THE FUNCTION OF
SHAME:
Reports in the literature of how changing occurs
through the community conferencing process are insightful and controversial. A dialectic exists here too: Does change spring from the internalist’s accounts of change, coming from within the
individual or the externalist’s accounts of change, being a product of the
pressures of social conformity from without? (see
McDonald & Moore, 2001). Deeply connected to this dialectic are questions
concerning the function of shame and the collective experience.
The function of shame.
Included in this function is the relationship between shame and forgiveness, and whether or not to force either in the
conference to make change happen. Affect theory (Nathanson,
1997; McCold & Wachtel,
1997) postulates that there are nine basic affects or emotions that are
universal to all human beings. These nine affects are categorized into three
groups: positive, neutral, and negative. It is in the negative group that the
controversy begins. The affect that dominated discussions in the earlier
theoretical development of the conferencing process was shame or humiliation.
Kaufman (1985) states, “To feel shame is to feel seen in a painfully diminished
sense. The self feels exposed both to itself and to anyone
else present” (p. 8). As theorists developed their models for the
conferencing process, shame was broken into two types and referred to as reintegrative shaming or stigmatizing shaming (Braithwaite,
1989). Stigmatizing shaming was seen to make offenders more
angry and less reflective. Reintegrative
shaming appeared to reconnect the offender with the community. Nathanson (1997) later argues that reintegrative
shaming was a misnomer. He argues that it is more useful to understand
individuals’ responses to shame: withdrawal, avoidance,
attack self, and attack other. In reality there was “only reintegration,
only hard work aimed at the reinforcement of community and the hope that the
offender finds the community enough of a source of positive affect that return
to it is worth a huge dose of shame as withdrawal” (p. 2).
The collective experience. Nathanson’s (1997) thinking reflects a shift to a more
systemic view of the process. In discussing the evolution of the conferencing
process, McDonald and Moore (2001) describe a shift that moves from seeing the
process as isolated events to a more synergetic event. They still recognize
that the expression of shame is a turning point in the conference, but they
“now emphasize that a significant part of the experience of shame seems to be
collective” (p. 131). They continued by acknowledging that change seems related
more to the emotional dynamics of a conference than to the expression of a
specific emotion. They summarize their account of this aspect by stating:
This account suggests that
the crucial dynamic is not that one conference participant expresses shame, and
thereby clears the hurdle beyond which reintegration can occur. Rather, the
crucial dynamic is that everyone experiences a sense of shame, and this
experience marks the transition from a generally negative emotional climate, to
a generally positive emotional climate. Shame marks the transition from
conflict to cooperation. (p. 7)
Within this brief review on how change occurs
through the conferencing process, I recognize Lawlis’
(1996) required elements for changing—courage for the individual and support
from the group or community.
(David’s home page)
(school
counselling home page)
In psychology, affect is an emotion or subjectively
experienced feeling. Affect theory is a branch of psychoanalysis
that attempts to organize affects into discrete categories and connect each one
with its typical response. So, for example, the affect of joy is
observed through the reaction of smiling. These affects can be
identified through immediate facial reactions that people have to a stimulus,
typically well before they could process any real response to the stimulus.
Affect theory is attributed to Silvan Tomkins and is introduced in the first two
volumes of his book Affect Imagery Consciousness (published in 1962 and
1963 respectively).
These are the nine affects, listed with a low/high
intensity label for each affect and accompanied by its biological expression [1]:
Positive:
·
Enjoyment/Joy - smiling, lips wide and out
·
Interest/Excitement - eyebrows down, eyes tracking, eyes
looking, closer listening
Neutral:
·
Surprise/Startle - eyebrows up, eyes blinking
Negative:
·
Anger/Rage - frowning, a clenched jaw, a red face
·
Disgust - the lower lip raised and protruded, head
forward and down
·
Dissmell (reaction to bad smell)
- upper lip raised, head pulled back
·
Distress/Anguish - crying, rhythmic sobbing, arched eyebrows,
mouth lowered
·
Fear/Terror - a frozen stare, a pale face, coldness,
sweat, erect hair
·
Shame/Humiliation - eyes lowered, the head down and
averted, blushing
The nine affects can be used as a blueprint for optimal
mental health. According to Tomkins (1962), optimal mental health requires the
maximization of positive affect and the minimization of negative affect. Affect
should also be properly expressed so to make the identification of affect
possible (Nathanson 1997).
Affect theory can also be used as a blueprint for
intimate relationships. Kelly (1996) describes relationships as agreements to
mutually work toward maximizing positive affect and minimizing negative affect.
Like the "optimal mental health" blueprint, this blueprint requires
members of the relationship to express affect to one another in order to
identify progress.
These blueprints can also describe natural and implicit
goals. Nathanson (1997), for example, uses the
"affect" to create a narrative for one of his patients:
I suspect that the reason he refuses to watch
movies is the sturdy fear of enmeshment in the affect depicted on the screen;
the affect mutualization for which most of us
frequent the movie theater is only another source of discomfort for him.
and:
His refusal to risk the range of positive and
negative affect associated with sexuality robs any possible relationship of one
of its best opportunities to work on the first two rules of either the Kelly or
the Tomkins blueprint. Thus, his problems with intimacy may be understood in
one aspect as an overly substantial empathic wall, and in another aspect as a
purely internal problem with the expression and management of his own affect.
Tomkins (1991) applies affect theory to religion noting
that "Christianity became a powerful universal religion in part because of
its more general solution to the problem of anger, violence, and suffering
versus love, enjoyment, and peace." The implication is that the optimization
of affect motivates the adoption of religion.
Affect theory is also referenced heavily in Tomkins's Script
Theory.