Shame and Violence

I was pleased to read in the January 19 issue that the International Psychoanalytic Association’s Committee on the United Nations is taking steps to provide practical assistance to the worldwide victims of violence and trauma stemming from war, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

The article quotes Henk-Jan Dalewijk, M.D., president of the IPA, as saying that he doesn’t know why two groups of people living in the same area can easily go at each other’s throats within a few hours of having old hatreds resurrected. He suggests that this phenomenon should be studied. He also says that the IPA wants to draw more attention to hatred and is trying to organize a conference on the subject.

Many clinicians are familiar with the growing body of literature showing the relationship between shame and violence. Historically shame has been largely overlooked and unacknowledged by psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. In the 1960s Helen Block Lewis reviewed tape-recorded psychotherapy sessions and found that clients’ expressions of shame typically went unacknowledged by their therapists. I completed an excellent psychiatry residency in 1999, which included my own year-long study of psychoanalytic psychotherapy at an institute in southern California. The affect of shame was rarely a topic presented to me by my teachers or mentors in my course materials or during supervision.

I would like to refer readers to the important work of James Gilligan, Thomas J. Scheff, and Suzanne M. Retzinger on shame and violence. Other significant theorists whose work can help us expand our understanding of shame include Francis Broucek, Susan B. Miller, Andrew P. Morrison, and Leon Wurmser.

I feel that it is vitally important that the relationship of shame to violence be recognized as an essential topic for exploration at any conference on the subject of hatred. I hope that some of our leading shame theorists will be invited to participate in the IPA’s conference.