Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self

by Donald L. Nathanson

This is a revolutionary book about the nature of emotion, about the way emotions are triggered in our private moments, in our relations with others, and by our biology. Drawing on every theme of the modern life sciences, Donald Nathanson shows how nine basic affects―interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell, disgust, and shame-humiliation―not only determine how we feel but shape our very sense of self.

For too long those who explain emotional discomfort on the basis of lived experience and those who blame chemistry have been at loggerheads. As Dr. Nathanson shows, chemicals and illnesses can affect our mood just as surely as an uncomfortable memory or a stern rebuke. Linking for the first time the affect theory of the pioneering researcher Silvan S. Thomkins with the entire world of biology, medicine, psychology, psychotherapy, religion, and the social sciences, Dr. Nathanson presents a completely new understanding of all emotion.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help

498 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1992

Reviews

[culley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The function of any affect is to amplify the highly specific stimulus that set it in motion. Affects make good things better and bad things worse. Affects make us care about different things in different ways. When we are said to be motivated, it is because an affect has made us so. Whatever is important to us is made so by affect. Affect is the engine that drives us. Affects are biological. The affects are: interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell, disgust, shame-humiliation

A baby in the throws of an affect is a broadcaster of affect and we observers resonate with their transmission. The contagious quality of broadcast affect literally drags the observer into resonance. Babies do not modulate their broadcasts, but as we age we learn to decrease the intensity of our broadcasts to socially acceptable levels. Interestingly, sexual intercourse is one of the situations where adults are allowed (or even expected) to broadcast an unmodulated affect.

Dissmell and disgust are mechanisms originally operating to limit a drive when it is at its height— hunger. Because our society place a value on interpersonal closeness, body odor becomes emphasized in our relationships. Whenever one person finds another inappropriate to the level of dissmell it is very difficult for them to built or maintain intimacy. Disgust is powerful because it creates intense conflict over continued desire for what has appeared so tasty and now has become nasty. The affective roots of prejudice always involves dismal and disgust.

Shame-humiliation is similar to to dissmell and disgust in that it interferes with the positive affects (rather than drives) when they are at their. Shame exists to modulate the positive affects interest-excitement, and enjoyment-joy. Shame is a highly painful mechanism of inner tension that operates to pull us away from whatever might interest us or make us content. It is an impediment to something we had wanted or enjoyed or which excited or pleased us. The more excitement, the more shame is triggered when this impediment is sensed.

The shame family includes embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, shyness, discouragement. Shame often attends the exposure of something that we would have preferred to keep hidden— it is often associated with privacy.

The basic themes of growth and development involve changes in
size and strength
dexterity and physical skill
dependence vs. independence
cognitive ability
communication
sense of self
gender identity and sexuality
interpersonal skills

Pride is attached to acquisition of these skills, and shame is attached to any failures along the way. They do not develop at the same time or rate. Pride is competence pleasure— when our competence has been tested in an atmosphere of excitement. Added to the adult sense of pride is a pleasant feeling of uniqueness and social distinction. Success, especially in an exciting venture, triggers joy. The very concept of skills is immutably locked to matters of shame and pride. Clumsiness is about shame, grace is about pride. A massive withdrawal of interest is called apathy. Without interest, life is dull.

Size and Strength
Bigness is about power. To a child, becoming bigger means becoming less helpless and dependent— about becoming more powerful. In the world of shame and pride, size comes to be an important metaphor. Size matters.

Dexterity and Skill
Any time we take on something new we court pride and risk shame in the service of comprehension. “Confusion” in the face of learning is an episode of the shame effect. Learning stimulates the affect of interest-excitement. The moment we feel daunted by what we are learning, the shame affect is triggered.

Sense of Self
The very notion of personal identity is intimately involved with whatever we measure along the shame/pride axis. For the adult, shame is almost always defined as the pain associated with some perceived deficiency in the self, and pride the pleasure associated with an elevation in the sense of self. Shame produces a sense of an incompetent self, that there is part of the self that is then created by shame. These powers of shame force us to consider who we were before the shame hit and what we have returned to as shame subsides. Shame is the affect most likely to produce attention to the nature of the self. Shame produces painful self-awareness at every stage of human development. Shame augments our memory of failure and protects us from whatever ganger might occur, when, in a moment of need, we might try something well beyond our capacity.

Sex
Too many notes to record!

[Corwin Slack · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an explication and application of affect theory to the experience of shame. The book, by Donald Nathanson is based on the research and writing of American psychologist Sylvan Tomkins who first formulated affect theory in the mid twentieth century. It represents another school of psychoanalytic thought that diverges from Freudian drive theory or Skinner's behavioral theory. Its major contribution is an explanatory system of emotion (particularly shame) that is lacking or inadequate in most other psychoanalytic theories.
Affect theory postulates nine affects present from birth that are bodily (particularly facial) responses to stimuli. The nine affects are described as 
Positive: interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy;
Neutral: surprise-startle; and,
Negative: fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell, disgust, and shame-humiliation.
The affects are automatic but can be simulated and triggered consciously. They occur in many combinations and sequences one at a time but frequently in quick succession. Awareness of affect creates feelings and over time the cumulative memories of these feelings are assembled in to emotions and scripts that shape future responses to the affects and their associated feelings. Our collection of scripts constitutes our personality. Affect theory provides the link between biology (affects) and emotions (biography).
The most pervasive affect is shame-humiliation which interacts with all the other affects. At this primal-level shame-humiliation is defined as any stimulus that results in a feeling of desire that was unattained. It presupposes interest-excitement or enjoyment-joy but it can be a follow-on to all the other affects and can trigger all of them.
Donaldson, in an attempt to make this theory accessible to interested lay readers, treats us to a folksy, anecdotal, frequently erudite and, too often, wandering and verbose recital of the theory and its application, most particularly the importance of shame. Your vocabulary may be extended sometimes gratuitously with words like talionic or nidus.
The book is by no means technical but affect theory is robust and dynamic so I didn't read a single page without doubting my grasp and understanding but remaining fascinated by the power of the theory and growing in confidence that I could integrate it into a worldview that is founded substantially on my faith in the dogmas and doctrines of Mormon Christianity.
The final chapter was disappointing. Entitled The Range of Shame, it is an overview of the consequences of shame in society at large. I found it platitudinous and superficial and quite removed from the thoughtfulness of the rest of the book.
It is a challenging read but if you are unsatisfied with the explanatory power of Freudianism or behaviorism or other theories of the mind and motivation you will find this interesting if not compelling.
Before reading this I read an essay Affect Theory, Shame and the Logic of Personality by Richard Ostrofsky and I took a break while reading this to read the essay A Primer of Affect Psychology by Vernon C. Kelly. Both were helpful.

[Stuart Bechman-Besamo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mind-blowing

This book opened my eyes to an entirely new understanding of attitudes and motivations behind one's emotions and personality. The dominant role of shame in our lives, how it comes about, and how it moulds each of us explains so much that I had previously not understood.

I will be re-reading this book, which is something i have almost never felt compelled to do with my other books. This is the book that I have been seeking for the past four decades!

[Randy Elrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful and insightful ideas. The book is poorly edited and at times confusing because of it—but the effort required is well worth it.

[Genna · Rating 2 out of 5]

You know the old adage about how, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail? That was how I felt about this book. I am not, to be clear, a psychiatrist, so I'm admittedly coming at this from a lay perspective, but I started to get suspicious that, as much as Nathanson criticized Freud (deservedly, I'd say) for putting everything down to sex, Nathanson himself seemed to be over-simplifying in order to find shame at the base of everything.

[John Musgrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit dated, but still a great read for the subject matter.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ouch.

[Laetitia Haddad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book tough to read and well, old. It does have some ideas though that could be interesting.

[Darrin allgood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wholly smokes, this is the deal....

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

valuable insights

[Cathy Hasty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book, foundational.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this book in high school or college and definitely remember liking it and thinking it was interesting. A rare non-fiction book I read for pleasure.