Shame, appearing early in the second year of life, is both a powerful inhibitory emotion and a mechanism of social control. Thus the positive face-to-face interactions that stimulated excitement and exhilaration during the first year come to include expressions of disapproval and anger. Shame is represented physiologically by a rapid transition from a positive to negative affective state and from sympathetic to parasympathetic dominance. This shift is triggered by the expectation of attunement to a positive state, only to receive negative emotions from the caretaker (Schore, 1994). While it
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