6.5 The repression of shame
Turner (2006) argues that Scheff
(1988, 1994, 1997b) merges the thoughts of Cooley (1902/2006) and Lewis (1971)
and comes up with a new theory of emotions. Scheff’s theory is characterized by
its combination of psychoanalytic tradition and symbolic interactionism. Scheff
argues that shame is a repressed emotion; we have a tendency not to show our
shame so that shame is almost invisible in western culture. Kaufman (1980/1992)
supports this point of view when he says:
Our culture is a shame-based culture, but here, shame is hidden. There
is shame about shame and so it remains under strict taboo. Other cultures, for
example, Eastern and Mediterranean, are
organized more openly around shame and its counterpart, honor. What we need in
our culture is to honor shame, and thereby redeem it (Kaufman 1980/1992: 32-33).
Scheff and Retzinger (1991) write
that our society, which represses shame, is characterized by meetings between
people where shame is not acknowledged. Many people deny feelings of shame
throughout their lives. This repression of shame in our society leads to a
diffuse hostility which can be used and/or misused by political leaders, like
Hitler during the Nazi era. Scheff (1995a) characterizes shame as the master
emotion. Likewise, Lewis coded shame rather than guilt as the most common
emotion. Turner (2006) calls repression the master defence mechanism.
The more negative the emotion and the more they are associated with a failure
to verify self, the more probable is repression…Most important, the more emotions
are repressed, the more they will be transmuted into new kinds of emotional
response (Turner
2006: 286).
In my interviews, the informant Knut
speaks of getting caught while playing sex games with friends as a child and
how this caused a terrible feeling of shame. He was also sexually abused in his
youth by an aunt, something he says he enjoyed at the time even though he knew
that it was forbidden. He speaks of his feelings of sexual pleasure, abuse,
childhood sexuality, and how all of this had to be repressed and had a negative
effect on his life as an adult.
Knut: I’m sitting here and thinking about how it
was before, and there are some
things I don’t agree with, some things I don’t think about. I believe
that umm sexuality in childhood is a taboo. Nobody ever talked about it. And
now when people talk about how one should speak to children about sexuality
today, well then I think of my own childhood, where in my environment, brothers
and sisters, friends, also played sexual games. But it was very taboo. Nobody
ever talked about it. We never told anyone about what we did. If we got caught
red-handed, so to speak, it meant reprisals and shame. For me, that’s my
absolute greatest shame…It was taboo. It was a shame. I hid myself behind a
towel and didn’t participate in everything. When I had sex with my
transgressor, well that was also a real shame. I did something that was
strictly forbidden. It worked though. But it was inside of me, behind the
closed door. That’s something I’ve had in my body ever since. So as a grown-up
now, I still feel the shame today, but I call it a guilty feeling for not
allowing myself to live the life I want. I know that sex is not something shameful.
The rational part of me knows that…but I don’t dare touch those feeling or live
them out. So I kept it a secret and in doing so I created my first repression
as an adult.
Kaare T. Pettersen
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