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 The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  The wolf in me trotted away from the campfire, threw back a finely modeled head, and howled—but the sheep went to O’Reilly, because I didn’t know how to say no. Taken out of his office and spirited here, O’Reilly looked crazy and ill—puffy, disordered, breathing laboriously, reeking of bourbon. I was ashamed of him. Over the next few weeks, Annie stopped eating. She’d got it into her head that William had found her repulsively fat, and she’d spit with scorn at the reflection in the mirror of her meager breasts and nearly fleshless hips. She longed for the purity of a boy’s body (a boy before puberty). She’d found another girl at school with the same obsessions. They slept all day, prided themselves on their luminous paleness, grew their hair very long. They wrote poetry and began to go to cocktail parties with professors; they were invited by a teaching fellow in art history whom they’d befriended. At midnight they’d get together in Annie’s dorm room, light candles, and take several hours to eat two cucumbers. The rest of the time they lived on vodka, cigarettes, and black tea. O’Reilly hospitalized Annie for not eating, but she tore the intravenous tubes out of her arms and trotted frantically up and down the stairs to work off the disfiguring calories. I took her home to my father’s for Christmas. My stepmother gave us a tour of the house, as Midwesterners will do. We looked at cedar closets, the linen cupboard with enough sheets to outfit an infirmary, the whole cooked turkey and cold ham waiting in the fridge for our midnight snacks. We inspected the basement, saw the furnace, the bar locked tight against pilfering maids, the Ping-Pong table. “If you kids feel in the mood for a game,” Dad said, “even in the middle of the night, go right ahead since it’s soundproof down here.” “Anyway, you’ll be up,” my stepmother said to my father sourly. She launched into a recital of his annoying nocturnal habits. “He doesn’t get up till late afternoon, and at six in the evening he sits down to a breakfast of a pound of bacon. I’ve had to go my own way. Otherwise I’d never have had a life.” Which was my father’s cue to brag about his wife’s social successes as chief Friend to the Symphony, as docent at the art museum, and as the star of Mr. Feltrinelli’s painting class. She said, “I did a portrait of your dad as a sad clown and then a sort of Michigan landscape that got out of hand so I made it abstract but it’s kinda cute anyway.” She was also going to play Scrooge in a Christmas production for the Home for the Incurables (“If only I can get my lines down. Will you help, Annie? I’ve got a wonderful costume and beard and bah-humbug all worked out”).

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  After I ejaculated I felt full of self-hatred every time, and every time I swore I’d never return to the toilets. Every time I had a free moment during the day when I could roost in the poultry house, I felt the excitement of anticipation creep over me. My hands went cold, a blotch of blush would float cloud-slow up my chest and neck, cover my face. If a girl stopped me to chat in the hall, I’d be torn by anxiety. What if he got away, the one big fish to cruise our pond today? I’d never said one word to all but one of the other campus homosexuals who were john queens. But I knew them all: the beetle-browed man whose outsize glasses touched his hairline above and his beard below and who, in his stall, would lower his ponderous haunches just far enough for my hand to touch his canine penis; the tall law student bearing a heavy tome of torts and investing his stall like a city under siege—no cough, no tapping foot, no lightest emery board of a sigh; the businessman in monogrammed shirt and glossy sharkskin I’d seen give a blow job that first day; and Jeremy, the only one I spoke to, a fat boy with a huge mouth and pomaded hair who waddled out of his booth with a diva’s disdain, gathering his reversible windbreaker around him as though it were a sable. None of us wanted each other but contempt had bred familiarity and we’d raise a weary eyebrow or stifle a yawn as we passed each other on our rounds as though to say, “Still at it?” or, “Slim pickings tonight.” The thrill came when one bagged not another old fruit but a hot young college kid, for although I myself was at least young and in college, I already saw myself as vampire-cold, turned prematurely old as a punishment for vice, and not nearly enviable enough to be that exciting thing, a “college kid.” I’d learned to feel nostalgia for my own youth while I was living it. I started dating Annie Schroeder, although I sometimes felt I was carting an aunt about. Her makeup was too elaborate and her clothes too stylish for the Beatniks I was meeting, among whom the women wore little other than black wool sweaters and skirts and black tights and paisley babushkas. For variety,

• From Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist's Memoir (2017)

  CHAPTER ONE THE BIRTH OF EMPATHY I awake from my dream at 3 a.m., weeping into my pillow. Moving quietly, so as not to disturb Marilyn, I slip out of bed and into the bathroom, dry my eyes, and follow the directions I have given to my patients for fifty years: close your eyes, replay your dream in your mind, and write down what you have seen. I am about ten, perhaps eleven. I am biking down a long hill only a short distance from home. I see a girl named Alice sitting on her front porch. She seems a bit older than me and is attractive even though her face is covered with red spots. I call out to her as I bike by, “Hello, Measles. ” Suddenly a man, exceedingly large and frightening, stands in front of my bicycle and brings me to a stop by grabbing my handlebars. Somehow I know that this is Alice’s father. He calls out to me: “Hey, you, whatever your name is. Think for a minute—if you can think—and answer this question. Think about what you just said to my daughter and tell me one thing: How did that make Alice feel? ” I am too terrified to answer. “ Cummon, answer me. You’re Bloomingdale’s kid [My father’s grocery store was named Bloomingdale Market and many customers thought our name was Bloomingdale] and I bet you’re a smart Jew. So go ahead, guess what Alice feels when you say that. ” I tremble. I am speechless with fear. “ All right, all right. Calm down. I’ll make it simple. Just tell me this: Do your words to Alice make her feel good about herself or bad about herself? ” All I can do is mumble, “I dunno. ” “ Can’t think straight, eh? Well, I’m gonna help you think. Suppose I looked at you and picked some bad feature about you and comment on it every time I see you?” He peers at me very closely. “A little snot in your nose, eh? How about ‘snotty’? Your left ear is bigger than your right. Supposed I say, ‘Hey, “fat ear”’ every time I see you? Or how about ‘Jew Boy’? Yeah, how about that? How would you like that? ” I realize in the dream that this is not the first time I have biked by this house, that I’ve been doing this same thing day after day, riding by and calling out to Alice with the same words, trying to initiate a conversation, trying to make friends. And each time I shouted, “Hey, Measles,” I was hurting her, insulting her. I am horrified—at the harm I’ve done, all these times, and at the fact that I could’ve been so blind to it. When her father finishes with me, Alice walks down the porch stairs and says in a soft voice, “Do you want to come up and play?” She glances at her father. He nods. “ I feel so awful,” I answer. “I feel ashamed, so ashamed. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t… ” Since early adolescence, I’ve always read myself to sleep, and for the past two weeks I have been reading a book called Our Better Angels by Steven Pinker. Tonight, before the dream, I had read a chapter on the rise of empathy during the Enlightenment, and how the rise of the novel, particularly British epistolary novels like Clarissa and Pamela , may have played a role in decreasing violence and cruelty by helping us to experience the world from another’s viewpoint. I turned out the lights about midnight, and a few hours later I awoke from my nightmare about Alice. After calming myself, I return to bed, but lie awake for a long time thinking how remarkable it was that this primeval abscess, this sealed pocket of guilt now seventy-three years old, has suddenly burst. In my waking life, I recall now, I had indeed bicycled past Alice’s house as a twelve-year-old, calling out “Hey, Measles,” in some brutish, painfully unempathic effort to get her attention. Her father had never confronted me, but as I lie here in bed at age eighty-five, recovering from this nightmare, I can imagine how it must have felt to her, and the damage I might have done. Forgive me, Alice.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  Do I eat too much?” “No,” I said, “very little.” Now I was just like her. On some days I’d think of my fat as manly, the potbelly of the laborers I’d worked among. But most of the time fat feminized me, turned me into a pink, quivering Rubens with breasts that jiggled when I ran down steps. I complained to Lou. He was tonic and pitiless. He said, “It’s easy to be anything you want. You must want to be fat. It’s a form of loyalty to your mother. Or maybe you’re merely afraid of being queer. It’s logical. There are no fat gay boys. You’re fat. Therefore you’re not gay. Certainly the fat keeps you from having gay sex.” I thought bitterly of his stomach, which had been half removed and permitted him to eat constantly and stay skinny. Lou lived by extremes. After the debacle of his last days in Chicago, here in New York he’d found a high-paying job, joined a gym, bought a luxurious wardrobe of dark cashmere suits. He worked twelve to fourteen hours a day at his office and weekends as well. His West Side apartment he filled with comfortable, anonymous furniture and blowups of his heroes, Ezra Pound, Bobby Phalen, and Cassius Clay. He had no plants, which would have required watering. He suspended his graceful blue bicycle from the ceiling when he wasn’t riding it. He did a thorough housecleaning every Thursday night to prepare for a solid weekend of tricking. He liked the black and Puerto Rican neighbors, the cheerful music, the kids playing on the stairs, the fiesta in the streets, the smell of saffron in the halls—saffron or its cheaper substitute, Bimol. Lou had met a tiny peroxided blond kid named Misty who he had move in with him. “Oh, Bunny,” he said, touching my hand as we ate at a Broadway coffee shop. “It was here, right here, that I met him one night.” “At three in the morning.” “Four. The bars had closed. I hadn’t scored and, anyway, I couldn’t feature another night with a grown-up, some accountant from Jersey City with a screw-on collar pin who wants to sixty-nine because he thinks it’s fair!” Horrified laugh. He’d been leaning across the sticky Formica table, scrutinizing me, his face in mine, but now he slammed back and disturbed the man behind him. “So, discouraged and rather tipsy”—a grimace to indicate his disgust with himself—“I came in here, ordered my mournful stack and two burned sausages, and looked in the corner and saw a divinity, a little blond god or goddess smiling at me. I could focus on him only by closing one eye, and I was so ashamed of myself I wanted to head home and hide. I’d fallen so low I was completely bitter and paranoid and really thought he and his little drag friends, all so chic and desirable, had decided to pick on me as a comically woebegone specimen.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  When I started to enter him, he said “Jesus Christ” out loud and grimaced with pain. The closest roommate stirred. I pulled out and he dashed for the toilet. I followed him. He sat on the toilet, door open, and said in a loud voice, “You’re really a pain in the ass,” and smiled that big unveiled smile. I stood there while he winced and talked and looked down into the toilet to see if anything had come out. His body had been tanned so often it retained a permanent swimsuit line. We didn’t go back to bed, neither then nor ever, but the next semester I had a room of my own in a boardinghouse and Mick would borrow it every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon when I was in class. He used it as a place where he could sleep with his girlfriend. Once I found a single drop of blood on my sheets. Often I could smell the scent of his clean but athletic and unperfumed body. By that time he’d been teased so much for his smile—and had even had a caricature drawn in which he was all teeth—that he’d lost his naturalness. The next year he dropped out of school and joined the paratroopers. Two days after the bachelor dinner, William Everett Hunton called me at three in the afternoon and begged me to hurry over to the law quad. When I arrived, there was Annie slumped outside his door, barefoot, wearing a pretty rose silk slip and nothing else, her beehive collapsed. She looked up at me with huge muddy eyes, but the clinch of recognition quickly relaxed and she glanced away, hopeless. “For God’s sake, Annie, get up!” I shouted, as concerned about the scandal she was making as the pain she was suffering. The minute I spoke, the door flew open and framed William. “Thank heavens you’ve come.” He looked with fear and loathing at Annie. “I see you’ve met my little doggie. Don’t pet her. We’re leaving her out here to punish her. She barked all night. You can call her Sam.” He yanked me into the room, after I caught a glimpse of a mad grin on Annie’s face at the name Sam. She even mouthed it silently. And then her mouth turned from comic to tragic, and her eyes filled with tears. As soon as he’d closed the door he leaned up against it, as though to keep Sam out. “Oh, my dear, you’d never guess the cheap paperback I’ve made of my life, pure roman de gare—why wasn’t I content to stay a thoughtless queen in quest of big dicks? This GF (by which I mean ‘genital female’ to distinguish her from us, darling, who are women by choice, not by necessity, though in your case I do see the iron hand of fate)—this GF has been turning my life into hell. I haven’t been to class for a week and, listen!” We stood stock still.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Reminding people of a relevant core value decreased their likelihood of defensiveness. So, in these moments of defensiveness, take time to remind yourself of your core values that relate to the situation. When you’ve done something wrong and a person is mad at you, take time to remind yourself who you are and what you care about. Similar to the study above, frame the experience around your values. Anticipate Moments of Defensiveness You may be able to predict some moments when you will feel defensive. Perhaps there are particular people (such as a boss, a parent) who tend to put you on edge or perhaps there are particular situations (a type of work meeting, a holiday gathering) that tend to bring it out of you. Once you have a sense for when these moments are coming, you can prepare for them. You can make some decisions about how you want to handle it and what you want to say before you find yourself overcome by the emotion. Find (or Create) a Pause (Again) In chapter 7 , I wrote about how to stay calm in these emotional situations. All of those same suggestions remain relevant here. Deep breathing, relaxation, and grounding are all valuable ways to keep from reacting in a way you’ll regret. But before you can do any of that, you need to find a way to pause in the moment. It’s an important step in reclaiming focus to find that pause button as soon as you recognize the escalation. What They Did vs. What They Feel It’s important to always remember that what a person feels is different but related to what they did with that feeling. A person can be angry with you, and that anger might be entirely valid, but that doesn’t mean they can treat you in whatever way they please. Justified anger doesn’t make it ok for a person to yell at you or say cruel and hurtful things to you. Remembering this is important for two reasons. First, it is very easy, especially when feeling defensive, to focus on how they are behaving and ignore the underlying feelings. Their behavior becomes a reason to ignore their anger, which may be justified and rooted in a very real injustice that you are responsible for.* While you do not need to subject yourself to cruel treatment, trying to separate what they did from how they feel might allow you to more effectively right a wrong.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  The video went viral almost immediately and it wasn’t long before one of the men was identified. Chris Reichert denied it was him at first but about a week later acknowledged that he was the person who threw money at Letcher. To be honest, I’m less interested in the contents of the video than I am in what Reichert had to say about it a few weeks later. Frankly, there are a lot of videos online of belligerent, hostile, and angry people treating other people poorly. Usually the angry person isn’t identified, though, so you know very little information about what happened, how they typically behave, or their values. In this case, though, Reichert spoke up about what he did and why he did it. “I snapped. I absolutely snapped and I can’t explain it any other way. He’s got every right to do what he did and some may say I did, too, but what I did was shameful. I haven’t slept since that day.” He went on to say, “That was my first time at any political rally and I’m never going to another one.” We could have a lengthy conversation about whether this apology was genuine or if this was just an attempt to minimize the damage to his image. There was a great deal of anger directed toward him and he voiced some concerns about his safety when later interviewed. My best guess is that this apology is a little bit genuine and a little bit damage control. What I find particularly interesting, though, is his acknowledgement that being at this political rally brought the anger out of him. His response, whether he meant the apology or not, acknowledges a simple truth about our anger: it can be contagious. Case Study: Sarah – “This anger felt unhinged” Sarah works as the artistic director for a 2,000-seat performing arts center. Like just about every other performing arts center in the United States, they closed their doors in March 2020 because of the Covid-19 health crisis. It was an emotionally painful experience for her and her staff. As Sarah described it to me, they do the work they do because they want to bring joy to their patrons. She and her team take their work seriously, not just because they love the arts, but because they know the value of the arts to the community. Sarah said to me: “Our goal is always to make the patron experience as enjoyable as possible. Because we know that the act of connecting with a live performer on stage has a genuine positive impact on their wellbeing and then what happens simultaneous to that is their connection to the rest of the audience. I often quote a study that audience members’ heartbeats will sync up during a performance. There’s a real thing that happens here and to us on our end of it, because we’ve chosen to work in this industry, that is a real very special thing to us.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  He recalls that God, after the crime, questioned Cain. Not that God needed his reply to know what the voice of blood proclaimed on earth. He only wanted the murderer to say: Yes, I killed. He was asking him at least to acknowledge: homôs homologies tauta.86 And God will punish him because he refused to acknowledge that, because he claimed “not to know.” Two expressions employed by Saint John Chrysostom are worth retaining. Because Cain was not the first to declare his transgression, God declined, not to directly forgive his act, but to “allow him metanoia”—that is, the lack of a confession deprived Cain of the very possibility of repentance, of conversion, of turning away (or being turned away) from the committed crime. It was necessary to declare the crime in order to separate oneself from it. Further, and as a consequence, what God will punish is not so much the murder itself as Cain’s impudence.87 An important term, anaideia: it relates to the temerity of the evident lie; to the absence of repentance concerning the crime committed; to the contradiction in the fact that Cain is ashamed to admit what he wasn’t ashamed to do; to the affront, finally, against God who was offering the criminal the possibility of being pardoned.88 The indecency of the non-avowal thus shifts the crime against Abel toward an offense against God; in any case the sin against the truth that was owed to God overrides the sin against the blood tie with the brother. Now, what does the punishment for this impudence consist of? Doubtless, the law of blood called for the death of the culprit. But Cain will stay alive, and this is precisely his punishment. His punishment will be to become the law incarnate on earth—nomos empsukhos; he will have to walk through the world like a “living law,” a “walking stele,” sealed with his own silence, but which makes the voice bellow “louder than a trumpet.” Phônê: the word is significant. It is the same as the one employed to designate the voice of Abel’s blood drying on the furrows. Since there was no confession to silence it, it is still this cry that makes itself heard in Cain’s punishment. But with this blood cry, the voice, the phônê that resounds in Cain’s voice, presents two differences. It doesn’t demand death for death; on the contrary, it tells every man in this world: Don’t do what I did. And moreover, this voice is not that of the spilled blood and the abandoned dead body; it is a voice that is now joined to Cain. For having avoided the confession that would have brought him relief, he has himself become the law that never falls silent; a person who killed him would be cursed seven times over. Cain was seized by the law; he cannot get free of it; he will travel the world moaning—stenôn—endlessly broadcasting the cry of the law, which no discourse of confession (homologia) can interrupt.89

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  23 Whoever denies and repudiates the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses and acknowledges the Son has the Father also. 24 As for you, let that remain in you [keeping in your hearts that message of salvation] which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning remains in you, you too will remain in the Son and in the Father [forever]. The Promise Is Eternal Life 25 This is the promise which He Himself promised us—eternal life. 26 These things I have written to you with reference to those who are trying to deceive you [seducing you and leading you away from the truth and sound doctrine]. 27 As for you, the anointing [the special gift, the preparation] which you received from Him remains [permanently] in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you. But just as His anointing teaches you [giving you insight through the presence of the Holy Spirit] about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as His anointing has taught you, c you must remain in Him [being rooted in Him, knit to Him]. 28 Now, little children (believers, dear ones), remain in Him [with unwavering faith], so that when He appears [at His return], we may have [perfect] confidence and not be ashamed and shrink away from Him at His coming. 29 If you know that He is absolutely righteous, you know [for certain] that everyone who practices righteousness [doing what is right and conforming to God’s will] has been born of Him. 1 John 3 Children of God Love One Another 1 S ee what an incredible quality of love the Father has shown to us, that we would [be permitted to] be named and called and counted the children of God! And so we are! For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, we are [even here and] now children of God, and it is not yet made clear what we will be [after His coming]. We know that when He comes and is revealed, we will [as His children] be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is [in all His glory]. 3 And everyone who has this hope [confidently placed] in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure (holy, undefiled, guiltless). 4 Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness [ignoring God’s law by action or neglect or by tolerating wrongdoing—being unrestrained by His commands and His will]. 5 You know that He appeared [in visible form as a man] in order to take away sins; and in Him there is [absolutely] no sin [for He has neither the sin nature nor has He committed sin or acts worthy of blame]. 6 No one who abides in Him [who remains united in fellowship with Him—deliberately, knowingly, and habitually] practices sin.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Cassian’s analysis has two particularities: not singling out adultery, which comes under fornication in the narrow sense; and above all focusing his attention only on the two other categories. Nowhere in the different texts where he evokes the chastity struggle does he talk about actual sexual relations. Nowhere are the different possible “sins” considered according to the act committed, the partner with whom one commits it, their age, their sex, the relations of kinship one might have with them. None of the categories that will constitute the great codification of the sins of lust in the Middle Ages appear here. Doubtless, Cassian, addressing monks who had made a vow to refrain from any sexual relation, did not need to revisit this prerequisite explicitly. It must be noted, however, that on an important point of the cenobium, one that had given rise in Basil of Caesarea or in Chrysostom to specific recommendations,89 Cassian confines himself to brief allusions: “Let no person, especially the younger ones, remain with another, even for a little while, or leave with him or hold hands.”90 It’s as if Cassian were interested only in the last two terms of his subdivision (concerning what happens without intercourse and without the body’s passion), as if he were passing over fornication as a union of two individuals and attributing importance only to elements whose condemnation was previously only secondary to that of sexual acts as such. But if Cassian’s analyses omit sexual intercourse, if they operate in such a solitary world and on such an interior stage, the reason is not simply negative. It’s that the main focus of the combat is on a target that is not in the domain of acts or relations: it involves a different reality from that of sexual relations between two individuals. A passage of the twelfth Conference allows us to grasp the nature of that reality. There Cassian characterizes the six stages that mark one’s progress in chastity. Now, since with this characterization it’s not a matter of showing chastity itself, but of pointing out the negative signs by which one recognizes that it is progressing—the different traces of impurity that are disappearing one by one—the passage offers an indication of what is to be fought in chastity’s combat. The first stage of this progress: The monk, when he is awake, is not “broken” by an “attack of the flesh”—impugnatione carnali non eliditur. Hence no more invasion of the soul by impulses that overwhelm the will. The second stage: If “voluptuous thoughts” (voluptariare cogitationes) are produced in the mind, he doesn’t “dwell” on them. He doesn’t think about what he finds himself thinking involuntarily and in spite of himself.91 The third stage has been reached when a perception of something in the outside world is not capable of arousing concupiscence: one can make eye contact with a woman without any lustful desire.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  In what form does it go on existing? As the projection, the shadow cast by the fall, of which it is the analogical consequence, as it were. From the fact that the fall is a deterioration of being, concupiscence is itself weakness and infirmity. In the medical vocabulary commonly used in Christian literature to designate sin, Augustine, when he wishes to bring out the difference between notions, tends to utilize the terms “wound” or “disease” to speak of the act of sinning, and the terms “disposition” (affectio or valitudo) or “weakness” (languor) to speak of concupiscence. A passage of the last pages of De nuptiis et concupiscentia shows this word game in practice. “Those wounds (vulnera) which are inflicted on the body produce lameness in a limb, or difficulty of motion […] That wound, however, which has the name of sin [here Augustine means the original sin], wounds the very life, which was being righteously lived. […] Whence it came to pass that our nature having then and there been deteriorated (in deterius commutata) by that great sin of the first man, not only was made a sinner, but also generates sinners; and yet the very infirmity, under which the virtue of a holy life has drooped and died, is not really nature, but corruption (non est utique natura, sed vitium); precisely as a bad state of health (mala in corpore valetudo) is not a bodily substance or nature, but disorder; very often, indeed, if not always, the ailing character of parents is in a certain way implanted, and reappears in the bodies of their children.”51 But the correlative and inseparable aspect of the infirmity that characterizes concupiscence is the force of the movements of that same concupiscence. That whereby it is weak, as the subject’s will in regard to himself, and also that by which it is strong, as the presence in the subject of the bad will. The imputability, the reatus, that makes concupiscence an actual culpability was erased by baptism, then, but not the active presence of that concupiscence. It acts in some manner (agita aliquid) even in one who is regenerated. And what is the form of that activity, if not “the bad and shameful desires.”52 Augustine’s basic propositions concerning the presence of concupiscence in the heart of men are too familiar now to need revisiting.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The patristic tradition often contrasts Cain with two other figures, Eve and David, who both recognized their fault. In the same second Homily on penance, Saint John Chrysostom evokes, after Cain’s silence, the confessions of David. In fact he draws up, around each of these two figures, two cycles of truth and the transgression that opposes it term by term. Cain knew his sin; David, claims Chrysostom, was not aware of his; and to establish this fact, which is not justified by anything in the Bible, he evokes a “philosophical” conception of passion: the soul must direct the body like the soul directs the chariot; if it is dazzled by some passion, or if it is inebriated, or even if it is just distracted, it no longer knows where it is going, and the chariot tips over in the mud. It was this way with David who, drunk with passion, did not know that he was in the process of sinning. Another difference: it is God who presents himself to Cain, the all-powerful God whom nothing escapes; it is only Nathan who presents himself to David. Nathan is a prophet like David, he has no preeminence over him. One imagines a physician who wants to treat another physician; and David might very well have rebuffed him, saying: “Who are you? Who sent you…? What audacity is pushing you…?” No authority in any case, no coercion, could force David to speak in spite of himself. Better: Cain had to reply to the question that already pointed to his crime: Where is Abel? David, for his part, hears himself being offered a fable: to spare his own flock, a rich man kills one of the sheep of a poor man who had only that one possession. The fable, as one understands it according to Chrysostom, had two functions: a test of the king’s judgment, an apologue to decipher to identify the guilty one. So tested, David replies by rendering the sentence himself: “The man who did that deserves death.” As for the enigma, it is Nathan who solves it: you are the man who did that; but David immediately accepts the designation and with the admission occupies the place that Nathan assigns him: “I have sinned against the Eternal One.” In his two responses, to the test and to the enigma, David stands in contrast to Cain. The latter had negated the law that joined him [to his brother] (I am not his keeper); and when he had ended up recognizing the magnitude of his crime and asked for the death sentence himself, it was not at the right moment—en kairô—it was after the fact, once the voice of the blood had denounced him. David, on the other hand, had begun by stating the law, delivering the sentence, and condemning himself without knowing it yet; then, once the truth was discovered, he had placed himself under the sentence that he had just pronounced. Made in this way, David’s avowal appears with its two faces—that of the formulated and accepted sentence and that of the admitted fault, and with all the more merit as it was not a matter of reducing the severity of a sentence one had oneself decided in advance. Thus analyzed through David’s adultery, or rather the carefully altered version that Saint John Chrysostom gives of it, the avowal appears as being not just the recognition that he’s committed a transgression, but the profound adherence to the sentence that condemns him.90 In accordance with a thematic essential to Christian penance, the sinner who confesses like David is both his own accuser and his own judge: “You have had the greatness of soul to admit your fault…You have formulated your own sentence.” If the pardon responds immediately to the avowal, this is because the latter is not simply an accurate statement of the facts, it’s also because it incorporates the constituent elements of a judicial procedure. Truth-telling, “veridiction,” involves its effects of remission in a relation to “juridiction”—a relation that shifts the agency that accuses and the one that judges onto the subject.

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  Why? Threats to Our Self-Identity Like most emotional experiences, defensiveness is about self-protection. Being accused of an error is perceived as a threat to our wellbeing or our identity, and we react with distress. That distress motivates us to seek some sort of comfort and resolution. If we were able to think rationally in that moment, the comfort and resolution would come from owning the mistake and addressing it. But when we can’t think rationally, we seek resolution by denying the mistake or trying to refocus the conflict on the other person. “I’m sorry I forgot to do the dishes” turns into “Yeah, well you never put the laundry away like you’re supposed to!” ANGER FACT Defensiveness is a natural emotional reaction to having identity threatened. It’s protective in the same way other emotions are protective, but it can still interfere with progress. It’s even more of a threat when the error is inconsistent with your self-identity. If someone accused me being a bad fisherman, I wouldn’t care. I don’t identify as being good at this activity so being told I’m bad at it doesn’t feel like a threat to my identity. If, though, someone accused me of being, or implied I was, a bad teacher, parent, or spouse, I would care. I want to be, and work really hard to be, good at those things, so the implication that I’m not doing them well is hurtful to me. When someone notices I made an error – no matter how small – that suggests I’m not doing a good job in one of these roles, it serves as a threat to an important part of my self-identity, and it hurts. It may not be as obvious as the examples here. Our identity can be broad and diffuse and challenged in all sorts of vague and unexpected ways. A great basketball player may feel attacked when challenged about some other sport simply because they identify as an athlete. The challenge feels like an attack on their natural athletic ability. A person who values kindness may feel threatened when told they came across as rude or impolite during an interaction. They see the feedback as a threat to their identity as a kind and considerate person.* There are a number of personal characteristics that might make you more likely to become defensive when someone is angry with you. You might be insecure or lack confidence. You might be anxious or have difficulty asserting yourself when challenged. You might have a history of trauma or abuse that makes these situations more emotionally taxing for you. You may have had defensiveness modeled for you in the same way other emotional expressions are modeled and it became a learned behavior.

• From Another Country (1962)

  She sighed and put one hand to her face. “Oh. I don’t know, I really don’t know what I was thinking. Sometimes I’d leave Ellis and I’d come and find you here—like my dog or my cat, I used to think sometimes, just waiting. And I’d be afraid you’d be here and I’d be afraid you’d gone out, afraid you’d ask me, really ask me where I’d been, and afraid you wouldn’t. Sometimes you’d try, but I could always stop you, I could see in your eyes when you were frightened. I hated that look and I hated me and I hated you. I could see how white men got that look they so often had when they looked at me; somebody had beat the shit out of them, had scared the shit out of them, long ago. And now I was doing it to you. And it made it hard for me when you touched me, especially—” She stopped, picked up her drink, tasted it, set it down. “I couldn’t stand Ellis. You don’t know what it’s like, to have a man’s body over you if you can’t stand that body. And it was worse now, since I’d been with you, than it had ever been before. Before, I used to watch them wriggle and listen to them grunt, and, God, they were so solemn about it, sweating yellow pigs, and so vain, like that sad little piece of meat was making miracles happen, and I guess it was, for them—and I wasn’t touched at all, I just wished I could make them come down lower. Oh, yes, I found out all about white people, that’s what they were like, alone, where only a black girl could see them, and the black girl might as well have been blind as far as they were concerned. Because they knew they were white, baby, and they ruled the world. But now it was different, sometimes when Ellis put his hands on me, it was all I could do not to scream, not to vomit. It had got to me, it had got to me, and I felt that I was being pumped full of—I don’t know what, not poison exactly, but dirt, waste, filth, and I’d never be able to get it out of me, never be able to get that stink out of me. And sometimes, sometimes, sometimes—” She covered her mouth, her tears spilled down over her hand, over the red ring. He could not move. “Oh, Lord Jesus. I’ve done terrible things. Oh, Lord. Sometimes. And then I’d come home to you. He always had that funny little smile when I finally left him, that smile he has, I’ve seen it many times now, when he’s outsmarted somebody who doesn’t know it yet. He can’t help it, that’s him, it was as though he were saying, ‘Now that I’m through with you, have a nice time with Vivaldo. And give him my regards.’ And, funny, funny—I couldn’t hate him. I saw what he was doing, but I couldn’t hate him. I wondered what it felt like, to be like that, not to have any real feelings at all, except to say, Well, now, let’s do this and now let’s do that and now let’s eat and now let’s fuck and now let’s go. And do that all your life. And then I’d come home and look at you. But I’d bring him with me. It was as though I was dirty, and you had to wash me, each time. And I knew you never could, no matter how hard we tried, and I didn’t hate him but I hated you. And I hated me.”

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  So one can define that “something” which, with the fall, modified the innocent use of sex that would have been possible in paradise. It is not a new organ—the differentiation of the sexes already existed and the transgression did not render it bad;28 it was not an act—it already had its place, its function, and it still preserves that function. The involuntary form of a movement is what makes the sexual organ the subject of an insurrection and the object of the eye’s gaze. Visible and unpredictable erection. Let us note, of course, the fact that libido conceived in this way is characterized essentially by male genitality, its forms and its properties. It is phallic from the origin. Augustine is quite aware of the possible objection and he tries to find the counterpart, in the woman, of the indecent motion that shames the man by pointing out her internal rebellion, and hence her fall from grace. “It was not a visible movement the woman covered, when in the same members she experienced something hidden but comparable to what the man experienced; both of them covered what each one felt at the sight of the other.” And perhaps because he sensed what was artificial in this symmetry that had the woman covering what was invisible to her, and no doubt also to preserve the already evoked theme of modesty in regard to mutual desire, Augustine adds in the same passage: “The man and the woman blushed, either each for each, or the one for the other.”29 In any case, the visibility of the male organ is at the center of things. And it has to be noted, moreover, that this interplay manifests man’s entry into the reign of death. Death relative to the grace that God has withdrawn from him; death also in this world, since death now becomes a fatal illness; death, finally, as we’ll see, since it is through the indispensable role of sexual union in childbirth that the original sin is passed down from generation to generation. In the involuntary movement of the sex organ and the visibility connected with it, man must recognize death: “For in the first stirring of the disobedient motion which was felt in the flesh of the disobedient soul, and which caused our first parents to cover their shame, one death indeed is experienced, that, namely, which occurs when God forsakes the soul.”30 Before, most exegetes saw in physical death the explanation if not for the first appearance of the two sexes, at least for their use. For Augustine, the sexual act didn’t have to wait for the passing away of the generations to be practiced, but the involuntariness that now haunts it signifies a spiritual death of which the end of earthly existences, one after the other, is also a manifestation. The body that escapes man’s will is also a body that dies. The withdrawal of grace both removes this control and actualizes death.31

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  First of all, regarding the causal chain, Cassian underscores the fact that the vices are not independent of each other, even if each of them can be attacked, more specifically, through one of the others.70 A causal vector links them together: it begins with gluttony, which originates with the body and kindles fornication; then this first pair engenders avarice, understood as attachment to earthly goods; which gives rise to rivalries, disputes, and anger; from which is produced the dejection of sadness, which provokes disgust with the whole monastic life and the listlessness of acedia. Such a concatenation assumes that one will never be able to vanquish a vice without triumphing over the one on which it depends. “If we always overcome the earlier ones, the later ones will be checked; and through the extermination of those that lead the way, the rest of our passions will die down without difficulty.”71 At the origin of the others, the gluttony-fornication pair, like “a tall spreading tree,”72 must be uprooted—whence the ascetic importance of fasting as a means of defeating gluttony and cutting off fornication. It’s where the ascetic exercise has its basis, because it is the beginning of the causal chain. The spirit of fornication is also in a singular dialectical position in relation to the last vices listed, and pride in particular. Actually, for Cassian, pride and vainglory don’t belong to the causal chain of the other vices. Far from being engendered by those, they are produced by the victory that one wins over them:73 “carnal” pride toward others through the show that one makes of one’s fasts, one’s chastity, one’s poverty, and the like, and “spiritual” pride that makes one think that this progress is due solely to one’s own merits.74 A vice connected with the defeat of vices, precipitating a fall all the heavier as it comes from on high. And fornication, the most shameful of all the vices, the most humiliating, is the consequence of pride—a punishment but also a temptation, a test that God sends to the presumptuous to remind them that the weakness of the flesh always threatens them if grace does not come to one’s rescue. “Because one has long enjoyed purity of heart and body, as a natural consequence […] deep inside oneself, one glorifies oneself to a certain extent […] but, for one’s good, the Lord acts as if he has abandoned him: the purity that gave him so much assurance begins to be clouded; in the midst of spiritual prosperity, he sees himself falter.”75 In the great cycle of combats, at the moment when the soul no longer has to struggle against itself, the goads of the flesh are felt anew, marking the necessary incompletion of this struggle and threatening it with a perpetual recommencement.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  Because Adam and Eve had this shame that is not ashamed to confess, their fault is not irremissible. And if their fault resulted in the fall of men, their modesty, which uncovers in concealing, is like the first form of what will appear as redemption. As against the serpent and Cain, who belong to the race of malediction, Adam and Eve, like David, are placed on the genealogical tree of salvation. And by their confession, in this exegesis by Chrysostom, this doubtless fundamental idea in Christianity emerges very clearly: that sin, at the very moment it contravenes God’s will or breaks his law, makes an obligation of truth come into effect. The latter has two aspects: one must recognize oneself as the author of the committed act and recognize that this act is evil. It is this obligation of truth that Cain evaded with his “I don’t know,” which added a truth crime against God to the blood crime against his brother. It is this obligation that Adam, Eve, and David submitted themselves to, thus redeeming the disobedience of the law through obedience to the principle of truth-telling. At the core of the economy of sin, Christianity placed the duty of truth-telling. But the exegeses of John Chrysostom, which are there only as examples and a first indication, make it clear that this duty of truth doesn’t simply have an instrumental role in the procedure of forgiveness: a way to obtain it, or to lessen the penalty. The crime scarcely committed, a debt of truth is contracted with God. This debt is so essential, so fundamental, that if one settles it, even the gravest sin can be pardoned; but if one shirks it, not only does the committed transgression remain, but one commits another one that is necessarily more serious, since it is pointed directly at God. It is significant that Saint Ambrose, commenting on the same passage of Genesis (4:9–15) as Saint John Chrysostom, affirms like him that in Cain, God punished the man who didn’t tell the truth more than the man who killed his brother. “Non tam majori crimine parricidii quam sacrilegii.”91 Where Chrysostom spoke of impudence, Ambrose speaks of sacrilege. Not that there is any difference of severity between them. Anaideia, in Chrysostom, designated the violation of the relation of “modesty” which the sin causes the sinners to contract with God; it is this infraction that Ambrose, in the juridical Latin vocabulary, designates as a sacrilegium. A little later, Saint Augustine will give Cain’s non-avowal an apparently quite different meaning. He also stresses that the question posed by God is nothing more than a test offered to Cain so that he might possibly save himself; for God knew exactly what had been done. But by answering “I don’t know” Cain gave in a sense the first figure of the Jews’ refusal to hear the Savior. Cain rejects the call to recognize the truth of his crime; the Jews will reject the call to recognize the truth of the Gospel. One mendaciously says that he doesn’t know what the voice of blood is crying out and what God recalls. The others mendaciously deny what the blood of Christ is crying and what the Scripture had heralded. “Fallax ignoratio, falsa negatio.”92 But by thus shifting the lesson of Cain from the avowal of faults to faith in the Gospel, Saint Augustine doesn’t modify anything basic in what the Homilies on penance and De paradiso were saying. He strongly and explicitly links together what Chrysostom and Ambrose, in the text in question, left implicit: namely that the obligation of truth in relation to transgressions is deeply connected to the obligation of truth in relation to the Revelation. Truth-telling and believing, veridiction in regard to oneself, and faith in the Word are or should be inseparable. The duty of truth, as belief and as confession, is at the center of Christianity. The two traditional meanings of the word “confession” include these two aspects. In a general way, “confession” is the recognition of the duty of truth.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  However, while one doesn’t have to become a penitent as well after becoming a monk, some elements of the penitential rites are utilized in the monastic life. Cassian’s texts, and especially the Institutes which refer to the practices of the cenobium, are very clear on this point: forms specific to public penance are described in that work, and the expression publice paenitere reappears several times, without it being a matter of assuming the status of penitent, of course. Thus Pafnutius, who accepts, in a spirit of humility, being wrongfully accused of a serious sin, is subjected to a treatment just like one that could be evoked by Tertullian, Ambrose, or Jerome in regard to public penances: “And when he had immediately left the Church […] he continually shed tears at his prayers, and fasted thrice as often as before, and prostrated himself in the sight of men […] with all humility of mind. But when he had thus submitted himself with all contrition of flesh and spirit for almost a fortnight, so that he came early on the morning of Saturday and Sunday not to receive the Holy Communion but to prostrate himself on the threshold of the Church and humbly ask for pardon.”3 But short of these great manifestations meant to atone for serious sins, one finds a record of other practices, intermediate between the confession of temptation and the solemn and long-lasting exomologesis. Moreover, Cassian lists a series of transgressions that call for a precise penitential act, determined in advance: accidentally breaking an earthenware jar; hesitating even slightly in chanting a psalm; replying roughly, unnecessarily, impertinently; obeying carelessly; preferring reading to working; lingering after the service instead of going back to one’s cell; talking with someone from the world outside the presence of the elder, and so on.4 Cassian employs the expression “public penance” to designate the prescribed sanction, although it seems that this involves only a certain number of elements borrowed from the great dramaturgy of canonical penance: separation from the community, gesture of supplication, attitude of humility5 (“when all the brethren are assembled for service he must lie on the ground and ask for absolution until the service of the prayers is finished; and will obtain it when by the Abbot’s command he is bidden to rise from the ground”6). There we have a sketch of a whole monastic discipline combining the ostentatious manifestations of penitential rites and the control of gestures and thoughts in a continual and unconditional relation of obedience. The importance of this juxtaposition is twofold.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  The practice of penance and the exercises of the ascetic life organize relations between “wrong-doing” and “truth-telling”; they bundle together relations to oneself, to evil and to truth, in a way that is doubtless much more innovative and much more determinant than this or that degree of severity added or subtracted from the code. What is at issue, in fact, is the form of subjectivity: the exercise of oneself upon oneself, knowledge of oneself, the constitution of oneself as an object of investigation and discourse, the liberation or purification of oneself and salvation by means of operations that carry light to one’s innermost being, and drive one’s deepest secrets up to the light of redemptive exposure. It is a form of experience—understood both as a mode of presence to oneself and a program for self-transformation—that was developed in that period. And it is this form that gradually placed the problem of the “flesh” at the center of its apparatus (dispositif). And instead of having a regimen of sexual relations, or aphrodisia, that blends into the general rule of a righteous life, one will have a fundamental relationship with the flesh that runs through one’s whole life and serves as a ground for the rules that are imposed on it. The “flesh” should be understood as a mode of experience—that is, as a mode of knowledge and transformation of oneself by oneself, depending on a certain relationship between a nullification of evil and a manifestation of truth. With Christianity, one didn’t go from a code that was tolerant of sexual acts to a code that was severe, restrictive, and repressive. We need to think differently about the processes and their articulations: the construction of a sexual code, organized around marriage and procreation, was largely begun before Christianity: outside it, then alongside it. Christianity essentially took charge of it. And during the course of its later developments and through the formation of certain technologies of the individual—penitential discipline, monastic asceticism—a form of experience was constituted that activated a new modality of the code and caused it to be embodied, in a totally different way, in the behavior of individuals.*5 And in order to write the history of this formation, it’s necessary to analyze the practices that established it. Not that the aim here is to retrace the genesis of these extremely complex institutions. It’s a matter of attempting to bring out the relations that developed between the forgiveness of wrongdoing, the manifestation of truth, and the “discovery” of the self. Skip Notes *1 Typescript: childbirth as desire’s reason for being. *2 Translator’s note: To clarify, Clement was not himself a gnostic, but apparently that brand of dualism was popular in his day and he used some of its vocabulary to appeal to its adherents.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  • The direction consists in an obedience training, understood as a renunciation of one’s own wishes through submission to another’s will: “And his concern and the chief part of his instruction [referring to the teacher of the novices]—through which the juniors brought to him may be able, in due course, to mount to the greatest heights of perfection—will be to teach them first to conquer their own wishes; and, anxiously and diligently practicing them in this, he will of set purpose contrive to give them such orders as he knows to be contrary to their liking.”48 • And to achieve this perfect and exhaustive obedience, so that this game of nullification-replacement (nullification of one’s own will, substitution of another’s will) can take place, an exercise is essential: constant examination of oneself and perpetual confession. “And, that they may easily arrive at this [perfect obedience and humility of the heart], they are next taught not to conceal by a false shame any itching thoughts in their hearts, but, as soon as ever such arise, to lay them bare to the senior, and, in forming a judgment about them, not to trust anything to their own discretion, but to take it on trust that that is good or bad which is considered and pronounced so by the examination of the senior.”49 II. The Rule of ObedienceThat direction presupposes the disciple’s exact obedience to the master is obviously not a principle peculiar to Christian monasticism. In the philosophical life of antiquity, the master had to be listened to faithfully. But that obedience was instrumental, targeted, and limited. It had a definite object: it was meant to help one break free of a passion, overcome a mourning or a sorrow, escape a phase of uncertainty (this was the case with Serenus consulting Seneca), or attain a certain state (of tranquility, of self-control, of independence with respect to external events). To achieve this end, the director would utilize tailored means, and the obedience required of the disciple was limited to those necessary forms. Moreover, it was a temporary submission that would cease as soon as the goal was reached. It was just one of the tools employed by the direction, according to a strict economy that limited it solely to the moment and the objectives for which it could be useful. Monastic obedience is of a different type altogether.