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 Going Clear (2013)

  While the ships were docked in Valencia, a storm arose. Hubbard happened to be aboard the Avon River when he noticed that the Royal Scotman had torn free from one of its mooring lines. He screamed that someone should hoist the anchor and start the engines, but before the crew reacted, the big ship crashed against the dock, damaging its prop. Although the ship was not badly damaged, Hubbard assigned the crew and the Royal Scotman itself to a condition of Liability, which is below Non-Existence on his ethics scale. Hubbard stayed aboard the Avon River and steamed off to Marseilles until the Royal Scotman was returned to favor. Mary Sue was made the captain and ordered to retrain the crew and spruce up the ship to an acceptable state. No one could bathe or change clothes for months. The crew wore dirty gray rags on their left arms, which signaled their degraded status. Even Mary Sue’s snappish Corgi, Vixie, had a rag around its collar, and the ship itself wore a bracelet of gray tarpaulins around its funnel. An Ethics Officer walked the decks actually swinging a mace. Despite the squalid conditions, Mary Sue ran the ship with a minimum of hysteria, earning her the respect and loyalty of many aboard. Without Hubbard, the mood lightened. Mary Sue used to have parties in her cabin with Candy Swanson, the children’s tutor, and two men they were sweet on. They danced to Jimi Hendrix records. But when Hubbard returned, the party was over. A YOUNG MAN with a gift for languages named Belkacem Ferradj joined the Sea Org when the ship docked briefly in Algiers in 1968. Hubbard, surrounded by his Messengers, had made an immediate impression on Ferradj. He was dressed like an admiral, and he spoke with a broad American accent. A golden glow seemed to emanate from his large head. Mary Sue struck Ferradj as “gorgeous,” with long, curly hair and piercing eyes, but he thought she was “the most secretive person in the world.” When the ship sailed in July, Ferradj was aboard, having signed his billion-year contract with the Sea Org. Ferradj became close to Hubbard’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Diana. She had developed into a glamorous young woman, with flowing red hair and pale skin showered with freckles. She played the grand piano in the family dining room on the ship. Some saw her as imperious, a princess, but Ferradj, who was four years older than Diana, was smitten. When Hubbard found out about the relationship, he summoned Ferradj to the poop deck. Ferradj said Hubbard greeted him with a blow to the jaw. “I hit the bulkhead of the ship and slumped to the deck,” he recalled. “I don’t know if it was because I was an Arab or what. I left in disgrace.”

• From Between Us

  Spanish but not the Dutch students reported that they would feel as much shame as they would feel anger in response to imaginary insults; Spanish students reporting the most shame perceived a threat to their family honor. 105 ripple effect of shame: Uskul et al., “Honor Bound.” 105 specifically studied family honor: Patricia M. Rodriguez Mosquera, Leslie X. Tan, and Faisal Saleem, “Shared Burdens, Personal Costs on the Emotional and Social Consequences of Family Honor,” Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology 45, no. 3 (2013): 400–16. 105 the highest threat to the family honor: Rodriguez Mosquera, Tan, and Saleem, “Shared Burdens, Personal Costs on the Emotional and Social Consequences of Family Honor.” 106 Shame is everywhere in honor cultures: In one of our studies, we did in fact find that events that were seen to be shameful in Turkey were perceived to be frequent (Boiger et al., “Defending Honour, Keeping Face”; see also Batja Mesquita and Nico H. Frijda, “Cultural Variations in Emotions: A Review,” Psychological Bulletin 112, no. 2 [1992]: 179–204). 106 not even the most important one: Rodriguez Mosquera, “Cultural Concerns,” 2018; Patricia M. Rodriguez Mosquera, “On the Importance of Family, Morality, Masculine, and Feminine Honor for Theory and Research,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 10, no. 8 (2016): 431–42. 106 you must act: E.g., Leung and Cohen, “Within- and between-Culture Variation” (variation on what they write on p. 3). 107 the (sexual) modesty of the female relatives: Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments, 1986; Peristiany, “Honour and Shame in a Cypriot Highland”; Rodriguez Mosquera, “On the Importance of Family, Morality, Masculine, and Feminine Honor for Theory and Research.” 107 a dignified way for women . . . to achieve respect and honor: Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments. 108 “wanting to dissolve into nothing”: Nico H. Frijda, The Emotions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press / Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1986). 108 being judged by others . . . falling short of the standard: Michael Boiger et al., “Protecting Autonomy, Protecting Relatedness: Appraisal Patterns of Daily Anger and Shame in the United States and Japan,” Japanese Psychological Research 58, no. 1 (2016): 28–41. 108 “public evaluations” . . . “self-failure”: Rodriguez Mosquera, Manstead, and Fischer, “The Role of Honor-Related Values in the Elicitation, Experience, and Communication of Pride, Shame, and Anger.” Chapter 5 BEING CONNECTED AND FEELING GOOD 111 the enterprise has been WEIRD: E.g., Charles R. Snyder and Shane J. Lopez, Handbook of Positive Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Shane J. Lopez and Charles R. Snyder, The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 111 “broadening and building”: E.g., Barbara L. Fredrickson, “The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions,” American Psychologist 56, no. 3 (2001): 218–26.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It’s not going to come back.” I wrote about shock on people’s faces: shock when they find out their love has been cheating on them, shock when they discover faked amnesia—heck, I even wrote about a character who constantly wore a look of shock on his face, even when there was nothing to be shocked about. But I couldn’t say that I’d ever seen true shock before. And here it was, written all over Isaac Asterholder. He dove in immediately, his eyebrows drawing together. “Senna, you don’t—” I waved him off. “I have to. I can’t live every day in fear, knowing it might come back. This is the only way.” He searched my face, and I knew then that he was the type of man who always considered what someone else was feeling. After a while the tension left his shoulders. He lifted his hands from where they’d been resting on the table, and placed them over mine. I could see the crumbs sticking to his skin. I focused on them so I wouldn’t pull away. He nodded. “I can recommend—” I cut him off for the third time, jerking my hands out from beneath his. “I want you to do the surgery.” He leaned back, put both hands behind his head and stared at me. “You’re an oncologic surgeon. I Googled you.” “Why didn’t you just ask?” “Because I don’t do that. Asking questions is at the forefront of developing relationships.” He cocked his head. “What’s wrong with developing relationships?” “When you get raped, and when you get breast cancer, you have to tell people about it. And then they look at you with sad eyes. Except they’re not really seeing you, they’re seeing your rape or your breast cancer. And I’d rather not be looked at if all people are seeing are the things I do, or the things that happen to me instead of who I am.” He was quiet for a long time. “What about before those things happened to you?” I stared at him. Maybe a little too fiercely, but I didn’t care. If this man wanted to show up in my life, and put his hands over mine, and ask why I didn’t have a best friend—he was going to get it. The full version. “If there was a God,” I said, “I’d say with confidence that he hates me. Because my life is the sum of bad things. The more people you let in, the more bad you let in.” “Well, there you have it,” Isaac said. His eyes weren’t wide; there was no more shock. He was a cucumber. It was the most I’d ever said to him. It was probably the most I’d said to any person in a long time. I pulled my cup up to my mouth and closed my eyes. “All right,” he said, finally. “I’ll do the surgery on one condition.” “What’s that?” “You see a counselor.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Someone could take your body, use it, beat it, treat it like it’s a piece of trash, but what hurts far worse than the actual physical attack is the darkness it injects into you. Rape works its way into your DNA. You aren’t you anymore, you’re the girl who was raped. And you can’t get it out. You can’t stop feeling like it’s going to happen again, or that you’re worthless, or that anyone could ever want you because you’re tainted and used. Someone else thought you were nothing, so you assume that everyone else will as well. Rape was a sinister destroyer of trust and worth and hope. I could fight cancer. I could cut chunks out of my body and inject poison into my veins to fight cancer. But I had no idea how to fight what that man took from me. And what he gave me—fear. I didn’t look at my body when I undressed and stepped into the shower. It wouldn’t be me in that mirror. Over the last few months my eyes had emptied out, become hollow. When I happened upon my reflection somewhere, it hurt. I stood with my back to the water, like Isaac told me, and my eyes rolled back in my head. This was my first shower since the surgery. The nurses had given me a sponge bath, and one had even washed my hair in the little bathroom. She’d pushed a chair right up against the rim of the sink and had me bend my head back while she massaged little bottles of shampoo and conditioner into my hair. I let the water run over me for at least ten minutes before I had the nerve to reach up and soap the empty place below my collar bone. I felt…nothing. When I was finished, patted dry and dressed in pajama pants, I called Isaac upstairs. Some of my steri-strips had come loose. I stood quietly as he worked to fit new ones on, my wet hair dripping down my back, my eyes closed. He smelled like rosemary and oregano. I wondered what he was making downstairs. When he was done, I slipped on a shirt and turned my back to him while I buttoned up the front of it. When I turned back around Isaac was holding the hairbrush I’d tossed on the bed. I’d been unsure of how to lift my arms high enough to work out the tangles. Pouring shampoo on my head had been one thing, brushing felt like an impossible feat. He gestured to the stool in front of my vanity. “You’re so strange,” I said, once I was seated. I was working hard to keep my eyes on his reflection and not look at my face. He glanced down at me, his strokes gentle and even. His fingernails were square and broad; there was nothing messy or ugly about his hands. “Why do you say that?”

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

  "His name, therefore, began to atract large audiences, and although musical critics were divided in their opinions, the papers always had long articles about him." "And—being so much in love with him—you had the fortitude to suffer, and yet to resist the temptation of seeing him." "I was young and inexperienced, therefore moral; for what is morality but prejudice?" "Prejudice?" "Well, is nature moral? Does the dog that smells and licks with evident gusto the first bitch that he meets, trouble his unsophisticated brains with morality? Does the poodle that endeavours to sodomize that little cur coming across the street care what a canine Mrs. Grundy will say about him? "No, unlike poodles, or young Arabs, I had been inculcated with all kinds of wrong ideas, so when I understood what my natural feelings for Teleny were, I was staggered, horrified; and filled with dismay, I resolved to stifle them. "Indeed, had I known human nature better, I should have left France, gone to the antipodes, placed the Himalayas as a barrier between us." "Only to yield to your natural tastes with someone else, or with him, had you happened to meet unexpectedly after many years." "You are quite right; physiologists tell us that the body of man changes after seven years; a man's passions, however, remain always the same; though smouldering in a latent state, they are in his bosom all the same; his nature is surely no better because he has not given vent to them. He is only humbugging himself and cheating everybody by pretending to be what he is not; I know that I was born a sodomite, the fault is my constitution's, not mine own. "I read all I could find about the love of one man for another, that loathsome crime against nature taught to us not only by the very gods themselves, but by all the greatest men of olden times, for even Minos himself seems to have sodomized Theseus. "I, of course, looked upon it as a monstrosity, a sin—as Origen says—far worse than idolatry. And yet I had to admit that the world—even after the cities of the plain had been destroyed—throve well enough notwithstanding this aberration, for Paphian girls in the great days of Rome were but too often discarded for pretty little boys. "It was but time for Christianity to come and sweep away all the monstrous vices of this world with its brand new broom. Catholicism later on burnt those men who sowed in a sterile field—in effigy. "The popes had their catamites, the kings had their mignons, and if all the host of priests, monks, friars and caluyers were forgiven, they—it must be admitted—did not always commit buggery, or cast away their seed on rocky soil, although religion did not intend their implements to be baby-making tools. "As for the Templars, if they were burnt, it surely could not have been on account of their pæderasty, for it had been winked at long enough.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Yet the Saudi king’s civil government supported Azzam’s teaching for its own temporal reasons. A study of Saudis who volunteered for Afghanistan and later fought in Bosnia and Chechnya shows that most were chiefly motivated by the desire to help their Muslim brothers and sisters. 19 Nasir al-Bahri, who would become Bin Laden’s bodyguard, gave the fullest and most perceptive explanation of this concern: We were greatly affected by the tragedies we were witnessing and the events we were seeing: children crying, women widowed, and the high number of incidents of rape. When we went forward for jihad, we experienced a bitter reality. We saw things that were more awful than anything we had expected or had heard or seen in the media. It was as though we were like “a cat with closed eyes” that opened its eyes at these woes. 20 This was, he said, a political awakening, and the volunteers began to acquire a global sense of the ummah that transcended national boundaries: “The idea of the umma began to evolve in our minds. We realised we were a nation [ummah] that had a distinguished place among nations.... The issue of nationalism was put out of our minds, and we acquired a wider view than that, namely the issue of the umma.” The welfare of the ummah had always been a deeply spiritual as well as a political concern in Islam, so the plight of their fellow Muslims cut to the core of their Islamic identity. Many were ashamed that Muslim leaders had responded so inadequately to these disasters. “After all those years of humiliation, they could finally do something to help their Muslim brothers,” one respondent explained. Another said that “he would follow the news of his brothers with the deepest empathy, and he wanted to do something, anything, to help them.” One volunteer’s friend remembered that “we would often sit and talk about the slaughtering to which Muslims are subjected, and his eyes would fill with tears.” 21 The survey also found that in nearly every case, there was more sympathy for the victims than hatred for their oppressors. And despite the United States’ support for Israel, there was as yet not much anti-Americanism. “We did not go because of the Americans,” insisted Nasir al-Bahri. Some recruits longed for the glamour of a glorious martyrdom, but many were also lured by the sheer excitement of warfare, the possibility of heroism, and the comradeship of brothers-at-arms.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  My teammates mobbed me. They lifted me up on their shoulders and carried me around the gym. I looked for my mom, but she’d fainted again, so they’d taken her outside to get some fresh air. I looked for my dad. I thought he’d be cheering. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was all quiet-faced as he looked at something else. So I looked at what he was looking at. It was the Wellpinit Redskins, lined up at their end of the court, as they watched us celebrate our victory. I whooped. We had defeated the enemy! We had defeated the champions! We were David who’d thrown a stone into the brain of Goliath! And then I realized something. I realized that my team, the Reardan Indians, was Goliath. I mean, jeez, all of the seniors on our team were going to college. All of the guys on our team had their own cars. All of the guys on our team had iPods and cell phones and PSPs and three pairs of blue jeans and ten shirts and mothers and fathers who went to church and had good jobs. Okay, so maybe my white teammates had problems, serious problems, but none of their problems was life threatening. But I looked over at the Wellpinit Redskins, at Rowdy. I knew that two or three of those Indians might not have eaten breakfast that morning. No food in the house. I knew that seven or eight of those Indians lived with drunken mothers and fathers. I knew that one of those Indians had a father who dealt crack and meth. I knew two of those Indians had fathers in prison. I knew that none of them was going to college. Not one of them. And I knew that Rowdy’s father was probably going to beat the crap out of him for losing this game. I suddenly wanted to apologize to Rowdy, to all of the other Spokanes. I was suddenly ashamed that I’d wanted so badly to take revenge on them. I was suddenly ashamed of my anger, my rage, and my pain. I jumped off my white teammates’ shoulders and dashed into the locker room. I ran into the bathroom, into a toilet stall, and threw up. And then I wept like a baby. Coach and my teammates thought I was crying tears of happiness. But I wasn’t. I was crying tears of shame. I was crying because I had broken my best friend’s heart. But God has a way of making things even out, I guess. Wellpinit never recovered from their loss to us. They only won a couple more games the rest of the season and didn’t qualify for the playoffs. However, we didn’t lose another game in the regular season and were ranked number one in the state as we headed into the playoffs.

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

  His eyes, his mouth, his moustache, and even his beard, all were new. Each time it was a beautiful and touching physiognomy, and these transformations were produced suddenly in the penumbra; and for five minutes it was the same face, that could not be compared to that of five minutes before. And then, I know not how, it changed again, and became unrecognizable. CHAPTER IV. “Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful history,—yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than the outcome.” He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and began:— “To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning. It must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my marriage. First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman of the steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University pupil, a graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year. But before talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly, and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a débauché, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality. “The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of this, I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love was to be incomparable, the purity of our conjugal life stainless. I thought thus, and all the time I marvelled at the nobility of my projects. “At the same time, I passed ten years of my adult life without hurrying toward marriage, and I led what I called the well-regulated and reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of it before my friends, and before all men of my age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of special refinements. I was not a seducer, I had no unnatural tastes, I did not make debauchery the principal object of my life; but I found pleasure within the limits of society’s rules, and innocently believed myself a profoundly moral being. The women with whom I had relations did not belong to me alone, and I asked of them nothing but the pleasure of the moment. “In all this I saw nothing abnormal. On the contrary, from the fact that I did not engage my heart, but paid in cash, I supposed that I was honest.

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

  "Monsieur," said she, "I ask neither alms of you nor a position as your scullion; it was all too recently I took leave of an estate loftier than that which might make those two favors desirable; I am not yet reduced to imploring them; I am soliciting advice whereof my youth and my misfortunes put me in need, and you would have me purchase it at an excessively inflated price." Ashamed thus to have been unmasked, the pastor promptly drove the little creature away, and the unhappy Justine, twice rejected on the first day of her condemnation to isolation, now enters a house above whose door she spies a shingle; she rents a small chamber on the fourth floor, pays in advance for it, and, once established, gives herself over to lamentations all the more bitter because she is sensitive and because her little pride has just been compromised cruelly. We will allow ourselves to leave her in this state for a short while in order to return to Juliette and to relate how, from the very ordinary condition in which she sets forth, no better furnished with resources than her sister, she nevertheless attains, over a period of fifteen years, the position of a titled woman, with an income of thirty thousand pounds, very handsome jewels, two or three houses in the city, as many in the country and, at the present moment, the heart, the fortune and the confidence of Monsieur de Corville, Councillor to the State, an important man much esteemed and about to have a minister's post. Her rise was not, there can be no question of it, unattended by difficulties: 'tis by way of the most shameful, most onerous apprenticeship that these ladies attain their objectives; and 'tis in all likelihood a veteran of unnumbered campaigns one may find today abed with a Prince: perhaps she yet carries the humiliating marks of the brutality of the libertines into whose hands her youth and inexperience flung her long ago. Upon leaving the convent, Juliette went to find a woman whose name she had once heard mentioned by a youthful friend; perverted was what she desired to be and this woman was to pervert her; she arrived at her house with a small parcel under her arm, clad in a blue dressing gown nicely disarrayed, her hair straggling carelessly about, and showing the prettiest face in the world, if it is true that for certain eyes indecency may have its charms; she told her story to this woman and begged her to afford her the sanctuary she had provided her former friend. "How old are you?" Madame Duvergier demanded. "I will be fifteen in a few days, Madame," Juliette replied. "And never hath mortal . . ." the matron continued. "No, Madame, I swear it," answered Juliette. "But, you know, in those convents," said the old dame, "sometimes a confessor, a nun, a companion... I must have conclusive evidence."

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Reformers inherited the doctrine of persecution from their mother Church, and practised it as far as they had the power. They fought intolerance with intolerance. They differed favorably from their opponents in the degree and extent, but not in the principle, of intolerance. They broke down the tyranny of popery, and thus opened the way for the development of religious freedom; but they denied to others the liberty which they exercised themselves. The Protestant governments in Germany and Switzerland excluded, within the limits of their jurisdiction, the Roman Catholics from all religious and civil rights, and took exclusive possession of their churches, convents, and other property. They banished, imprisoned, drowned, beheaded, hanged, and burned Anabaptists, Antitrinitarians, Schwenkfeldians, and other dissenters. In Saxony, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark no religion and public worship was allowed but the Lutheran. The Synod of Dort deposed and expatriated all Arminian ministers and school-teachers. The penal code of Queen Elizabeth and the successive acts of Uniformity aimed at the complete extermination of all dissent, whether papal or protestant, and made it a crime for an Englishman to be anything else than an Episcopalian. The Puritans when in power ejected two thousand ministers from their benefices for non-conformity; and the Episcopalians paid them back in the same coin when they returned to power. "The Reformers," says Gibbon, with sarcastic severity, "were ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The nature of the tiger was the same, but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs."1008 Protestant persecution violates the fundamental principle of the Reformation. Protestantism has no right to exist except on the basis of freedom of conscience. How, then, can we account for this glaring inconsistency? There is a reason for everything. Protestant persecution was necessary in self-defence and in the struggle for existence. The times were not ripe for toleration. The infant Churches could not have stood it. These Churches had first to be consolidated and fortified against surrounding foes. Universal toleration at that time would have resulted in universal confusion and upset the order of society. From anarchy to absolute despotism is but one step. The division of Protestantism into two rival camps, the Lutheran and the Reformed, weakened it; further divisions within these camps would have ruined it and prepared an easy triumph for united Romanism, which would have become more despotic than ever before. This does not justify the principle, but it explains the practice, of intolerance.

• From Between Us

  They rather have the meaning of keeping you out, and of breaking connection. True connection also means to share your innermost feelings, even if these do not paint you or the relationship in the most favorable light. Telling close others that you are jealous or angry, or even that you feel hurt by their behaviors, shows you as authentic, human, and willing to make connection. The Dutch virtue of “honest authenticity” is so ingrained in me that I have found myself on many occasions (politely) expressing my views or making revelations about my emotions to American colleagues, school teachers, and friends, only to realize how “Dutch” I had been. Who was asking for those opinions? Who wanted those revelations? (No one!) I often realized that there was no need to share my feelings and thoughts in an American context, only after having divulged my inner self. After decades of living in the United States I still catch myself doing it occasionally. My American friends punctuate my self-disclosure, as when my friend Ann Kring pointedly commented “Thank you for sharing” after I had explained in great detail some convoluted story about my emotions (how I had felt rejected when I thought I was not included in some breakfast arrangement, only to discover that people had tried to include me, and that I was mistaken). She did me a service, the Dutch way, by telling me that my self-disclosure was inappropriate, and in the process, socializing me. Everybody’s Emotions Are Cultured Coming to America made me aware, for the first time, that my own emotions were not like those of people from this other culture. This would not have been remarkable, because it was the first time I had lived outside of the European continent—save for a small, but important detail: I had just spent the preceding six years studying cultural variations in emotions. Given that my research expertise was the role of culture in emotion, my failure to recognize my own emotions as cultured goes to show the difficulty of recognizing our own emotions as anything but natural. Even to me, as a cultural psychologist who studied emotions for a living, it was impossible to see my own emotions as products of culture, until I had a real stake in being part of another culture—until I became an immigrant to the United States. Many an ethnographer has similarly run “into painful reminders, of [her] failure to share emotional assumptions or commitments” of the people with whom they stayed. The late anthropologist Jean Briggs described in her now-famous ethnography Never in Anger how, only after she got ostracized, she fully grasped how different (and inappropriate) her own emotions must have been from the perspective of the Utku Inuit, who lived in the Canadian Northwest Territories.

• From Between Us

  W. Norton & Company, 1937), as cited in Sheikh, “Cultural Variations in Shame’s Responses,” 2014; Gershen Kaufman, The Psychology of Shame: Theory and Treatment of Shame-Based Syndromes (New York: Springer Publishing Co., 2004). 100 vulnerable to depression, anxiety, and somatic symptoms: Jeffrey Stuewig et al., “Children’s Proneness to Shame and Guilt Predict Risky and Illegal Behaviors in Young Adulthood,” Child Psychiatry and Human Development 46, no. 2 (2015): 217–27. The attention of clinical psychologists has been devoted to the “shame-prone” individual, rather than to isolated instances of shame. 100 “a short step . . . disapproving”: June P. Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing, Shame and Guilt (New York: Guilford Press, 2002), 93. 101 care about your bond with others: The common thread across shame instances may be that it is a bid for acceptance, or at the very least, an acknowledgment that acceptance by others may be problematic. Some have proposed that shame has grown out of an act of subordinance: the less powerful yielding to the more powerful (Daniel M. T. Fessler, “Shame in Two Cultures: Implications for Evolutionary Approaches,” Journal of Cognition and Culture 4, no. 2 [2004]: 207–62. See also, Dacher Keltner and LeeAnne Harker, “The Forms and Functions of the Nonverbal Signal of Shame,” in Shame: Interpersonal Behavior, Psychopathology, and Culture, ed. P. Gilbert and B. Andrews [Oxford University Press, 1998], 78–98). Shame is not universally limited to situations in which the self is poorly evaluated (Fessler, 2004). 101 “An Admirable Culture of Shame”: Nassrine Azimi, “An Admirable Culture of Shame,” New York Times, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/opinion/08iht-edazimi.html. 101 Shame fits this focus on self-criticism: Steven J. Heine et al., “Is There a Universal Need for Positive Self-Regard?,” Psychological Review 106, no. 4 (1999): 770. 101 Shame is . . . less unpleasant in Japanese: Kimball A. Romney, Carmella C. Moore, and Craig D. Rusch, “Cultural Universals: Measuring the Semantic Structure of Emotion Terms in English and Japanese,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94, no. 10 (1997): 5489–94. 102 keen motivation not to burden others: E.g., Hiroshi Azuma, “Two Modes of Cognitive Socialization in Japan and the United States,” in Cross-Cultural Roots of Minority Child Development, ed. Patricia M. Greenfield and Rodney R. Cocking (Hillsdale, NJ: Psychology Press, 1994), 275–84; Akiko Hayashi, Mayumi Karasawa, and Joseph Tobin, “The Japanese Preschool’s Pedagogy of Feeling: Cultural Strategies for Supporting Young Children’s Emotional Development,” Ethos 37, no. 1 (March 2009): 32–49. 102 risks jeopardizing the relationship: Psychologists Yukiko Uchida and Shinobu Kitayama make a similar observation (“Happiness and Unhappiness in East and West: Themes and Variations,” Emotion 9, no. 4 [2009]: 442): “Unhappiness in East and West: Themes and Variations,” Emotion 9, no. 4 [2009]: 442): “Accomplishing one’s goals might be perceived as good insofar as others also feel happy about it. If it should invite envy of others, the sense of accomplishment might be compromised.”

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

  Permit me to conceal my name and birth, Madame; without being illustrious, they are distinguished, and my origins did not destine me to the humiliation to which you see me reduced. When very young I lost my parents; provided with the slender inheritance they had left me, I thought I could expect a suitable position and, refusing to accept all those which were not, I gradually spent, at Paris where I was born, the little I possessed; the poorer I became, the more I was despised; the greater became my need of support, the less I was able to hope for it; but from amongst all the severities to which I was exposed at the beginning of my woeful career, from amongst all the terrible proposals that were made me, I will cite to you what befell me at the home of Monsieur Dubourg, one of the capital's richest tradesmen. The woman with whom I had lodgings had recommended him to me as someone whose influence and wealth might be able to meliorate the harshness of my situation; after having waited a very long time in this man's antechamber, I was admitted; Monsieur Dubourg, aged forty-eight, had just risen out of bed, and was wrapped in a dressing gown which barely hid his disorder; they were about to prepare his coiffure; he dismissed his servants and asked me what I wanted with him. "Alas, Monsieur," I said, greatly confused, "I am a poor orphan not yet fourteen years old and I have already become familiar with every nuance of misfortune; I implore your commiseration, have pity upon me, I beseech you," and then I told in detail of all my ills, the difficulty I was having to find a place, perhaps I even mentioned how painful it was for me to have to take one, not having been born for a menial's condition. My suffering throughout it all, how I exhausted the little substance I had... failure to obtain work, my hope he would facilitate matters and help me find the wherewithal to live; in sum, I said everything that is dictated by the eloquence of wretchedness, always swift to rise in a sensitive soul.... After having listened to me with many distractions and much yawning, Monsieur Dubourg asked whether I had always been well-behaved. "I should be neither so poor nor so embarrassed, Monsieur," I answered him, "had I wished to cease to be." "But," said Dubourg upon hearing that, "but what right have you to expect the wealthy to relieve you if you are in no way useful to them?" "And of what service are you speaking, Monsieur? I asked nothing more than to render those decency and my years will permit me fulfill." "The services of a child like yourself are of no great use in a household," Dubourg replied to me. "You have neither the age nor the appearance to find the place you are seeking.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Sara didn’t believe in divorce—it was a terrible stigma at the time—and she still thought she could save Ron. “ I kept thinking that he must be suffering or he wouldn’t act that way.” And so, she went back to him. Ron took a loan and bought a house trailer, and he and Sara drove across the country to Port Orchard, where his parents and his undivorced first wife and children were living. Sara had no idea why people treated her so strangely, until finally Hubbard’s son Nibs told her that his parents were still married. Once again, Sara fled. Ron found her waiting for the ferry that was leaving for California. The engines of the ship grumbled as Ron hastily pleaded his case. He told her that he really was getting a divorce. He claimed that an attorney had assured him that he and Sara actually were legally married. Finally, the ferry left without her. Soon after that, Ron and Sara set out for Hollywood. They got as far as Ojai, California, where Ron was arrested for failing to make payments on the house trailer they were living in. In October 1947, Hubbard sent the VA an alarming and revealing plea: I am utterly unable to approach anything like my own competence. My last physician informed me that it might be very helpful if I were to be examined and perhaps treated psychiatrically or even by a psychoanalyst.… I avoided out of pride any mental examinations, hoping that time would balance a mind which I had every reason to suppose was seriously affected.… I cannot, myself, afford such treatment. Would you please help me? Nothing came of this request. There is no record that the VA conducted a psychological assessment of Hubbard. Throughout his life, however, questions would arise about his sanity. Russell Miller, a British biographer, tracked down an ex-lover of Hubbard’s, who described him as “ a manic depressive with paranoid tendencies.” The woman, whom Miller called “Barbara Kaye” (her real name was Barbara Klowden), later became a psychologist. She added, “ He said he always wanted to found a religion like Moses or Jesus.” A man who later worked in the church as Hubbard’s medical officer, Jim Dincalci, listed his traits: “ Paranoid personality. Delusions of grandeur. Pathological lying.” Dr. Stephen Wiseman, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, who has been a prominent critic of Scientology, speculated that a possible diagnosis of Hubbard’s personality would be “ malignant narcissism,” which he characterizes as “a highly insecure individual protecting himself with aggressive grandiosity, disavowal of any and every need from others, antisocial orientation, and a heady and toxic mix of rage/anger/aggression/violence and paranoia.” And yet, if Hubbard was paranoid, it was also true that he really was often pursued, first by creditors and later by grand juries and government investigators.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  As soon as he returned to France, he defended his real conviction more boldly than ever. He spoke of Pope Leo IX. and Nicolas II. in language as severe as Luther used five centuries later.732 Lanfranc attacked him in his book on the eucharist, and Berengar replied very sharply in his chief work on the Lord’s Supper (between 1063 and 1069.)733 His friends gradually withdrew, and the wrath of his enemies grew so intense that he was nearly killed at a synod in Poitiers (1075 or 1076). Hildebrand who in the mean time had ascended the papal throne as Gregory VlI., summoned Berengar once more to Rome in 1078, hoping to give him peace, as he had done at Tours in 1054. He made several attempts to protect him against the fanaticism of his enemies. But they demanded absolute recantation or death. A Lateran Council in February, 1079, required Berengar to sign a formula which affirmed the conversion of substance in terms that cut off all sophistical escape.734 He imprudently appealed to his private interviews with Gregory, but the pope could no longer protect him without risking his own reputation for orthodoxy, and ordered him to confess his error. Berengar submitted. "Confounded by the sudden madness of the pope," he says, "and because God in punishment for my sins did not give me a steadfast heart, I threw myself on the ground and confessed with impious voice that I had erred, fearing the pope would instantly pronounce against me the sentence of excommunication, and that, as a necessary consequence, the populace would hurry me to the worst of deaths." The pope, however, remained so far true to him that he gave him two letters of recommendation, one to the bishops of Tours and Angers, and one to all the faithful, in which he threatened all with the anathema who should do him any harm in person or estate, or call him a heretic.735 Berengar returned to France with a desponding heart and gave up the hopeless contest. He was now an old man and spent the rest of his life in strict ascetic seclusion on the island of St. Côme (Cosmas) near Tours, where he died in peace 1088. Many believed that he did penance for his heresy, and his friends held an annual celebration of his memory on his grave. But what he really regretted was his cowardly treason to the truth as he held it. This is evident from the report of his trial at Rome which he drew up after his return.736 It concludes with a prayer to God for forgiveness, and to the Christian reader for the exercise of charity. "Pray for me that these tears may procure me the compassion of the Almighty."

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Nothing was okay. But, I didn’t say that. Instead, I thought about the way he knew exactly what to do and what to say to keep me calm/ He was a doctor; in hindsight it all made sense. If I could choose my ride home, I choose not to ride in the back of a police cruiser. I nodded. He glanced at the cop who seemed more than happy to hand me off. A rape case on Christmas Day, who wanted to be reminded that there was evil in the world while Santa and his reindeer were still leaving contrails in the sky? Dr. Asterholder walked me out a side door and into a staff parking lot. He’d offered to pull around the front of the building to pick me up, but I’d shaken my head firmly. His car was nondescript. The unflashy hybrid. It looked a little self-righteous. He opened the door for me, waited until my feet were tucked in … closed it … walked around to his side. I stared out the window at the rain. I wanted to apologize for ruining his Christmas. For getting raped in the first place. For making him feel as if he had to drive me home. “Your address?” he asked. I pulled my eyes away from the rain. “1226 Atkinson Drive.” His hand hovered over the GPS before moving back to the steering wheel. “The stone house? On the hill—with the vines on the chimney?” I nod. My house was noticeable from all across the lake, but he must live near if he’d seen it close enough to know about the vines. “I live in the area,” he said a moment later. “It’s a beautiful house.” “Yes,” I said absently. I suddenly felt cold. I lifted my hands to my arms to catch the goose bumps, and he turned up the heat without me asking. I saw a family crossing the parking lot, each with an armful of presents. All four of them were wearing Christmas hats, from the toddler to the beer-bellied father. They looked hopeful. “Why aren’t you with your family on Christmas?” I asked him. He pulled out of the lot and turned onto the street. It was one o’clock on Christmas Day so, for once, there was no traffic. “I moved here from Raleigh two months ago. My family is back East. I couldn’t get enough time off to go see them. Plus hospitals are short staffed on Christmas. I was scheduled to come in later today.” I looked out the window again. There was silence for a few miles, and then I said, “I didn’t scream … maybe if I’d screamed—” “You were in the woods, and it was Christmas morning. There was no one to hear you.” “But I could have tried. Why didn’t I try?” Dr. Asterholder looked at me. We were at a light, so he could. “Why didn’t I get there sooner? Just ten minutes and I could have saved you…”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I sat back, satisfied that I’d filled the session with enough information to keep Saphira the Dragon happy. She raised her eyebrows, which I figured was the prompt to keep talking. “That’s it,” I snapped “I’m fine. He’s fine. Life moved on.” I pulled out my grey and smoothed it back behind my ear. “Where is Nick now?” she asked. “Do you keep in contact?” I shook my head. “We tried that for a while. It was too painful.” “For you, or him?” I stared at her blankly. Weren’t breakups always painful for everyone involved? Maybe not… “He moved to San Francisco after he published his last book. Last I heard he was living with someone.” I looked at the finches while she wrote on her notepad. I had to turn my back to her to do it, but it felt good, like passive-aggressive defiance. “Did you read his book?” I waited a second to turn back around, just enough time to rearrange my face. I lifted a hand to my throat, wrapping my forefinger and thumb under my chin. Nick used to say it looked like I was trying to strangle myself. I suppose subconsciously I was. I quickly pulled my hand away. “He wrote it about me … about us.” I had thought that would be enough, that it would divert her attention and allow me to breathe. But she waited patiently for my answer. Did you read his book? Her chocolate eyes were unblinking. “No, I didn’t read it.” “Why not?” “Because I can’t,” I snapped. “I don’t want to read about how I failed him and broke his heart.” It felt okay to say. The problems I had two years ago with Nick felt welcome compared to what was lurking in the shallow tide pools of my memory. “He mailed me a copy. It’s been sitting on my nightstand for two years.” I glanced at the clock … hoping. And, yes! Our time was up. I jumped up and grabbed my purse. “I hate this,” I said. “But my stupid surgeon won’t operate unless I talk to you.” She nodded. “I’ll see you Thursday.” I was shrugging my coat on and opening the door when she called after me. “Senna.” I paused, one arm not all the way in my sleeve. “Read the book,” she said. I left without saying goodbye. Dr. Elgin was humming softly as the door quietly shut behind me. It was the first time I’d driven myself anywhere. I brought Isaac’s CD, and I played Landscape all the way home. It calmed me. Why? I’d love to know. Maybe Saphira could eventually tell me. It was the only song I owned that actually had words attached to it, and the beat wasn’t particularly soothing. Quite the opposite.

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

  But in this general survey, you may be sure, the most material spot of me was not excused the strictest visitation; nor was it but agreed, that I had not the least reason to be diffident of passing even for a maid, on occasion; so inconsiderable a flaw had my preceding adventures created there, and so soon had the blemish of an over-stretch been repaired and worn out at any age, and in my naturally small make in that part. Now, whether my partner had exhausted all the modes of regaling the touch or sight, or whether he was now ungovernably wound up to strike, I know not; but briskly throwing off his clothes, the prodigious heat bred by a close room, a great fire, numerous candles, and even the inflammatory warmth of these scenes, induced him to lay aside his shirt too, when his breeches, before loosened, now gave up their contents to view, and shew’d in front the enemy I had to engage with, stiffly bearing up the port of its head unhooded, and glowing red. Then I plainly saw what I had to trust to: it was one of those just true-sized instruments, of which the masters have a better command than the more unwieldy, inordinate sized one are generally under. Straining me then close to his bosom, as he stood up foreright against me, and applying to the obvious niche its peculiar idol, he aimed at inserting it, which, as I forwardly favoured, he effected at once, by canting up my thighs over his naked hips, and made me receive every inch, and close home; so-that stuck upon the pleasure-pivot, add clinging round his neck, in which and in his hair I hid my face, burn-ingly flushing with present feeling as much as with shame, my bosom glued to him; he carried me once round the couch, on which he then, without quitting the middle-fastness, or dischannelling, laid me down, and began with pleasure-grist.

• From Between Us

  Mother says, “School master has said that we should follow fixed work and rest routines, otherwise School master will reproach us.” [Both children] wonder if School master will reproach her. Mother answers: “That day, wasn’t School master reproaching . . . me?” Both children ask why. Mother replies, “She said I did not raise you two well, and that I did not have you sleep during nap time, right?” If her children misbehave, it will be the mother who is blamed for not teaching and raising them well. Implicit is the shame-sharing: the child’s shameful behavior reflects badly on their parents and family. Many parents articulate the shame-sharing, saying, “You made your mother lose face” or “such a disobedient child.” But perhaps more important is that, through invoking an authority figure—the schoolmaster in the case of Axin’s mom—the bond between the child and the parent remains intact. It is not the mom rejecting the child, but the child and the mom jointly having to meet external demands. There is a basic alliance between the child and their parents (or relatives). This alliance makes for the wider impact of norm violations, but also means that shame is not nearly as threatening as it is in Western cultures. Shame among the Minangkabau and in Taiwan calls for remedying what is wrong, but it does not challenge the bond between a child and their most important caregivers. Having shame is seen as a virtue: it reveals that you have a sense of social norms, and it will prevent you from violating these norms. Having shame keeps you attentive to how others see you, but in so doing, keeps you from the misconduct that would have led to social exclusion. Adult Minangkabau cite malu as source of normative behavior, saying, “Malu makes us behave carefully so that we don’t do something bad or wrong.” And similarly, the Taiwanese mothers want to teach their children propriety by helping them to feel shame. Across cultures, caregivers want what is best for their child: among the Minangkabau and among Taiwanese families, “knowing shame” best prepares children to be valued members of their society. Raising a Child Who Knows Fear A central goal of socialization among the Bara in the southern part of Madagascar is to be docile. Bara society is segmented and hierarchical: the basic segment of the Bara social organization consists of three or four generations of living descendants from a single ancestral spirit. The ideal behavior for Bara children is to be docile, submissive, and compliant with anything their elders want them to do: Bara children are made to follow the directives of their elders without protest. To that end, they should “know tahotsy, that is, they should readily fear their elder relatives.” Fear, according to anthropologist Birgitt Röttger-Rössler and developmental psychologist Manfred Holodynski, is the socializing emotion.

• From Between Us

  That shame is socially debilitating is also clear from a study with salespeople in the financial sector, this time in the Netherlands. Marketing professors Richard Bagozzi, Willem Verbeke, and Jacinto Gavino developed shame stories that involved customers. For instance, the customer points out that the salesperson has neglected to fulfill a promise they previously made to the customer, or the salesperson discovers a mistake in their own presentation. Salespeople were asked to report the shame responses they had when something similar occurred to them. The Dutch salespeople felt what Dorothy called “exposed.” They imagined that customers would be scrutinizing every one of their behaviors and seeing right through them. They also felt “worthless,” the word Ryan used: they imagined that the customer knew that they were “an incomplete and inadequate person,” and “a failure as an individual.” And, finally, they felt the acute sense of shame, which neither Ryan nor Dorothy described because their stories were so far in the past. The salespeople imagined they would feel like “crawling in a hole,” “suddenly shrinking,” and “physically weak” and “tongue-tied.” To the Dutch salespeople, shame meant feeling exposed, feeling a failure, and feeling small and weak. Bagozzi and his colleagues were particularly interested in how shame would affect the relationship with customers. They reasoned that Dutch salespeople, coming from an individualist culture (similar to the U.S.), would “strive to be unique, to promote their own goals, to feel self-assured, and to compare themselves with others so as to surpass or achieve better achievement.” When shamed, Dutch salespeople would become aware that their actions or accomplishments were negatively evaluated, and this would be a threat to how they wanted to feel. As they felt “denigrated and ridiculed,” Bagozzi and colleagues reasoned, Dutch salespeople would be preoccupied trying to protect their self-esteem—so preoccupied, in fact, that they would not have the bandwidth to attend to their customer. This is what they found: Dutch salespeople who were ashamed became reluctant to take any chances in the relationship—they did not ask questions, they did not engage in small talk, and they did not make any business proposals. They became less effective communicators and they were no longer able to deliver appropriate service to the customer. Shame itself became a burden, and made the salespeople withdraw from their social engagements, as shame seemed to have done for Ryan and Dorothy. It is possible that shame is so uncomfortable that we try to collectively avoid it? When was the last time you heard someone talk about being ashamed? In our own research, Michael Boiger asked U.S. and Japanese college students to rate situations that had elicited shame in previous groups of American and Japanese college students.