When a parent traumatizes a child, he is in a state of shamelessness. If the injurer felt appropriate shame, he would contain his harmful behavior. The shame a parent does not consciously feel will be absorbed, along with other unconscious feelings, by the child. Pia Mellody has called these transmitted states carried shame and carried feeling. They are the means by which the wound, the legacy of pain, is passed from father to son, mother to son, across generations. Carried feeling and carried shame are the psychological seeds of depression.
