Humiliation

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Simply Jesus (2011)

  It’s a society of forgiven sinners repaying their unpayable debt of love by working for Jesus’s kingdom in every way they can, knowing themselves to be unworthy of the task. The moment any Christian, particularly any Christian leader, forgets that—the moment any of us imagine that we are automatically special or above the dangers and temptations that afflict ordinary mortals—that is the moment when we are in gravest danger. Peter’s disastrous, humiliating crash came an hour or two after he had declared that he would follow Jesus to prison and even to death. I suspect that part at least of the cause of the scandals that have afflicted some parts of the church is creeping triumphalism, which allows some people to think that because of their baptism, vocation, ordination, or whatever, they are immune to serious sin—or that, if it happens, it must be a “blip” rather than a telltale sign of a serious problem. Nor will it do to refer to Jesus’s love and forgiveness as an excuse for sweeping things under the carpet. That’s just cheap grace; real forgiveness involves real confrontation with what has gone wrong. Nobody reading John 21 could doubt that Peter’s problem had been addressed and dealt with. The kingdom message of forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation applies as much to those who are now implementing it as to those to whom they minister. This is a vital part of the way in which Jesus operates right now, today, as part of his kingdom project. But the third point is perhaps the most important, and it opens up a whole new area at which we hinted earlier on and to which we now return. The way in which Jesus exercises his sovereign lordship in the present time includes his strange, often secret, sovereignty over the nations and their rulers. What does this mean? How does the kingship of Jesus, at work in the wider world, relate to the specific vocation of the church to be Jesus’s agents in implementing his sovereign rule? Some, indeed, have been so overwhelmed by the failure, short-sightedness, and sin of the church that they have trumpeted God’s work in the wider world as though to put the church in its place. To listen to some theologians, you might think that God was wonderfully at work everywhere in the world except in the church. This position is always in danger of the trap toward which, in our earlier discussion, Chris seemed to be marching: hailing movements of thought and opinion, the rise and fall of empires, as places where “God was at work,” so that one simply had to “do it with him” to get on board with the forward movement of the divine purpose.

• From Wild (2012)

  “It’s twelve dollars for the night,” the man added in a gasping voice. “The thing is,” I said, “I don’t happen to have any cash on me. I’m on this big trip. I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail—the PCT?—and there’s all this snow up in the mountains—it’s a record year—and anyway, I got off the trail and I didn’t plan to be here because these women who gave me a ride accidentally dropped me off in the wrong place and it was—” “None of that changes the fact you have to pay, young lady,” the man bellowed with surprising power, his voice silencing me like a great horn from the fog. “If you can’t pay, you’ve got to pack up and leave,” said the woman. She wore a sweatshirt that had a pair of baby raccoons peeping coyly from a burrow in a tree on her chest. “There’s no one even here! It’s the middle of the night! What harm would it do if I simply—” “Them are the rules,” heaved the man. He turned away and got back into the truck, done with me. “We’re sorry, miss, but we’re the camp hosts and keeping everyone to the rules is what we’re here to do,” said the woman. Her face softened for a moment in apology before she pursed her lips and added, “We’d hate to have to call the police.” I lowered my eyes and addressed her raccoons. “I just—I can’t believe that I’m doing any harm. I mean, no one would even be using this site if I weren’t here,” I said quietly, trying to make one last appeal, woman to woman. “We’re not saying you have to leave,” she shouted, as if she were scolding a dog to hush up. “We’re saying you’ve got to pay.” “Well, I can’t.” “There’s a trail to the PCT that starts up just past the bathrooms,” the woman said, gesturing behind her. “Or you can walk on the side of the road, about a mile or so up. I think the road’s more direct than the trail. We’ll keep the lights on while you pack,” she said, and got back into the truck beside her husband, their faces now invisible to me behind the headlights. I turned to my tent, stunned. I’d yet to meet a stranger on my trip who’d been anything but kind. I scrambled inside, put on my headlamp with shaking hands, and shoved everything I’d unpacked back into my pack without the usual orderly care for what went where. I didn’t know what I should do. It was full dark by now, the half moon in the sky. The only thing scarier than the thought of hiking along an unknown trail in the dark was walking along an unknown road in the dark. I put on Monster and waved to the couple in the truck, unable to see whether they waved back.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  BAPTISMANDTHE LORD'SSUPPER 2O3 ternal organization of theChurch.Ithas always been an inner privilege, forwhich preparation had tobe made, and from which aman might be excluded ; consequently it was prized. In the European State Churches, people who have become wholly indifferent to church life, still attendcommunion once a year andwould regard it as a lossto be shutout from it. Inthe early Church, dis- cipline consisted largely in barring offenders fromcom- munion. The humiliationand sacrifices assumed by penitents in orderto get back into the full solidarity of theChurchshows that strong social feelings were at work here. Reconciliation among the members pre- ceded communion. Nonecouldshare in the Lord's Supper who were in a state of enmity with otherChris- tians,Thus people were compelled toface Christ'slaw of love and forgiveness, and pluck the bitterroot of pride and ill-will from their hearts. This,too, was a social value of the ceremony. The rubric of the Book ofCommon Prayer still empowers the minister to warn notorious offenders to stay away, and to dothe same " with those, betwixtwhomhe perceiveth malice and hatred to reign, not suffering them to be partakers of the Lord's Table, until he know them to bereconciled." Thisis expressed also in thebeautifulinvitation: " Ye whodo truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with yourneighbours, and intend to leadanew life, following thecommand- ments of God, and walking fromhenceforth in his holy ways : Draw near with faith, and takethis holy sacra- ment to your comfort, and make your humbleconfession to Almighty God, devoutlykneeling."

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  There was another pause; perhaps Florence shrugged. ‘I do think she must’ve been in prison, though,’ the man went on, ‘judging by the state of her poor hair...’ I felt slightly indignant at that; and indignation made me twitch. ‘Look out!’ said the man then. ‘She is waking up.’I opened my eyes again to see him stooping over me. He was a very gentle-featured man, with short-cut hair of a reddish-golden hue, and a full set of whiskers that made him look a little like the sailor on the Players’ packets. The thought made me long all at once for a cigarette, and I gave a dry little cough. The man squatted, and patted my shoulder. ‘Ho there, miss,’ he said. ‘Are you well, dear? Are you well at last? You are quite, you know, amongst friends.’ His voice and manner were so very kind that - still weak and slightly bewildered from my swoon - I felt the tears rising to my eyes, and raised a hand to my brow to press them back. When I took the hand away, there seemed blood upon it; I gave a cry, thinking I had set my nose off bleeding once again. But it was not blood. It was only that the rain had soaked into my cheap hat, and the dye had run all down my brows in great wet streaks of crimson.What a guy Diana had made of me! The thought made me weep at last in earnest, in terrible, shaming gulps. At that, the man produced a handkerchief, and patted me once again upon the arm. ‘I expect,’ he said, ‘that you would like a cup of something hot?’ I nodded, and he rose and moved away. In his place came Florence. She must have put her baby down somewhere, for now she had her arms folded stiffly across her chest.She asked me: ‘Are you feeling better?’ Her voice was not quite as kind as the man’s had been, and her gaze seemed rather sterner. I nodded to her, then with her help raised myself from the floor into an armchair near the fire. The baby, I saw, was lying on its back on another, clasping and unclasping its little hands. From a room next door - the kitchen, I guessed - came the chink of crockery and a tuneless whistle. I blew my nose, and wiped my head; then wept some more; then grew a little calmer.I looked again at Florence and said, ‘I am sorry, to have turned up here in such a state.’ She said nothing. ‘You will be wondering, I suppose, who I am...’ She gave a faint smile.‘We have been a little, yes.’‘I’m,’ I began - then stopped, and coughed, to mask my hesitation. What could I say to her?

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Like Moe, you may know firsthand the excruciation of teetering on the edge of speaking. It’s like standing at the end of a ten-meter diving platform, your heart pounding at the prospect of leaping in. Remaining silent invites frustration—“I knew that was the answer,” or, “Dammit, that was my idea,” but the thought of jumping into the abyss of conversation is paralyzing. But after his colleague’s comment, Moe decided it was actually worse to remain silent than to say something. Ongoing silence weighs a person down like a slowly accumulating pile of bricks in the lap. A few moments of silence can easily be shaken off, but hours of silence are nearly impossible to break, particularly without causing turned heads, exclamations of surprise, and crushingly offhand comments of, “Oh, I forgot you were there!” So Moe decided to try to speak sooner rather than later: “So I showed up to the next meeting with some notes jotted in my phone. I thought it would be easier if I wrote out what I wanted to say. But I couldn’t do it. The worst part is that the guy next to me took my phone and read my notes to everyone. I think he thought he was doing me a favor, but I wanted to die. What kind of man can’t read his own notes?” Once humiliated, twice shy. It took Moe a while to work up the courage to try again, but he did. Before the next meeting, he gamely typed out some more notes, but he still couldn’t manage to say anything. “I tried,” he said, “but my vision got blurry; I started to shake. It was horrible. Why does this keep happening to me? What the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I do what other people can do so easily?” From working in politics, Moe was used to having to try again. So he decided to push himself—to try one more time. “I had a dinner to go to—just friends—so I thought I’d try giving a toast,” he said. “I rehearsed it over and over in my head, but when I stood up I couldn’t get past the first sentence. I had even worked a joke into it, but once I got past the first line I couldn’t remember the rest of the joke, much less what else I wanted to say, so I just said, ‘Thanks for coming,’ and sat down. And I thought, ‘Oh my God, what an idiot.’”

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  I call this `the day my eyes opened."' At a conference a year or so later, Samuel Klagsbrun, psychiatrist and executive director of Four Winds Hospital, presented an extraordinary portrayal of his work with Hedda.10 He explained that through psychological manipulation and severe physical abuse, Hedda had been "demeaned and diminished to slave level. She became an automaton, a robot." Klagsbrun's speech at the conference was titled "Is Submission Ever Voluntary?" By the end, listeners concluded that in cases such as these, the answer is a resounding No. The following is a summary of Klagsbrun's presentation: Hedda endured years of harsh verbal abuse and punishment meant to teach her how to behave, but in the final two years, she was subjected to daily assaults and brutal beatings, sometimes with a 4x4 plank, until torture and fear became normal to her. Joel manipulated their adopted daughter into informing on her mother, which intensified Hedda's humiliation while pulling the young child into Joel's sadistic rituals. Soon he began to beat the girl as well, and he eventually murdered her. In the beginning of her therapeutic treatment, Hedda was almost mute and devoid of emotions.... One year later, she was able to shed tears at the loss of her daughter. She knew her common-law husband was to blame, but she still asserted that he loved her. When the therapeutic sessions began, she denied her pain while she held onto the meaningful parts of the relationship. But slowly, she began to talk about the cycle of abuse, which included punishments followed by rewards, followed by isolation, followed by more punishments, and so on. As Hedda recounted the inner workings of the relationship, she began to be able to identify Joel's manipulations and premeditated behaviors. In his role as her teacher, he became the omniscient figure who always soothed her after punishment and tended to her wounds. This led her to view him as a healer. By occasionally rekindling the flame of their courtship, he was still also her lover. The enforced isolation (she was not allowed to leave the house or see her family) prevented her from receiving any outside validation. He was the center of her universe from beginning to end. In his 2003 interview, Larry King asked Hedda, "Not all battered women are brainwashed and methodical prisoners of their battering, are they?" And she wisely replied, "They are not. But I think a lot of them are brainwashed in a way-in that even women who aren't physically beaten, because the guy keeps telling them `you're no good, you're this, you're that, you can't do anything right,' and [the women] start believing it after hearing it enough times, and that's a form of brainwashing too." The Cultic Nature of Abusive RelationshipsDespite this kind of news coverage, abusive relationships in which cult methods are used to dominate the victim are not widely acknowledged. As a result, women tend to get trapped in them.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Now she turned and addressed the group of goggling ladies. She said: ‘Nancy thinks it amusing, sometimes, to kick her little heels; and sometimes, of course, it is. But not tonight. Tonight, I’m afraid, it is only tiresome.’ She looked at me again, but spoke, still, as if to her guests. ‘She will go upstairs,’ she said levelly, ‘until she is sorry. Then she will apologise to the ladies she has upset. And then, I shall think of some little punishment for her.’ Her gaze flicked over the remains of my costume. ‘Something suitably Roman, perhaps.’‘Roman?’ I answered. ‘Well, you should know about that. How old are you today? You were there, weren’t you, at Hadrian’s palace?’It was a mild enough insult, after all that I had said. But as I said it, there came a titter from the crowd. It was only a small one; but if there was ever anyone who could not bear to be tittered at, that person was Diana. I think she would rather have been shot between the eyes. Now, hearing that stifled laugh, she grew even paler. She took a step towards me, and raised her hand; she did it so quickly, I had time only to catch the flash of something dark at the end of her arm - then there came what seemed to be a small explosion at my cheek.She had still held Dickie’s book, all this time; and now she had struck me with it.I gave a cry, and staggered. When I put a hand to my face, I found blood upon it - from my nose, but also from a gash beneath my eye, where the edge of the leather-bound spine had caught it. I reached for a shoulder or an arm, against which to steady myself; but now all the ladies shrank away from me, and I almost stumbled. I looked once at Diana. She also had reeled, after dealing me the blow; but Evelyn was beside her with her arm about her waist. She said nothing to me; and I, at last, was quite incapable of speech. I think I coughed, or snorted. There came a splatter of blood upon the Turkey rug, that made the ladies draw even further from me, and give little moues of surprise and disgust. Then I turned, and staggered from the room.At the door stood Maria’s whippet, Satin, and when he saw me he barked.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Like Jon, many such patients don’t have a coherent existence, and therefore in therapy it is harder for them to create a clear narrative of their early life. In a seminal 1929 paper titled “The Unwelcome Child and His Death-Instinct,” the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi described people who came into the world as what he called “unwelcome guests of the family.” Ferenczi made the direct link between being an unwelcome baby and having an unconscious wish to die. He portrayed those patients of his as pessimistic, skeptical, filled with mistrust of others, and having suicidal fantasies. He found that they shared a common history: they were all babies of unwanted pregnancies, whether this was known to them or kept as a family secret. Ferenczi describes them as people who die easily and willingly. Jon takes a deep breath. “I’m okay,” he says. “Isn’t it funny? The worst was confirmed for me, but instead of feeling bad, I’m feeling better. You know how you always used to say that I’m a baby without a story? So now I have one. Maybe it’s not a happy story, but it’s true, and it’s mine.” I know that Jon still has a lot to process. Many questions to ask, much to mourn, to be angry about, and to forgive . These days, when Jon walks into my office he no longer asks if I am expecting him. The mother, his mother, the one who didn’t expect him, is no longer hidden and so we can now talk about her instead of reliving his relationship with her. Jon loves his mother, but now he is free to feel the insult and humiliation of rejection and of never actually having had her. The freedom to think and to feel even the most disturbing thoughts and painful emotions brings with it the experience of being alive. It is the birthright—previously denied—that allows Jon finally to be able to choose life. 7 PERMISSION TO CRY A s a young woman I was familiar with the army unit that my patient Ben had served in; some of my friends had been in the same elite commando brigade within the Israel Defense Forces. Ben was a fighter in that unit around the same time I served in the Israeli army as a singer in the entertainment unit. In my New York City office now, thirty years later, I gather information about him and ask about his military service. He tells me the name of his unit and I write it down and nod. I remember the day my band was sent to perform on the base of that unit. Nothing about it felt unusual or dramatic, except that I was in love with the drummer of the band and was happy that it was too dangerous for us to drive back home that night, and that we had to stay and sleep there, in Khan Yunis, Gaza.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  The machine jammed, and neither Tess nor any of the other staff could get it to work. Because it was after hours, the repair service couldn't be called. Even though the jam was no fault of hers, Tess was viciously criticized for "screwing up the job and preventing the leader from getting her new political line out to the members." That night, Tess was ordered by her leadership to appear at each local meeting of the cult, seven groups in all, with ten to fifteen comrades in each, in order to be publicly criticized by her peers. It was a draining and devastating experience for her. Now out of the group, and five years later, Tess is working at a law firm. While copying a document at the office copier, she suddenly felt a rush of shivers, her whole body flushed. In her mind, the company's copy room transformed into the cult's staff headquarters and Tess heard voices screaming at her. She stood at the machine paralyzed and in a trance state until a co-worker nudged her several times to ask her what was wrong. Tess burst into tears and ran out. Interactions with other people can also set off cult memories, sometimes unpleasant ones. Certain exchanges with friends, family members, colleagues, or bosses-or even someone's appearance or voice-may remind you of people or relationships in your cult. Triggering episodes can also occur if you have to maintain contact with some cult members (such as an ex-spouse or business associate) after you leave. Many different people or things in your life may trigger unwanted memories and emotions. Sensory triggers are probably the most common. Typical ones are: • Sights: special colors, flags, pictures of the leader, facial expressions, hand signals, group symbols, items used in group activities or rituals, certain buildings or locations • Physical sensations: hunger, fatigue, touches, handshakes, a kiss or caress, massage • Sounds: songs, certain music, slogans, clicks in the throat, special laughter, mantras, certain prayers, ululations reminiscent of speaking in tongues, curses, cue words and phrases, a certain rhythm or tone of voice, yelling • Smells: incense, perfume or cologne of the leader, certain food aromas, room odors, body odors • Tastes: certain foods or liquids, herbs or spices The process of becoming immune to triggers begins when you become aware of what triggers you. If you have any souvenirs or reminders of your cult's rituals or observances, put them away, out of sight. We don't recommend throw ing them away or destroying them, as you may want to refer to them later for some purpose, such as writing, study, research, or even donation to a library or resource organization. Avoid using them or keeping them in plain view just to test yourself.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  I had to do what he told me to, or he would yell and hit me in front of my friends. He locked me in while they were waiting in my room, wondering where had I disappeared to. It was humiliating.” Guy tells me about his childhood for the first time. His face is serious but he doesn’t express any emotions. I listen in silence. As he is speaking, I slowly notice that I start feeling pain in my body, and I sense an urge to change my position in the chair. I watch Guy turning uncomfortably in his chair and wonder what it is that we each feel in our bodies. “No wonder you needed to run away,” I say, remembering his interpretation of the blurred figures in my painting. “Your wish to run away was an act of hope.” Guy nods. “As a child, there was nothing I could do. I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to,” he says quietly. He explains that his mother was afraid of his father and couldn’t protect him and his brother . “My only hope was that one of us would disappear; either he would die or one day I would leave everything and escape, find a new home in another country. I would flee to a place where no one could find me,” he continues. “Like my mother, who always seemed so frightened, I learned to hide, to be silent, to make sure I was invisible.” Guy looks straight into my eyes. “I don’t know how to explain this to you,” he says. “My father is a sick man. You have to understand, it’s not his fault. That’s how he grew up, that’s how his parents grew up, his grandparents. He didn’t know anything else and he believed that this was the right way to raise his children. I’m not angry at him.” I hear Guy’s conflict. He is trapped between identifying with his father and wanting to be different from him. He doesn’t want to be angry because anger will make him too much like his father. But he empathizes with that father in court more than with the man’s daughter. Anna Freud defined “identification with the aggressor” as a defense mechanism that children use in the face of abuse. The victims, instead of only feeling threatened and helpless, try to make sense of and control reality by adopting the abuser’s beliefs and behaviors. By impersonating the aggressor, the child turns passivity into action and instead of being just the victim, she becomes the one who hurts others and/or herself.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  She then tied a noose in a stout rope, threw it over my head, and let it slip down as far as the hips. She drew it tight, and bound me to a pillar. A curious tremor seized me at that moment. “I have a feeling as if I were about to be executed,” I said with a low voice. “Well, you shall have a thorough punishment to-day,” exclaimed Wanda. “But put on your fur-jacket, please,” I said. “I shall gladly give you that pleasure,” she replied. She got her kazabaika, and put it on. Then she stood in front of me with her arms folded across her chest, and looked at me out of half-closed eyes. “Do you remember the story of the ox of Dionysius?” she asked. “I remember it only vaguely, what about it?” “A courtier invented a new implement of torture for the Tyrant of Syracuse. It was an iron ox in which those condemned to death were to be shut, and then pushed into a mighty furnace. “As soon as the iron ox began to get hot, and the condemned person began to cry out in his torment, his wails sounded like the bellowing of an ox. “Dionysius nodded graciously to the inventor, and to put his invention to an immediate test had him shut up in the iron ox. “It is a very instructive story. “It was you who innoculated me with selfishness, pride, and cruelty, and you shall be their first victim. I now literally enjoy having a human being that thinks and feels and desires like myself in my power; I love to abuse a man who is stronger in intelligence and body than I, especially a man who loves me. “Do you still love me?” “Even to madness,” I exclaimed. “So much the better,” she replied, “and so much the more will you enjoy what I am about to do with you now.” “What is the matter with you?” I asked. “I don’t understand you, there is a gleam of real cruelty in your eyes to-day, and you are strangely beautiful—completely Venus in Furs.” Without replying Wanda placed her arms around my neck and kissed me. I was again seized by my fanatical passion. “Where is the whip?” I asked. Wanda laughed, and withdrew a couple of steps. “You really insist upon being punished?” she exclaimed, proudly tossing back her head. “Yes.” Suddenly Wanda’s face was completely transformed. It was as if disfigured by rage; for a moment she seemed even ugly to me. “Very well, then you whip him!” she called loudly. At the same instant the beautiful Greek stuck his head of black curls through the curtains of her four-poster bed. At first I was speechless, petrified. There was a horribly comic element in the situation. I would have laughed aloud, had not my position been at the same time so terribly cruel and humiliating.

• From Less (2017)

  Less begins to imagine (as the mayor doodles on in Italian) that he has been mistranslated, or—what is the word?— supertranslated, his novel given to an unacknowledged genius of a poet (Giuliana Monti is her name) who worked his mediocre English into breathtaking Italian. His book was ignored in America, barely reviewed, without a single interview request by a journalist (his publicist said, “Autumn is a bad time”), but here in Italy he understands he is taken seriously. In autumn, no less. Just this morning, he was shown the articles in la Repubblica, Corriere della Sera, local papers, and Catholic papers, with photographs of him in his blue suit, gazing upward at the camera with the same worried unsophisticated sapphire gaze he showed to Robert on that beach. But it should be a photograph of Giuliana Monti. She has written this book. Rewritten, upwritten, outwritten Less himself. For he has known genius. He has been awakened by genius in the middle of the night, by the sound of genius pacing the halls; he has made genius his coffee, and his breakfast, and his ham sandwich and his tea; he has been naked with genius, coaxed genius from panic, brought genius’s pants from the tailor and ironed his shirts for a reading. He has felt every inch of genius’s skin; he has known genius’s smell and felt genius’s touch. Fosters Lancett, a knight’s move behind him, for whom an hour-long talk on Ezra Pound is a simple matter—he is a genius. Alessandro, in his Oil Can Harry mustache, the elegant Luisa, the perverted Finn, the tattooed Riccardo: possible geniuses. How has it come to this? What god has enough free time to arrange this very special humiliation, to fly a minor novelist across the world so that he can feel, in some seventh sense, the minusculitude of his own worth? Decided by high school students, in fact. Is there a bucket of blood hanging high in the auditorium rafters, waiting to be dropped on his bright-blue suit? Will this become a dungeon at last? It is a mistake, or a setup, or both. But there is no escaping it now.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Now she turned and addressed the group of goggling ladies. She said: ‘Nancy thinks it amusing, sometimes, to kick her little heels; and sometimes, of course, it is. But not tonight. Tonight, I’m afraid, it is only tiresome.’ She looked at me again, but spoke, still, as if to her guests. ‘She will go upstairs,’ she said levelly, ‘until she is sorry. Then she will apologise to the ladies she has upset. And then, I shall think of some little punishment for her.’ Her gaze flicked over the remains of my costume. ‘Something suitably Roman, perhaps.’‘Roman?’ I answered. ‘Well, you should know about that. How old are you today? You were there, weren’t you, at Hadrian’s palace?’It was a mild enough insult, after all that I had said. But as I said it, there came a titter from the crowd. It was only a small one; but if there was ever anyone who could not bear to be tittered at, that person was Diana. I think she would rather have been shot between the eyes. Now, hearing that stifled laugh, she grew even paler. She took a step towards me, and raised her hand; she did it so quickly, I had time only to catch the flash of something dark at the end of her arm - then there came what seemed to be a small explosion at my cheek.She had still held Dickie’s book, all this time; and now she had struck me with it.I gave a cry, and staggered. When I put a hand to my face, I found blood upon it - from my nose, but also from a gash beneath my eye, where the edge of the leather-bound spine had caught it. I reached for a shoulder or an arm, against which to steady myself; but now all the ladies shrank away from me, and I almost stumbled. I looked once at Diana. She also had reeled, after dealing me the blow; but Evelyn was beside her with her arm about her waist. She said nothing to me; and I, at last, was quite incapable of speech. I think I coughed, or snorted. There came a splatter of blood upon the Turkey rug, that made the ladies draw even further from me, and give little moues of surprise and disgust. Then I turned, and staggered from the room.At the door stood Maria’s whippet, Satin, and when he saw me he barked.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The king gave her a quick kiss, then went to his own chamber and sank into bed relieved. He was tired from his journey and wrote his sister that he was glad he would not be expected to make love to Catherine that night. Trying to remain optimistic about his bride, the next day Charles told his chancellor, “Her face is not so exact as to be called a beauty, though her eyes are excellent good, and not anything in her face that in the least degree can shock one.”7 The day of the royal wedding, in protest Lady Castlemaine ordered her underclothes to be washed and hung out to dry on the palace grounds for all the world to see. The diarist Samuel Pepys, walking in the Privy Garden, “saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine’s, laced with rich lace at the bottoms that I ever saw, and did me good to look upon them.”8 Catherine had immediately fallen deeply in love with her tall, darkly swashbuckling husband, and Charles insisted a bit too often that he, too, was delighted. A sexual athlete, Charles likely found in Catherine a tightly furled bud, a bud that would never unfurl further. We can picture her, shy and chaste, a dutiful wife in bed, while Lady Castlemaine reveled with him in sexual abandon. Beneath the smile Charles wore when beginning his married life simmered a secret which he knew would devastate his bride. To pacify Lady Castlemaine’s wrath at his marriage, he had promised her the honor of becoming a lady of the queen’s bedchamber. Not only would she live at court, but as a lady of the bedchamber Lady Castlemaine would be concerned with the most intimate details of the queen’s life, including sexual relations with her husband, bodily functions, menstruation, and pregnancy. The position offered great status, as it was one of the few that could officially be given to a woman directly. It would cement Lady Castlemaine’s standing in an envious, backbiting court. Two months after the king’s wedding, the royal mistress gave birth to their second child, and Charles glumly decided it was time to fulfill his promise to her, even at the risk of alienating his bride. He invited Lady Castlemaine to Hampton Court and, taking her by the arm, walked up to the queen to present her. Admiring the beautiful visitor, Catherine stood up smiling and extended her hand as her husband introduced Lady Castlemaine. Upon hearing the name, Catherine’s reaction was gut-wrenching. She blanched and sank down visibly upset. Tears fell fast and heavy down her cheeks. Suddenly, blood dripped from her nose and she passed out on the floor. She was carried into an adjoining room, but Charles did not follow. He interpreted his wife’s illness as defiance; wrath clouded his dark face as he took his mistress back to her coach.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The poor woman suddenly became the chief object of interest at the ball. Hundreds of pairs of aristocratic lips whispered about her behind fans. Hundreds of pairs of hawklike eyes fastened on her. Maria was humiliated by all the attention, but her husband preened himself like a vain peacock. Finally she had done something to make him proud. The following day Marshal Duroc, chief of the imperial household, called on Maria with a bouquet of flowers and a letter fastened with the imperial green seals. It said, “I saw no one but you, I admired only you; I want no one but you; I beg you to reply promptly to calm my ardor and my impatience. Napoleon.”6 Stunned, Maria told the marshal there would be no reply. That evening came another bouquet and another letter. This one read, “Did I displease you, Madame? Your interest in me seems to have waned, while mine is growing every moment…. You have destroyed my peace…. I beg you to give a little joy tomy poor heart, so ready to adore you. Is it so difficult to send a reply? You owe me two. Napole.”7 Again, Maria declined to send a reply. Soon after, a third missive arrived in which Napoleon threw his heart at her feet and cleverly added, “Oh come, come…all your desires will be granted. Your country will be so much dearer to me if you take pity on my poor heart.”8 The last was a cunning ruse, for it spoke to patriotic Maria in a language she heard. Poland. She could use her influence with the Great Man to save Poland. What Maria did not know was Napoleon’s opinion of women meddling in politics. “States are lost as soon as women interfere in public affairs,” he said. “…If a woman were to advocate some political move, that would seem to me sufficient reason for taking the opposite course.”9 In a message to his army he wrote, “How unhappy are those princes who, in political matters, allow themselves to be guided by women.”10 Soon everyone in Warsaw knew of Napoleon’s infatuation with Maria. Many guests dropped by her house to offer advice. Society ladies offered unwanted congratulations on Maria’s conquest, even congratulated her husband. Her oldest brother, Benedict, who had already served ten years with the French army, regarded it as her patriotic duty to have sex with the emperor. The count felt honored that Napoleon wanted to make love to his wife and prodded her to visit him as he requested.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  When he reproached the queen for her insolent behavior, she was intransigent rather than contrite. Charles retaliated by sending home Catherine’s retinue of Portuguese ladies and monks—many of them her childhood friends. Charles further isolated his wife by ignoring her completely. He caroused through the night with friends as the queen lay sleepless in her cold bed. Charles’s faithful lord chancellor, Edward Clarendon, begged him to give up Lady Castlemaine and restore his marriage. This would also quiet any dissent among his people, some of whom had already lost respect for the king’s personal life. But Charles indignantly defended Lady Castlemaine. “I have undone this lady,” he said, “and ruined her reputation, which was fair and untainted till her friendship with me, and I am obliged in conscience and honor to repair her to the utmost of my power.”9 Charles was uneasy about becoming “ridiculous to the world” if he did not win this very public debate with his new wife.10 He forced poor Lord Clarendon, who despised Lady Castlemaine, to persuade the queen to accept her as a lady of the bedchamber. To this request the queen replied, “The King’s insistence upon that particular can proceed from no other ground but his hatred of my person. He wishes to expose me to the contempt of the world. And the world will think me deserving of such an affront if I submitted to it. Before I do that I will put myself on board any little vessel and so be transported to Lisbon.”11 Charles stubbornly presented his wife with a list of ladies to be approved for bedchamber positions. At the top of the list was the name of Barbara, Lady Castlemaine. Equally stubborn, Catherine crossed out the name and again threatened to get on the next boat home. The king moved his mistress to luxurious apartments in Hampton Court, above his own, their suites connected by a secret stair. He sat next to Lady Castlemaine at meals, laughing and talking gaily with her, while the queen sat in mute dejection. No one wanted to be seen talking to the queen, as it might awaken the prejudice of the king and Lady Castlemaine. As soon as Catherine retired, courtiers made insulting jokes about her.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  He is conveying that I have taught him something, but also that he is not dependent on me, that he can do it on his own. The ability to master and control his life is crucial. It’s the only way he feels safe, and he needs to make sure that he is in control in our sessions as well. I’m again aware that it’s Guy, not me, who ends each session. When he feels overwhelmed, rather than turning to me for comfort, he withdraws. “I needed to be alone for a moment, to calm down,” he says. I know that there is something about jury duty that awakens his childhood trauma. “As a child, I spent hours in the bathroom. My father used to lock my brother and me in there every time he got angry, which was all the time. He would lock us in there for hours, and I learned to sit on the floor and wait. And I thought to myself, I hate this man. I wish he were dead.” Guy doesn’t look at me. “You know,” he says, “sometimes, when my friends came over and we made noise, I would suddenly hear him calling my name. I knew he was angry and that he was going to lock me in the bathroom again. I had no choice. I had to do what he told me to, or he would yell and hit me in front of my friends. He locked me in while they were waiting in my room, wondering where had I disappeared to. It was humiliating.” Guy tells me about his childhood for the first time. His face is serious but he doesn’t express any emotions. I listen in silence. As he is speaking, I slowly notice that I start feeling pain in my body, and I sense an urge to change my position in the chair. I watch Guy turning uncomfortably in his chair and wonder what it is that we each feel in our bodies. “No wonder you needed to run away,” I say, remembering his interpretation of the blurred figures in my painting. “Your wish to run away was an act of hope.” Guy nods. “As a child, there was nothing I could do. I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to,” he says quietly. He explains that his mother was afraid of his father and couldn’t protect him and his brother.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Madame de Montespan used these opportunities of dining with the king to slip love potions into his wine and onto his meat—disgusting concoctions of dead baby’s blood, bones, and intestines, along with parts of toads and bats. Suddenly Louis—either because of her sparkling conversation or her potions—fell in love with Madame de Montespan. With no remorse toward the queen or Louise, she triumphantly affixed the seal of betrayal upon the altar of friendship. After the birth of Louise’s fourth royal bastard in 1667, she never became pregnant again, while Madame de Montespan remained almost constantly in this interesting condition. In order to protect his new mistress from the legal maneuvers of her insanely jealous husband, Louis arranged for Louise de La Vallière and Madame de Montespan to share a joint apartment in the palace. A court joke became, “His Majesty has gone to join the ladies.”9 No one knew for sure which one he visited. Or did he visit both at once? Malicious tongues wagged. It gradually became crystal clear at court that Madame de Montespan was now the real mistress, and poor Louise just a decoy. Madame de Montespan demanded, with the king’s apparent acquiescence, that Louise assist her with her toilette. Only Louise, she said, could tame an unruly curl, clasp a necklace, adjust some lace to make her exquisite for the king. Though the former favorite must have been humiliated performing these duties for her imperious successor, she never complained. Kind, gentle, as assiduous as any lady’s maid, Louise would send the radiant Madame de Montespan bouncing on her way to meet her royal lover. The king’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Charlotte, safely removed from romantic intrigues, looked on eagerly from the sidelines as if watching a horse race. “La Montespan was whiter complexioned than La Vallière,” she wrote, “she had a beautiful mouth and fine teeth, but her expression was always insolent. One had only to look at her to see that she was scheming something. She had beautiful blonde hair and lovely hands and arms, which La Vallière did not have, but at least La Vallière was clean in her person, whereas La Montespan was filthy.”10 Elizabeth Charlotte noted that “Madame de Montespan mocked Madame de La Vallière in public, treated her exceedingly ill, and influenced the King to do likewise…. The King had to go through La Vallière’s rooms to reach La Montespan’s. He had a fine spaniel called Malice; at Madame de Montespan’s instigation he tossed that little dog into La Vallière’s lap as he passed her, saying, ‘Here, now, I’m leaving you in good company…. So don’t mope.’ ”11 And he left her alone with Malice. Louise wrote in her autobiography, “I stay on in this world of flesh in order to expiate my sins upon the same scaffold upon which I offended Thee. Out of my sin shall come my penance…. Those whom I adored now act as my executioners.”12

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  After the birth of Prince Harry in 1984 and three years of marital fidelity, Charles, frazzled by Diana’s violent temper tantrums, ran back into the arms of Camilla. Diana—convulsed at the realization that her husband had never loved her—sought comfort in affairs of her own, but never found a long-lasting relationship. Her venom-spitting hatred of Camilla as the individual responsible for all her sufferings never faded with time. Perhaps Diana, looking in the mirror at her glamorous beauty, knew it couldn’t be Camilla’s looks that had seduced Charles away from the marriage bed; worse than that, it was something that Diana lacked inside that Camilla had, and the bitter knowledge rubbed salt in her aching wound. But Charles would endure far worse than his wife’s tantrums. On January 13, 1993, the British press reported a cell phone conversation between Charles and Camilla. The sexually explicit conversation made clear that Camilla had been his mistress for some time. The “Camillagate” tape was played over and over on television and radio around the world. The public was outraged; public opinion of the royal family dropped to an all-time low. It didn’t help that Charles had expressed the desire to be reincarnated as Camilla’s Tampax. Foreign press called him the Tampax Prince, and British women began calling tampons “Charlies.” Humiliated and reviled, Charles seriously thought of relinquishing his position as heir to the throne and leaving the country. The prince’s blackest moment came when Camilla’s elderly father, Major Shand, demanded a meeting with his daughter’s seducer, whom he harangued for ninety minutes. “My daughter’s life has been ruined, her children are the subject of ridicule and contempt,” the major roared. “You have brought disgrace on my whole family.”16 It was a far cry from the father of Madame de Montespan, who, upon hearing that his daughter had become Louis XIV’s mistress in 1667, cried, “Praise be to God! Here is a stroke of great good fortune for our house!”17 What had happened in the intervening three centuries? A great deal. For one thing, the financial rewards of a royal mistress today are severely limited, nor does she have an accepted position at court. Before the French Revolution, Diana would have found herself and Camilla, having been created a duchess, stuffed into a carriage with Charles between them. Camilla would have officially welcomed foreign ambassadors, while an unruly Diana may well have been locked in a tower. Camilla would have far outstripped Diana in jewels and gowns, in the number of rooms she possessed in their joint palace, in her power and influence.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  He looks straight into my eyes. “My parents never wanted a fifth child. Four was enough for them. They ended up with four after all. But not with the four they wanted.” We are both silent. I’m stunned but not surprised. It is often easy to recognize those people who were not fully invited into this world. They seem like visitors, outsiders who might leave at any minute. Like Jon, many such patients don’t have a coherent existence, and therefore in therapy it is harder for them to create a clear narrative of their early life. In a seminal 1929 paper titled “The Unwelcome Child and His Death-Instinct,” the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi described people who came into the world as what he called “unwelcome guests of the family.” Ferenczi made the direct link between being an unwelcome baby and having an unconscious wish to die. He portrayed those patients of his as pessimistic, skeptical, filled with mistrust of others, and having suicidal fantasies. He found that they shared a common history: they were all babies of unwanted pregnancies, whether this was known to them or kept as a family secret. Ferenczi describes them as people who die easily and willingly. Jon takes a deep breath. “I’m okay,” he says. “Isn’t it funny? The worst was confirmed for me, but instead of feeling bad, I’m feeling better. You know how you always used to say that I’m a baby without a story? So now I have one. Maybe it’s not a happy story, but it’s true, and it’s mine.” I know that Jon still has a lot to process. Many questions to ask, much to mourn, to be angry about, and to forgive. These days, when Jon walks into my office he no longer asks if I am expecting him. The mother, his mother, the one who didn’t expect him, is no longer hidden and so we can now talk about her instead of reliving his relationship with her. Jon loves his mother, but now he is free to feel the insult and humiliation of rejection and of never actually having had her. The freedom to think and to feel even the most disturbing thoughts and painful emotions brings with it the experience of being alive. It is the birthright —previously denied—that allows Jon finally to be able to choose life. 7 PERMISSION TO CRY AS A YOUNG woman I was familiar with the army unit that my patient Ben had served in; some of my friends had been in the same elite commando brigade within the Israel Defense Forces. Ben was a fighter in that unit around the same time I served in the Israeli army as a singer in the entertainment unit.