Shame

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 Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  While Philip seeks affirmation on the outside, Jackie’s self-affirmation rests solely on him and his response to her. She highlights a common way women order their sexuality, in that she makes him, and his desire for her, the centerpiece of her sexual identity. In the early days, when Philip was all over her, she blossomed. There was no issue. She felt open, daring, sexy, and wanted. Today, a good student of her own childhood, she avoids putting herself out there for fear of rejection. When she does get up the courage to make advances, Philip feels pressure to be responsive and to take care of her. “Whenever Jackie comes on to me, I’m paralyzed,” he confides. “Which heightens Jackie’s insecurity,” I add. Arguably, male desire runs the gamut between two extremes: those who plead for their partner to come on to them, thereby confirming their desirability; and those who balk when their mate initiates, fearful that their passivity isn’t adequately masculine. Forever unsure of their power as Mom’s little ward, the come-on averse walk a fine line between boyhood and manhood. Predictably, Philip takes Jackie’s overtures as needy demands rather than tempting invitations. Philip feels guilty because he can’t be more erotically involved with his wife. When I ask him for a sexual image that includes her, he conjures up a picture of the two of them kissing romantically in the sunset. He adds that he has difficulty, now, imagining Jackie in a passionate, erotic way. He tells her openly, “I just can’t see you in my mind as a sexual woman, and I feel bad about it, but it’s the truth.” Philip yearns for ardor with Jackie, but he believes that the tug-of-war within himself won’t allow it. He dreads the rough edge of his desire within the bonds of holy matrimony, and is embarrassed by his need for objectified sex. To his thinking, love is no place for these wanton inclinations. “You Don’t Do That with Your Wife” Many of my patients are afraid to express their intense sexual excitement with the one they love and respect. Philip is not alone in hiding his lack of desire behind the decency alibi. You may recognize some of these comments: “I can’t imagine him saying what I want to hear. He’d wonder what happened to his wife.” “I don’t even want to think about, let alone talk about, what I was into before we met.” “I can’t do that with my wife.” Domestic eroticism is wrapped in a veil of appropriateness. When Philip tells me that Jackie would never go for this stuff, I ask him, “And the stuff is what exactly?” I am prepared for a long list of hard-core kink, and I am surprised when he reveals the basic menu of his sexual imagination. “I’m not one for subtleties. I like the blatant stuff.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  “What do you mean? Hard to talk about or hard to do?” she answered my question with a question. “Hard to own.” I replied. “It’s easier for me to have sex than to talk about it.” “And with Nico?” “With Nico it’s easier not to have sex than to talk about it.” “Tell me.” “Sex is hard. I don’t want it a lot of the time, which is strange because I’ve always thought of myself as a sexual person. I read about women with low desire and I don’t identify with them, even though it sounds like me lately.” “Was it easier with other men?” “Oh, God, no—but in the past I never had to talk about it. It was never something I had to work on. Either it came naturally and we clicked, or the relationship wasn’t going to last anyway, so why bother? Now I’m with a man I love. I think he’s beautiful, he treats me like a queen, and I don’t want to have sex with him. He gets frustrated when I reject him day after day, and I don’t like the fact that I’m so indifferent to sex. I’d like to think it happened when I got pregnant with our daughter, but to be honest I was kind of relieved to have an excuse. ‘I’m pregnant’ turned into ‘I just had a baby’ turned into ‘I’m nursing’ turned into ‘I need my sleep.’ Truthfully, as you know, it’s been a problem from the beginning.” “Shall we take the plunge?” “I’m tired of avoiding it, of waiting for something to change. I can’t swap Nico for a new model. I make it work with him or I shrivel up.” Maria grew up in a working-class family, the daughter of a policeman and a substitute teacher. Religion was central, and she attended all-girl Catholic schools through high school. “We never talked about sex at home. My grandma had ten kids and never knew women could have orgasms. Can you imagine? I haven’t seen my mother naked since I was three. I’ve never seen my father naked. I’m the youngest of five, and each of us rebelled in our own way—though my brothers never had to face the injunctions reserved for the girls.” Maria sheds light on the pervasive all-or-nothing, feast or famine sexual culture in America. “I was seventeen when I lost my virginity; and for Catholic girls, once you’ve slept with one person you might as well sleep with the whole town—and, frankly, most of us did.” she tells me. “I know it sounds archaic, but it really was like that where I grew up. Staten Island is like a nature preserve for endangered Catholics. The message was clear: sex is a sin unless you’re married.” “Right. Like the old adage, ‘Sex is dirty; save it for someone you love,’” I say.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I was embarrassed by her. I didn’t like thinking I was born of her. When I was young—maybe eight, nine—I felt suffocated when my mother got too close to me. I remember telling my analyst that my mother ‘sucked up all the oxygen in the room.’ That phrase became a slogan, a major motif, of my analysis: my analyst referred to it again and again. I used to look at my mother and think, I have to love her as my mother, but if she were a stranger I’d dislike everything about her.” “So,” said Dr. Werner, “now we know something important about your countertransference. Although you invite your patient to come closer, you unintentionally give her a simultaneous ‘don’t get too close’ message. She’ll intrude too far, suck up all the oxygen. And without a doubt she’s perceiving this second message and accommodating you. Again, let me repeat, we can’t hide these feelings from patients. I’ll say it once again: we can’t hide these feelings from patients. It’s the lesson for today. I cannot emphasize the point too strongly. No experienced therapist can possibly doubt the existence of unconscious empathy.” “Lot of ambivalence too,” said Barbara, “in your sexual feelings toward her. I’m struck by your response to her breasts—both longing and repulsion. You like those blouse buttons popping, but they bring up unpleasant memories of Mother.” “Yes,” added Tom, another of Ernest’s close friends, “and then you get self-conscious, start to question whether you may have unwittingly been staring at her breasts. Happens to me often.” “And your sexual attraction to her coupled with a wish to get away? What do you make of it?” asked Barbara. “Some dark primitive vagina dentate fantasy in me, no doubt,” replied Ernest. “But still there’s something in this patient that particularly ignites that fear.” Just before drifting off to sleep, Ernest wondered again whether he should stop seeing Myrna. Maybe she needs a female therapist, he thought. Maybe my negative feelings are too deep, too entrenched. But when he had raised that question in the seminar group, everyone, including Dr. Werner, said, “No, stay the course.” Myrna’s major problems, they felt, were with men and could best be addressed with a male therapist. Too bad, Ernest thought: he really wanted out. Yet, he wondered, what about that strange session today? Although as obnoxious as ever in most ways, including her reference to his fee, Myrna had at least acknowledged his presence in the room. She had challenged him, asked him whether he liked her, taken him to task about the sarcastic T-shirt comment. Exhausting—but at least something different, something real, was happening. On her drive to the next session, Myrna listened again to Dr. Lash’s hateful dictation and then to the tape of the last session.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  A moment later, it’s reversing direction and slowly backing up through the swinging doors and out again into the Glen Echo sunlight . “Momma, Momma!” I call, both arms waving. “How’d I do?” She hears me. I see her plowing her way through the crowd, flinging people right and left. “Oyvin, what a question,” she says, unlocking the guard rail and pulling me out of the cart. I look at her. She seems about fifty or sixty, is strong and stocky, and is effortlessly carrying a bulging, embroidered, wooden-handled shopping bag. She is homely but does not know it and walks with her chin raised as though she were beautiful. I notice the familiar folds of flesh hanging from her upper arm and the stockings bunched and tied just above her knees. She gives me a big wet kiss. I feign affection. “You did good. Who could ask for more? All those books. You made me proud. If only your father were here to see.” “What do you mean I did good, Momma? How do you know? You can’t read what I’ve written—your vision, I mean.” “I know what I know. Look at these books.” She opens the shopping bag, removes two of my books, and begins to fondle them tenderly. “Big books. Beautiful books.” I feel unnerved by her handling my books. “It’s what’s in the books that’s important. Maybe they just contain nonsense.” “Oyvin, don’t talk narishkeit —foolishness. Beautiful books!” “Carrying around that bag of books all the time, Momma, even in Glen Echo? You’re making a shrine of them. Don’t you think—” “Everybody knows about you. The whole world. My hairdresser tells me her daughter studies your books in school.” “Your hairdresser? That’s it, the final test?” “Everybody. I tell everybody. Why shouldn’t I?” “Momma, don’t you have anything better to do? What about spending your Sunday with your friends: Hannah, Gertie, Luba, Dorothy, Sam, your brother Simon? What are you doing here at Glen Echo anyway?” “You ashamed I should be here? You were always ashamed. Where else should I be?” “I only mean we’re both all grown up. I’m over sixty years old. Maybe it’s time we should each have our own private dreams. ” “Always ashamed of me.” “I didn’t say that. You don’t listen to me.” “Always thought I was stupid. Always thought I didn’t understand anything.” “I didn’t say that. I always said you didn’t know everything. It’s just the way you—the way you—” “The way I what? Go ahead. You started—say it—I know what you’re going to say.” “What am I going to say?” “No, Oyvin, you say it. If I tell you, you’ll change it.” “It’s the way you don’t listen to me. The way you talk about things you don’t know anything about.” “Listen to you? I don’t listen to you?

• From Cleanness (2020)

  I was surprised by this, which was a risk for him as for me, for him more than for me, since he was surrounded by neighbors any of whom might open their doors. He lived on a middle floor of one of the huge apartment blocks that stand everywhere in Sofia like fortresses or keeps, ugly and imperious, though this is a false impression they give, they’re so poorly built as already to be crumbling away. I obeyed him, I took off my shoes and then my coat and began to undo the long line of buttons on my shirt, my hands fumbling in the dark and in my excitement, too. I pulled down my pants, awkward in my haste, wanting him and also wanting to end my exposure, though it was part of my excitement. It was for this excitement I had come, something to draw me out of the grief I still felt for R.; he had left months before, long enough for grief to have passed but it hadn’t passed, and I found myself resorting again to habits I thought I had escaped, though that’s the wrong word for it, escaped, given the eagerness with which I returned to them. I made a bundle of my clothes, balling my pants and shirt and underthings in my coat, and I held this in one hand and my shoes in the other and stood, still not entering, my skin bristling both from cold and from that profounder exposure I felt. Ne ne, kuchko, he said, using for the first time the word that would be his only name for me. It’s our word, bitch, an exact equivalent, but he spoke it almost tenderly, as if in fondness; no, he said, fold your clothes nicely before you come in, be a good girl. At this last something rose up in me, as at a step too far in humiliation. Most men would feel this, I think, especially men like me, who are taught that it’s the worst thing, to seem like a woman; when I was a boy my father responded to any sign of it with a viciousness out of all proportion, as though he might keep me from what I would become, a faggot, as he said, which remained his word for me when for all his efforts I found myself as I am. Something rose up in me at what he said, this man who still barred my way, and then it lay back down, and I folded my clothes neatly and stepped inside, closing the door behind me.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Not bad, she thought—she liked the way she had held her own in the last session. She enjoyed making the sucker work for his money. How delicious that he was unsettled by her barbs about his fee: I’ll make sure, she resolved, to zap him with a money-jab each session. The long drive zipped by. “Yesterday at work,” Myrna began the hour, “I was sitting in the lavatory and overheard some girls at the sink talking about me.” “Oh? What did you hear?” Ernest was always intrigued by the drama of overhearing oneself being discussed. “Things I didn’t like. That I’m obsessed with earning money. That I talk about nothing else, have no other interests. That I’m boring and hard to be with.” “Oh, terrible! How painful that must have been.” “Yeah, I felt betrayed by someone I thought cared for me. Kicked in the stomach.” “Betrayed? What sort of relationship had you had with them?” “Well, they’d pretended to like me, to care about me, be my friends.” “How about others in your office? How do they feel about you?” “If you don’t mind, Dr. Lash, I’ve been thinking about what you’ve been saying about staying here in this office. You know, focusing on our relationship. I’d like to try that.” “Absolutely.” A look of astonishment crossed Ernest’s face. He couldn’t believe his ears. “So let me ask you,” said Myrna, crossing her legs with a loud swish of her stockings, “do you feel that way about me?” “What way?” stalled Ernest. “What I just said. Do you find me narrow? Boring? Hard to be with?” “I never feel just one way about you, or anyone. It varies.” “Well, let’s say in general,” said Myrna, who was clearly not about to be deterred. Ernest felt his mouth go dry. He tried to swallow surreptitiously. “Well, let me put it this way. When you avoid me, when you talk in a repetitious way about certain things—for example, your stock options or your ongoing conflict with your CEO at work—that’s when I feel less in touch with you. Less engaged is the better term.” “Less engaged? Isn’t that shrink code for boring?” “Uh, no—I mean, boring in a social situation doesn’t really pertain to the therapy situation. The patient—I mean you—isn’t here to entertain me. I’m focusing on how my patient interacts with me and others so that—” “But surely,” she interrupted, “you find some patients boring.” “Well,” said Ernest, pulling out Kleenex from the box on his side table and squeezing it between his palms, “I’m examining my feelings all the time, and if I’m—uh—less engaged—” “Bored, you mean?” “Well, in a way. If I feel—uh—distant from a patient, I don’t think of that as a judgment. I think of that feeling as data, and I try to find out what’s happening between us.” Ernest’s attempt to dry his palms had not escaped Myrna.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  It was a place to walk, and to do other things; there were always bottles and cans and cigarettes, people hung out there, I guess, there was nowhere else to go. Guys went there too, R. said; I didn’t know it then, we were only there in the daytime, but at night it was a cruising place, and when I got older it was where I went too, even though I hated it. It was always the same three or four married assholes, but whatever, it was something. We’d go walking there, just talking to each other, and then one day he stopped and pointed at something on the ground. It was a condom somebody had dropped by one of the walls, stretched out and dry, it was disgusting. He pointed at it with his shoe and asked me if I knew what it was for. And that’s how he started it, R. said, he put his arm around me and led me behind one of the walls where no one would see us. I didn’t want it but I let him do it, I guess, I mean I didn’t fight him and I never said anything, I let it happen. R. looked at me then, finally turning away from the glass, he looked at me where I sat immobile as he spoke, my fork still in my hand. I never said anything, he repeated, I’ve never said anything until now. Oh, I said, the single syllable, not a word but a sound, oh, and I set my fork down beside the plate I had hardly touched, that was past touching now. Skupi , I said, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but at this his anger snapped back, a fierce anger as he said See, almost snarling it, you see me differently now, I don’t want you to be sorry for me, I don’t want to be some hurt little boy, I don’t want it. On his face there was an expression I had never seen before, on his face or any other, it was a desperate, frightened face, though frightened of what I wasn’t sure. Okay, I said, leaning back, I was frightened too, okay. He turned away from me again and took a deep breath. The point isn’t to make you feel sorry, he said more calmly, looking at the night and the wind that filled it, the point is that I’m not just scared, that’s not the only reason I don’t want to tell people what I am.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  On the ride to Mladost I felt myself sinking into drunkenness, or felt drunkenness rise around me; even as I responded to the driver’s small talk I closed my eyes and could feel my head roll to the side before I yanked it up again. I waved to the guards in their booth at the American College as the cab pulled away, and then I was beyond the glare of the floodlamps, on the dark road that led to the school. For years I had walked this path every day, morning and afternoon, with the weight of the day before me or with the relief of casting it off, and even now that I lived on campus I walked it often, to the store or the gym, to cabs waiting at the gates. I walked slowly now, feeling how easily I could stumble, taking a step or two to one side before I brought myself back to line. So this is what that is, I thought, remembering the drunks I had seen weaving in this way, imagining what I must look like to the guards in their booth, how maybe they had turned to watch me, people often watch drunks stumbling around, it amuses them, I don’t know why. In me it has often aroused a darker feeling, pity or sometimes disdain; it wasn’t funny at all, I would think, there was nothing innocent in it, it was a kind of willful abnegation of judgment, of responsibility. What have I done, I thought suddenly, what have I done. I turned onto the path between buildings, on the right the asphalt of the basketball court, where boys played soccer in the mornings, and on the left the row of academic buildings, in the most stately of which I had taught all my students, classes coming and going, Z. and N. coming twice, still boys in tenth grade and, two years later, something closer to men. It’s a kind of performance, of course, all teaching is pretending; I had stood before them as a kind of poem of myself, an ideal image, when for a few hours every day I had been able to hide or mostly hide the disorder of my life, and if I hadn’t succeeded entirely with Z. I had mostly succeeded, if he had seen glimpses of what I was he had never until tonight seen me fully. I had leered at him, I had touched him, I had been a caricature of myself, I thought, but that isn’t true; I had been myself without impediment, maybe that’s the way to say it. I followed the path through the wooded part of campus, the trees that separate the main buildings from the faculty houses.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In fact, it often makes matters worse. After all, knowing why one reacts to a person, place or thing is not, in itself, helpful. Indeed, it is potentially harmful. For example, breaking out in a cold sweat when your lover touches you is distressing enough. Yet, having this same reaction, over and over, even after understanding why it occurs, can be further demoralizing. Comprehending that what happened was merely triggered by an earlier event, while repeatedly having to endure its uninvited intrusion, can add crippling feelings of failure, shame and helplessness. On the other hand, “simple” awareness, along with a fortified tolerance for bewildering and frightening physical body sensations, can seemingly, as if by magic, prevent or dissolve entrenched emotional and physical symptoms. A deeply focused awareness is what allowed me to survive my accident without being emotionally scarred. It is also what allowed the young samurai to find peace in the midst of his emotional hell. However, let it be said that in actuality, it may not be so easy to experience the potent simplicity of awareness—especially in the beginning. This trial is described by one young man learning to contact the essence of awareness: Deepening awareness is a challenge. It isn’t a challenge because my parents didn’t love me enough. It’s a challenge because it’s a challenge. I don’t need to take it personally. I’ve spent years excavating my past, sorting and cataloguing the wreckage. But who I really am, the essential truth of my being, can’t be grasped by the mind, no matter how acute my insights. I’ve confused introspection with awareness, but they’re not the same. Becoming the world’s leading expert on myself has nothing to do with being fully present. 137 Beginning meditators are often painfully surprised at the tumultuous activity of their minds. Thoughts, sensations, feelings, fears and desires chaotically pursue each other like dogs obsessively chasing their tails. However, as they gain some steadiness in awareness, practiced meditators start taming their restless minds. They begin having extended periods when they are not sucked into the endless swirling vortex of their frenzied thoughts and emotions. In place of this turbulent state a sublime inquisitiveness about moment-to-moment experience begins to develop. They start to investigate the “how” of each arising moment, as well as their reactivity to various thoughts, sensations, feelings and situations. They settle into the mysterium tremendum of “no-self.” In the words of the meditator, “One must be present, and it is not always useful to begin the past all over in order to live in the present.” One of the greatest barriers to being fully present is the habit of accepting what one does deliberately (i.e., “on purpose”) “as the last word” instead of only one mode, rather than including what occurs spontaneously. For growth and development, any live organism and its supporting environment must be in intimate contact.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  We pulled into the Welches’ drive and sat there a moment, silent, before we got out. I had worked on several farms during my summer vacations, picking and haying. These farms were in the upper valley near Marblemount. close but not too close to the river, with good drainage and rich soil. The owners prospered. They had up-to-date equipment, and kept their houses and barns painted. Their yards were grassy, trimmed with flower beds and decorated with birdbaths and wagon wheels and big ceramic squirrels. The Welch farmyard was all mud, a wallow without hogs. Nothing grew there. And nothing moved, no cats, no chickens, no mutts running out to challenge us. The house was small, ash gray and decrepit. Moss grew thickly on the shingle roof. There was no porch, but a tarpaulin had been stretched from one wall to give shelter to a washtub with a mangle and a clothesline that drooped with dull flannel shirts of different sizes, and dismal sheets. Smoke rose from a stovepipe. It was surprising to look up and see that the sky was blue and fresh. Chuck knocked. A woman opened the door and stood in the doorway, a little girl behind her. Both of them were red-haired and thin. The little girl smiled at Chuck. Chuck smiled sadly back at her. “I was surprised,” the woman said. “I have to say I was surprised.” “I’m sorry,” Chuck said. He made the abashed face he’d been wearing in the kitchen that morning. “I wouldn’t have never thought it of you,” she said. She looked at me, then turned back to Chuck. “You say you’re sorry. Well, so am I. So is Mr. Welch. It’s just not what we ever expected.” Mrs. Welch told us where to find her husband. As we slogged through the mud, the fuel cans swinging at our sides, Chuck said, “Shit, shit, shit. . .” Mr. Welch was sitting on a pile of wood, watching Jack and one of the other Welch boys. They were a little ways off, taking turns digging with a post-holer. Mr. Welch was bareheaded. His wispy brown hair floated in the breeze. He had on a new pair of overalls, dark blue and stiff-looking and coated with mud around the ankles. We came up to him and set the cans down. He looked at them, then looked back at his sons. They kept an eye on us as they worked, not with any menace, but just to see what was going to happen. I could hear the post-holer slurping up the mud with the same sound our shoes had made the night before. Chuck waved at them and they both nodded. We looked at them for a time. Then Chuck went to Mr. Welch’s side and began to talk in a low voice, telling him how sorry he was for what we had done. He offered no explanations and did not mention that we had been drinking.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Virtually anything can work its way into one’s erotic imagination. Memories, smells, sounds, words, specific times of the day, textures—all can be considered fantasy as long as they set in motion the arc of desire. In her book Men in Love, Nancy Friday writes: A fantasy is a map of desire, mastery, escape, and obscuration; the navigational path we invent to steer ourselves between the reefs and shoals of anxiety, guilt, and inhibition. It is a work of consciousness, but in reaction to unconscious pressures. What is fascinating is not only how bizarre fantasies are, but how comprehensible; each one gives us a coherent and consistent picture of personality—the unconscious—of the person who invented it, even though he may think it the random whim of the moment. Silence, Please! The symbolic paradoxes and the irrationality of our erotic mindscape provide the most fascinating and revealing glimpse into our depths. Fantasies express truths about ourselves that are hard to get at otherwise. They reveal us at our most bare, and in their own mysterious way they convey our deepest wishes. Yet when it comes to talking about our internal musings, most of us are remarkably tight-lipped, even with our partners (perhaps especially with our partners). In an age where intimacy is organized around disclosing uncomfortable personal truths, erotic silence holds steady as the norm. Though we may be comfortable talking about what we do, few of us are keen to reveal what we’re thinking while we do it. At the most basic level, our reluctance stems from simple embarrassment. Most of us were taught at a very young age to keep our thoughts to ourselves and our hands off our bodies. Some of us were handed down a stricter message that turned our innocent curiosity into lasting shame. Schooled in silence, the inheritors of an incontrovertible distrust of sex, it is no wonder we’re filled with discomfort at the prospect of conveying our innermost thoughts. By opening ourselves to another, we risk being laughed at and judged. My patient Zoya summed it up well: “The way I grew up, there was no liking sex, let alone talking about it. People who have sex because they like it are all sluts and perverts who go blind and grow hair on their palms. You bet I kept my mouth shut.” If we’re not talking, no one else is, either. Many of us experience our sexual fantasies in isolation (despite the public ubiquitousness of sex). Since we don’t know what others are thinking and doing, we have nothing to compare ourselves with, no way to gauge whether or not we’re normal. We’re afraid of being different and therefore deviant.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: Excommunication is pronounced by way of sentence, which no man can pronounce on himself, for the reason that in the tribunal of justice the same man cannot be both judge and accused. On the other hand an indulgence is not given under the form of a sentence, but by way of dispensation, which a man can apply to himself. OF THE SOLEMN RITE OF PENANCE (THREE ARTICLES)We must now consider the solemn rite of Penance: under which head there are three points of inquiry: (1) Whether a penance can be published or solemnized? (2) Whether a solemn penance can be repeated? (3) Whether public penance should be imposed on women? Whether a penance should be published or solemnized?Objection 1: It would seem that a penance should not be published or solemnized. Because it is not lawful for a priest, even through fear, to divulge anyone’s sin, however notorious it may be. Now a sin is published by a solemn penance. Therefore a penance should not be solemnized. Objection 2: Further, the judgment should follow the nature of the tribunal. Now penance is a judgment pronounced in a secret tribunal. Therefore it should not be published or solemnized. Objection 3: Further, “Every deficiency is made good by penance” as Ambrose [*Cf. Hypognost. iii, among the spurious works ascribed to St. Augustine] states. Now solemnization has a contrary effect, since it involves the penitent in many deficiencies: for a layman cannot be promoted to the ranks of the clergy nor can a cleric be promoted to higher orders, after doing solemn penance. Therefore Penance should not be solemnized. On the contrary, Penance is a sacrament. Now some kind of solemnity is observed in every sacrament. Therefore there should be some solemnity in Penance. Further, the medicine should suit the disease. Now a sin is sometimes public, and by its example draws many to sin. Therefore the penance which is its medicine should also be public and solemn so as to give edification to many. I answer that, Some penances should be public and solemn for four reasons. First, so that a public sin may have a public remedy; secondly, because he who has committed a very grave crime deserves the greatest confusion even in this life; thirdly, in order that it may deter others; fourthly, that he may be an example of repentance, lest those should despair, who have committed grievous sins. Reply to Objection 1: The priest does not divulge the confession by imposing such a penance, though people may suspect the penitent of having committed some great sin. For a man is not certainly taken to be guilty, because he is punished, since sometimes one does penance for another: thus we read in the Lives of the Fathers of a certain man who, in order to incite his companion to do penance, did penance together with him. And if the sin be public, the penitent, by fulfilling his penance, shows that he has been to confession.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: If mental consent is lacking in one of the parties, on neither side is there marriage, since marriage consists in a mutual joining together, as stated above ([4942]Q[44], A[1]). However one may believe that in all probability there is no fraud unless there be evident signs thereof; because we must presume good of everyone, unless there be proof of the contrary. Consequently the party in whom there is no fraud is excused from sin on account of ignorance. Reply to Objection 3: In such a case the Church compels him to hold to his first wife, because the Church judges according to outward appearances; nor is she deceived in justice or right, although she is deceived in the facts of the case. Yet such a man ought to bear the excommunication rather than return to his first wife; or else he should go far away into another country. Whether consent given secretly in words of the present makes a marriage?Objection 1: It would seem that consent given secretly in words of the present does not make a marriage. For a thing that is in one person’s power is not transferred to the power of another without the consent of the person in whose power it was. Now the maid is in her father’s power. Therefore she cannot by marriage be transferred to a husband’s power without her father’s consent. Wherefore if consent be given secretly, even though it should be expressed in words of the present, there will be no marriage. Objection 2: Further, in penance, just as in matrimony, our act is as it were essential to the sacrament. But the sacrament of penance is not made complete except by means of the ministers of the Church, who are the dispensers of the sacraments. Therefore neither can marriage be perfected without the priest’s blessing. Objection 3: Further, the Church does not forbid baptism to be given secretly, since one may baptize either privately or publicly. But the Church does forbid the celebration of clandestine marriages (cap. Cum inhibitio, De clandest. despons.). Therefore they cannot be done secretly. Objection 4: Further, marriage cannot be contracted by those who are related in the second degree, because the Church has forbidden it. But the Church has also forbidden clandestine marriages. Therefore they cannot be valid marriages. On the contrary, Given the cause the effect follows. Now the sufficient cause of matrimony is consent expressed in words of the present. Therefore whether this be done in public or in private the result is a marriage. Further, wherever there is the due matter and the due form of a sacrament there is the sacrament. Now in a secret marriage there is the due matter, since there are persons who are able lawfully to contract—and the due form, since there are the words of the present expressive of consent. Therefore there is a true marriage.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  By rote, Adam went on and on with the litany he had told the psychiatrist. There was not a trace of feeling in his narrative: “That all happened so long ago,” he added with a small tired sigh. I listened, finding myself quite uncomfortable at hearing such horror described without affect. In a strange way, though, I was relieved that he had no feeling; that way I wouldn’t have to feel either. Intellectually, I distanced myself from feeling and from Adam. I was able to do this by falling back on a clinical analysis, wondering what mechanism he had used to wall himself off from his horrific experiences and how he had kept himself from winding up wandering in the streets, like he had done as an orphan, or in the back ward of some mental institution. As a way to try to initiate a little contact, I questioned Adam about his work, his family and friends—any topic where I thought there might be an entry point to even a tiny trace of positive feeling. Nothing came of this. I found myself, strangely, asking him to describe the last few hours of his day. Puzzled, he told me of missing his flight and frantically renting a car to drive the two hundred miles from Curitiba to São Paulo to meet with me. At the rental lot near the airport he recalled seeing children flying kites that they had made from things found at the garbage dump. h I caught the first flicker on his otherwise expressionless face. But then, just as quickly, his face became flat again, and his body slumped forward in resignation. Not wanting him to collapse, I asked him to stand up with his knees slightly bent. Standing requires the activation and coordination of the proprioceptive and kinesthetic systems. This had the effect of keeping Adam’s awareness online by engaging the arousal branch of his nervous system. This intervention is the opposite of allowing a client to collapse, activating the shutdown response and thus perpetuating the mortifying feelings of shame and defeat. While he was standing erect with relaxed knees, I then directed Adam to “look inside” and find some place within his body where he could “find the picture of the children playing with their improvised kite.” i At first, he reported feeling more anxious (due to sympathetic hyperarousal), but with encouragement, Adam was able to locate a small circle of warmth in his belly. I asked him to “just get to know that sensation for a little while.” He abruptly opened his eyes, surprising himself with his own words: “This could be dangerous.” “Yes,” I agreed, “it could be; that’s why it’s important to learn about feeling, just a little bit at a time. Your body has been frozen for a long time; it will take some time to thaw,” I add.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Using fine bristles so our brush strokes wouldn’t show, we painted the bench, the pedestal, the fluted columns that rose from the pedestal to the keyboard. We painted the carved scrollwork. We painted the elaborate inlaid picture above the keyboard, a picture of a girl with braided yellow hair leaning out of her gabled window to listen to a redbird on a branch. We painted the lustrous cabinet. We even painted the foot pedals. Finally, because the antique yellow of the ivory looked wrong to Dwight against the new white, we very carefully painted the keys, all except the black ones, of course. I was standing on the road with two other boys, my news bag still heavy with papers, when I saw him coming toward us with his little dog Pepper. The three of us started making cracks about him. His name was Arthur Gayle and he was the uncoolest boy in the sixth grade, maybe even the whole camp. Arthur was a sissy. His mother was said to have turned him into a sissy by dressing him in girls’ clothes when he was little. He walked like a girl, ran like a girl, and threw like a girl. Arthur was my father’s name, so that seemed okay to me, but the name Gayle implicated him further in sissyhood. He was clever. He had an arch, subtle voice that he used to good effect as an instrument of his cleverness. I’d come away smarting from all my exchanges with him. Arthur was testy with me. He seemed to want something. At times I caught him looking at me expectantly, as if I were holding out on him. And I was. All my life I have recognized almost at a glance those who were meant to be my friends, and they have recognized me. Arthur was one of these. I liked him. I liked his acid wit and the wild stories he told and his apparent indifference to what other people thought of him. But I had withheld my friendship, because I was afraid of what it would cost me. As Arthur came toward us he set his face in a careless smirk. He must have known we were talking about him. Instead of walking past, he turned to me and said, “Didn’t your momma teach you to wash your hands after you go pee?” My hands weren’t all that yellow anymore, in fact they were nearly back to normal. I’d finished shucking the nuts weeks before. It was springtime. The earth was spongy with melted snow, and on the warmest days, if you listened for it, you could hear a faint steady sibilance of evaporation, almost like a light rain. The trees were hazy with new growth. Bears had begun to appear on the glistening granite faces of the mountainsides above us, taking the sun and soaking up heat from the rock; at lunchtime people came out onto their steps and watched them with upturned, benevolent faces.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The Shame, Blame, Immobility Spiral It should be no surprise, given the nature of fear-induced immobility, that a majority of rape victims predictably describe feeling paralyzed (sometimes also suffocated) and unable to move. Being held down and terrorized by someone much larger, stronger and heavier is virtually guaranteed to induce long-lasting immobility and, thus, trauma. Rape not only forces one to keep still, it induces an inner immobility because of the terror (fear-potentiated immobility). In one study, 88% of the victims of childhood sexual assault and 75% of the victims of adult sexual assault reported moderate to high levels of paralysis during the assault. 35 In addition, because of the high levels of dissociation, it is likely that many victims do not remember feeling paralyzed or deny the paralysis because they feel so guilty for not having “fought back.” Similarly, soldiers under fire can rarely flee or even physically fight. They must frequently stay pinned close to the ground (resisting both active fight and flight urges), while “calmly” trying to steady, aim and fire their guns. I interviewed a soldier who was threatened with a court martial for “cowardice under fire.” He was an embedded translator with a special-forces assault team in Iraq—although the only foreign languages he knew were Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian; he did not know Farsi or any Arabic language! He had not been trained for combat duty, and when his crack Marine unit was ambushed, he did not fire back. While interviewing this broken, devastated, humiliated and terrified soldier, I came to see that his “refusal” to fire back was, in fact, involuntary paralysis—a normal reaction to the highly abnormal situation of seeing the blood, death and dismemberment of his comrades. Unlike the Marines, he had had no training to override his fear. e His instinctual response to overwhelming threat precluded action. 36 This story speaks to modern cultures that tend to judge immobilization and dissociation in the face of overwhelming threat as a weakness tantamount to cowardice. Beneath this castigating judgment lies a pervasive fear of feeling trapped and helpless. This fear of fear and helplessness, and of feeling trapped, can come to dominate a person’s life in the form of persistent and debilitating shame. Together, shame and trauma form a particularly virulent and interlocked combination.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  For Stephanie, love and desire are inseparable. She needs to feel intimate before she can allow the vulnerability of sex; otherwise, she feels objectified. “Sometimes it feels like he just wants a release. It has nothing to do with me,” she says. “It’s a total turn-off.” “Stephanie needs you to take the lead, but you can’t just buy her a ticket; you have to get her interested in the trip,” I tell Warren. “You play an important role as the keeper of the flame. Right now, all she feels is pressure. She experiences your come-ons as abrupt and intrusive. She thinks all you want is sex. Prove to her it’s not.” Looking for Stephanie It was harder for me to reach Stephanie, for she and I could not easily separate ourselves from the ideological pressures that lurked beneath the surface of our conversation. Validating her husband’s needs could easily be construed as denying hers. How to invite a woman to reconnect with her body and her sexuality, separately from her children, when she’s completely uninterested in either, or when she feels undeserving or too maxed out? How to avoid the pitfall of swinging back and forth between her children’s needs and her husband’s needs, leaving her own needs perennially unattended? I did not want to impose a bias about sex that would add more pressure to the mix. What I said to her was this, “You’ll never hear me say that you should force yourself. Nothing is more deflating erotically than sex on demand. But I do believe that sex matters: for you, for your marriage, and for your kids. I am puzzled by your willingness to forgo such an important part of yourself. How did it come to be that, on the extensive list of things your children need, parents who have sex isn’t one of them?” Many women struggle to integrate sexuality and motherhood. Ours is a culture that equates maternal devotion with selflessness: self-sacrifice, self- abnegation, self-denial. Stephanie has had years of putting the children first and forgetting herself altogether. She has relinquished her freedom and her independence—both cornerstones of desire—and has forsaken herself as a person in her own right. Reconnecting with her erotic self, separate from her maternal self, is crucial. Together we probe the elusiveness of her sexual agency. We explore her sexual history: how sexuality was expressed in her family while she was growing up, and what her earliest experiences were like.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  If we feel insecure and unattractive, in our fantasies we are irresistible. If we anticipate a withholding woman, in fantasy she’s insatiable. If we fear our own aggression, in our internal reveries we can feel powerful without worrying that we might hurt another. If we don’t dare ask, in our erotic imaginings the other knows our needs even before we do. If we feel we shouldn’t have sex, in our private theater we can surrender to a lustful other without having to bear the responsibility—we did what he wanted, it wasn’t us. Fantasy expresses the problem and provides the solution. It is a fervid space, where our inhibiting fear is transformed into brazenness. What a relief to find that our shame is now curiosity, our timidity is now assertiveness, and our helplessness is now sovereignty. Fantasy does not, however, always take the form of elaborate, scripted scenarios. Many people think that if they don’t fantasize with carefully orchestrated plots and well-drawn characters, then they’re not fantasizing at all. This is particularly true of women, who seem to have a harder time owning their sexual thoughts in general. My patient Claudia once described to me, in great detail, how she would like her husband to approach her. She envisioned a slow, gradually unfolding dance of seduction throughout the day, with tantalizing conversations, light kisses on the nape, gentle touches, warm smiles, and sidelong glances. “I want him to touch my arm without touching my breast. I want him to tease me, to move in a bit sexually and then pull back, to make me want. I want to ask him to touch my breast,” she explains. “And if he did these things?” I ask. “We would have an entirely different sexual relationship,” she answers. Not twenty minutes later, when I ask her about her fantasy life, she assures me, “I don’t fantasize. Jim does, but I don’t. He’s all into threesomes.” I am stunned. I say, “Are you kidding? Your entire description of foreplay and anticipation is fantasy. It’s certainly not reality, is it?” To my thinking, sexual fantasy includes any mental activity that generates desire and intensifies enthusiasm. These thoughts need not be graphic, or even well-defined. They’re often inarticulate, more feelings than images, more sensuous than sexual. Virtually anything can work its way into one’s erotic imagination. Memories, smells, sounds, words, specific times of the day, textures—all can be considered fantasy as long as they set in motion the arc of desire. In her book Men in Love, Nancy Friday writes:

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Awareness and Introspection Though frequently used interchangeably, awareness and introspection are two very different creatures. Stated simply: awareness is the spontaneous, and creatively neutral, experiencing of whatever arises in the present moment—whether sensation, feeling, perception, thought or action . In contrast, introspection is a directing of our attention in a deliberate, evaluating, controlling and, not infrequently, judgmental way . Introspection, while often valuable (and the essence of many talk therapies) can in itself become interfering, taking us far away from the here and now. The unexamined life, according to Thoreau, may not be worth living. However, introspective examination can become pathological, contributing to increased rumination, inhibition, self-consciousness and excessive self-criticism. Awareness might be likened to seeing a glowing ember emanating the light of its own internal combustion. Introspection, on the other hand, is like viewing an object illuminated by an external light source, such as a flashlight. With awareness one directly experiences one’s life energy as it pulsates and glows. In introspection, one sees only a reflection of the contents of one’s life. Confusing thought and awareness, of equating them, is at the root of so much unnecessary human suffering. 136 Insight, while important, has rarely cured a neurosis or healed a trauma. In fact, it often makes matters worse. After all, knowing why one reacts to a person, place or thing is not, in itself , helpful. Indeed, it is potentially harmful. For example, breaking out in a cold sweat when your lover touches you is distressing enough. Yet, having this same reaction, over and over, even after understanding why it occurs, can be further demoralizing. Comprehending that what happened was merely triggered by an earlier event, while repeatedly having to endure its uninvited intrusion, can add crippling feelings of failure, shame and helplessness. On the other hand, “simple” awareness, along with a fortified tolerance for bewildering and frightening physical body sensations, can seemingly, as if by magic, prevent or dissolve entrenched emotional and physical symptoms. A deeply focused awareness is what allowed me to survive my accident without being emotionally scarred. It is also what allowed the young samurai to find peace in the midst of his emotional hell. However, let it be said that in actuality, it may not be so easy to experience the potent simplicity of awareness—especially in the beginning. This trial is described by one young man learning to contact the essence of awareness: Deepening awareness is a challenge. It isn’t a challenge because my parents didn’t love me enough. It’s a challenge because it’s a challenge. I don’t need to take it personally. I’ve spent years excavating my past, sorting and cataloguing the wreckage. But who I really am, the essential truth of my being, can’t be grasped by the mind, no matter how acute my insights.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) The second denial was not outside the door, but after he had returned to the fire; for the second maid did not see him after he had gone out, but as he was going out; his getting up to go out drew her attention, and she said to them that were there, that is, to those that were standing round the fire in the hall, Tins fellow also was with Jesus of Nazareth. He who had gone out, haying heard this returned, that he might by denial vindicate himself. Or, as is more likely, he did not hear what was said of him as he went out, but it was after he came back that the maid, and the other man whom Luke mentions, said to him, And thou also art one of them. JEROME. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. I know that some out of a feeling of piety towards the Apostle Peter have interpreted this place to signify that Peter denied the Man and not the God, as though he meant, ‘I do not know the Man, because I know the God.’x But the intelligent reader will see that this is trifling, for if he denied not, the Lord spoke falsely when He said, Thou shalt deny me thrice. AMBROSE. (in Luc. 22, 57.) I had rather that Peter deny, than that the Lord be made out false. RABANUS. In this denial of Peter we affirm that Christ is denied not only by him who denies that He is Christ, but who denies himself to be a Christian. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Let us now come to the third denial; And after a while came they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them, (Luke’s words are, About the space of one hour after,) for thy speech bewrayeth thee. (Luke 22:59.) JEROME. Not that Peter was of a different speech or nation, but a Hebrew as his accusers were; but every province and every district has its peculiarities, and he could not disguise his native pronunciation. REMIGIUS. Observe how baneful are communications with evil men; they even drove Peter to deny the Lord whom he had before confessed to be the Son of God. RABANUS. Observe, that he said the first time, I know not what thou sayest; the second time, He denied with an oath; the third time, He began to curse and to swear that he knew not the man. For to persevere in sinning increases sinfulness, and he who disregards light sins, falls into greater.