Shame & Guilt

by Ernest Kurtz

Shame & Guilt explores the differences between these two painful but inevitable experiences. Both guilt and shame involve feeling "bad"-feeling bad about one's actions (or omissions) in the case of guilt; feeling bad about one's self in shame. The deep meaning of the word bad is "unable to fit": unable to fit into some external context in the case of guilt, unable to fit into one's own being in the case of shame. Human experience offers two different ways of discovering that one does not "fit," of feeling "bad." Each has to do with the boundaries of the human condition. But there are two kinds of boundaries, and it is important to recognize their difference, the difference between rules and goals. For though the human condition is bounded, recognizing that reality can be either a choking, tightening experience or it can lead to the discovery of a new freedom. True, shame's negative side points up failure and falling short, but shame also entails something insight into the reality of the human condition. The experience of shame lays bare the essential paradox that inheres in being to be human is to be caught in a contradictory tension between the pull to the unlimited, the more-than-human, and the drag of the merely limited, the less-than-human. Shame's healing is to be found in the discovery of how that paradox can be lived creatively in ways that find other human beings to be not the problem in shame, but its solution.

Genres: Psychology

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[JJ Waggy]

This a very short and easily accessible read, but it gives you a lot to chew on. Kurtz is writing out of an explanation of shame (and, to a far lesser extent, guilt) as it impacts alcoholics and as it is tackled within the structure of Alcoholics Anonymous, but he deliberately writes to make the concepts pertinent to non-addicts as well. I think he succeeds admirably and will keep mulling over the ideas he introduces. He definitely leans on Helen Block Lewis's differentiation of shame and guilt (shame being internal and about one's "being," guilt being external and about one's actions), but his A.A. context goes into the interdependency of humans in dealing with that shame and the ways in which working through shame require retraining one's sense of self as regards dependence and control.

I definitely recommend this for those who are friends or relatives of addicts (of any kind) as well as for addicts themselves. I also recommend this to readers in general; though I am not myself an addict, there are definitely pieces of my life to which I can apply the things Kurtz notes about how shame manifests in one's life and what healing that requires.

[Maria Almaguer]

A tiny book with a lot of punch, it's something one would have to re-read several times for it to be fully understood.

[Andy C.]

You will enjoy this.