonymization, Berkhout claims removing any form of identity does little to address the politics of knowledge production. In her study, concerning socially and economically disadvantaged women navigating through the increasingly complex health-care system, Berkhout addressed the importance of confidentiality to her participants as she noted voluntarily choosing identifiable pseudonyms, such as nicknames, could lead to embarrassing, discrediting, or even discriminatory information; in other fields of research, the neglect of anonymity may also very well lead to a risk of discrimination through illness or disability disclosure.

    Berkhout further claims anonymity can also protect from harm of certain individuals, strengthen the researcher- participant relationship; however, in some cases, participants neglect anonymity since they feel the researcher would prefer a completely honest testimony. Though this analysis centralizes on the problems participants may have with anonymity, Berkhout emphasizes the importance of anonymity to her participants since the lack of, depending on the context, could easily lead to embarrassment, or shaming, of the participants through disclosed information leaking out in the open.

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    Whole governments and nations are built on this and I was a part of that. The vast structure of beliefs in a society is made up of interlocking tropes, but some of them are strongly defended against change of any kind. Although the study had several limitations, including the degree of aggression as a correlation to culture specific variables, this study further adds to the aggression literature in the anticipation to prevent and alleviate intercultural conflicts. The decrease has been occurring in these languages also over the two hundred years. Looking into aggression across various cultures in the hopes of finding universal aggression dimensions, Severance et al uncovered the universal dimensions in all four countries were damages to self-worth, direct versus indirect aggression and physical versus verbal aggression; moreover, an infringement of personal resources dimension developed in the United States and Israel while the dimension of a degree of threat appeared in Pakistan.

    Mtetwa, Sibongile et al. Although generally affected by HIV and regardless of the existence of proper health care services targeting specifically female sex workers, sex workers in Zimbabwe are refusing in persisting to seek antiretroviral treatment ART. In this study, three focus group discussions, which served to explore their experiences and perceptions of seeking care, were transcribed and analyzed to identify any recurring themes related to interactions with health services in their decision-making process.

    At the end of their study, Mtetwa et al concluded these women resisted seeking available care due to several reasons: That is, depression symptoms were looked for a correlation with social support, stigma caused by others and stigma caused by the participant themselves. It was hypothesized Asian students would be more prone to stigmatization and depressive symptoms would be more strongly associated with stigma in this group, as opposed to the Euro-Caucasian group.

    From the study, it was concluded the Asian student population did encounter greater stigmatization in seeking mental help and received less support from friends and parents. Focusing on the stigma of seeking professional mental help and correlation between depression symptoms, Talebi et al. Severance, Laura et al. Looking into aggression across various cultures in the hopes of finding universal aggression dimensions, Severance et al uncovered the universal dimensions in all four countries were damages to self-worth, direct versus indirect aggression and physical versus verbal aggression; moreover, an infringement of personal resources dimension developed in the United States and Israel while the dimension of a degree of threat appeared in Pakistan.

    A universal phenomenon, Severance et al conclude by declaring this study confirms the conceptions of aggressive acts as, to some extent, universal. Although the study had several limitations, including the degree of aggression as a correlation to culture specific variables, this study further adds to the aggression literature in the anticipation to prevent and alleviate intercultural conflicts. Despite the fact that Severance et al mention shame in the article three times, it is clear they do not make the shame literature connection since shame is only mentioned as either a quote or a restatement of a referenced article; moreover, shame is touched over as a possible reason for aggression.

    With the help of the debt charity StepChange , Alinah and Leo were able to stop the nuisance calls under Financial Conduct Authority guidelines, creditors are allowed to keep asking debtors for payment, but not to contact them at unreasonable times, or to use threats or unhelpful legal language.

    They also managed to work out a repayment plan, but were left with no access to credit, and some serious money worries. We knew we had to stick together on it or it was really going to destroy our family. And we had a lot of support from the people around us. As any of us who have ever struggled financially will know — and since the credit crunch, that must be most of us — worrying about money is emotionally draining.

    For those who, like Alinah and Leo, have borrowed from a relative or friend, the impact on those relationships can also be severe. Making Burning the Books has, Alinah says, been hugely helpful in coming to terms with their situation — not only in forcing her, and those who participate in the work, to face up to an issue that is so often taboo; but in inspiring her to think about debt as a moral question, one bound up with ideas of sin.

    We were using money that we really should have been using on living, on trying to make the payments. The work has also given Alinah pause for thought about the fact that debts — especially of the emotional kind — are, to some degree, an integral part of our relationships; the byproduct, if you like, of being part of any social group.

    To feel that we owe nothing to anyone at all, we would need to be living in complete isolation — as one participant in Burning the Books made clear. No one owes me anything. And that is one of the advantages of being completely alone in this world. Being in any kind of relationship means being willing to be owed. To contribute to the project, visit burningthebooks.