ELINA M. REENKOLARitokalliontie 8 E,00330 Helsinki, Finland elina.reenkola@kolumbus.fi

Female shame as an unconscious inner

conflict

Female shame as an unconscious inner

conflict

Summary:

The author discusses shame as an internal conflict.

The matrix of shame consists of conflicts arising

from the intertwined emergence of the awareness of

one’s separateness and desire. Internal conflicts

may emerge from symbiotic desires and strivings for

separate love, from oedipal sexual desires as well

as from aggression. Disappointments in desire for

love and reciprocity may predispose one to shame.

However, I argue that shame arises only if these

factors lead to an inner conflict between the ego

and the ego ideal and feelings of unlovability.

2

Gender specific features manifest themselves in

shame. Moving into the realm of separate love from

symbiotic love is hard work for a girl. The change

of the object of love and the consequent two

rejections are a specific blow to a girl’s

narcissism. Women’s unique physical experiences

influence her shame as well. The female pleasures

and treasures locate within her body, invisible.

Her genital body zones are linked to fecal and

urethral zones. Her body boundaries are shamefully

incontinent; leaking fluids like menstrual blood

and milk. Intrusion into her inner space by incest,

rape or sexual abuse may evoke mortal shame. In the

vulnerable area of motherhood the woman’s shame may

be profound.

Shame arises as a stifling, often sudden feeling

when people are revealed as being inadequate at the

moment they express their innermost desires. Being

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humiliated or rejected is often related to shame.

It is the opposite of honor, esteem, pride and

satisfaction. Shame evokes the desire to hide, to

crawl underground. Various protective mechanisms -

denial of shame; projecting it onto others; turning

shame into its opposite, shamelessness and

arrogance; despising or mitigating others; denying

value; being compelled to succeed or fears of

success - can hide unbearable shame. Shame touches

the entire self. In my view, the matrix of shame

might well be the conflicts arising from the

intertwined emergence of the awareness of one’s

separateness and desire. I discuss shame as an

inner conflict. I shall here examine woman’s shame

separately, since gender differences manifest

themselves in the experience of shame. I shall

further discuss how shame is influenced by the

vicissitudes of a girl’s love in the change of the

object of love as well as by women’s unique

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physical experiences, such as sensations of

pleasure within the body, the potential to grow a

baby inside herself and breastfeed the baby.

____

An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the EPF Conference, Helsinki 2004 and the XIX Nordic Psychoanalytic Congress, Copenhagen 2004.

Inner conflict

Shame can be viewed as an inner conflict where the

fulfillment of a certain wish or a gratifying

sensory experience is blocked by internal causes.

In the model of shame conflict, wishes to be loved

and be good enough for others are shattered by

internal comparisons.

A person always compares one’s self to one’s self-

ideals. When there is tension between the ego ideal

and the ego, shame and problems with self-esteem

arise (Piers & Singer 1971, Chasseguet-Smirgel

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1985). What emerges as a consequence is the signal

anxiety of shame, the activation of unconscious

defense mechanisms which lead to new compromise

constructs. This model of shame follows the

traditional model of conflict in which the wish to

satisfy the drives conflicts with inner constraints

(Hutton 2003). Internal conflicts evoking shame

also emerge from strivings for separateness and

symbiotic wishes, from oedipal sexual desires as

well as from aggression.

Freud (1900) wrote about shame as a psychic

conflict between a desire to exhibit ourselves and

inner censorship. This conflict can be expressed in

typical dreams where the dreamer is naked and

ashamed, unable to move. Such dreams represent the

desire to exhibit and to reveal, the desired

opposite of hiding and secrecy. Freud also linked

shame to sexuality.

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Awareness of separateness and desire

How could we understand a woman’s shame? Why is it

shameful for a woman to expose her ego and reveal

her desire? Let me start with the bond between

daughter and mother that is so strong.

Consequently, symbolic matricide, manifested as

attaining clear separateness from the mother, the

one like herself, the object of her identification

and love is hard work (Reenkola 2002). Aggression,

even in the service of the affirmation of ego

boundaries and differentiation is not easy for her.

Separateness may mean destruction for one or both

of the partners of the symbiotic union. Losing the

mother as the object of symbiotic love and moving

into the realm of separate love is a pivotal moment

in a girl’s development. It calls for a specific

kind of psychic work, “woman’s work”. Strong

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separateness and clear ego boundaries are not a

woman’s most characteristic traits. Being loved is

especially important for women. Would this be the

soil conducive to the growth of a woman’s

susceptibility to feelings of shame?

I will begin by examining the pendulum movement

between separateness and oneness which begins at

the start of life and continues throughout the

woman’s life, particularly during pregnancy,

delivery and motherhood. My thinking has been

influenced by Freud’s views as well as Wurmser’s

views of shame and its genetic triad during a

child’s rapprochement crisis. Another influence has

been Reenkola’s views on the ego.

The fate of the human child is to be helpless and

absolutely dependent on the care of a vitally

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important mother or other adult caregiver at the

beginning of his/her long life. The illusion of

psychic unity alternates with experiences of

separateness from the start of life. Freud (1925,

p. 238) assumed that a baby can differentiate

between internal and external stimuli from the

beginning of life. Only gradually, at a later

stage, can the baby distinguish the mother’s breast

and the mother as a separate object. Thus the

baby’s ability to differentiate between internal

and external stimuli develops earlier, and the

ability to perceive mother as a separate object

only later.

Desire and separateness, drive and object are

intertwined in a dialectical process. Becoming

aware of one’s desire also means the gradual

emergence of the experience of separateness. In the

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primary narcissistic state within the womb, the

baby has no separate desire. Through the umbilical

chord, hunger is automatically satiated. After

birth, the emergence of hunger and appetite

gradually accelerate the experience of desire and

separateness. Disappointments in obtaining

immediate gratification gradually awaken the baby

into awareness of her mother and of separateness.

In small doses, disappointments accelerate the

development of an awareness of separateness -

continuous and severe disappointments do not. This

makes it necessary for the baby to do psychic work

to define the boundaries of his/her ego (Reenkola T

1983). As sexual desires become more powerful,

awareness of separateness is further reinforced.

For a girl, the milestone on the road to

separateness is her discovery of her clitoris. When

the girl finds pleasure in her own genitalia and

creates masturbation fantasies, she cannot share

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these with her mother. This magnifies the girl’s

budding awareness of her own, separate desire.

Revealing and expressing love and sexual desire

emphasize the experience of separateness and force

the girl to redefine over and over again the

boundaries of her ego, and in puberty yet again,

through psychic work.

As the symbiotic alliance breaks down, the child

becomes aware of her separateness and feels

helplessly small, defective and dirty. The archaic

matrix of shame consists of these three factors:

weakness, defectiveness and dirtiness or

incontinence, in the genetic triad of shame

(Wurmser 1994). During the rapprochement crisis the

child experiences three painful losses. The child

loses the illusion of the symbiotic union with the

mother and experiences herself as shamefully

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helpless. The child loses the genital self-

confidence and the illusion of perfection; the

other sex has something that s/he is missing.

Although the girl might have clear experiences of

pleasure from her genitalia, the shameful feelings

of physical deficiency emerge transiently at this

stage. The child also loses “excretory freedom” as

potty training begins around this time. No longer

does the mother always react with admiration to

finding excrement in the child’s pants or diapers.

The child now must control his or her bowel

movements in order to please the mother.

Incontinence and incontrollable bodily contents

begin to feel shameful. Girls are required to be

particularly tidy, clean and smell good. In

addition, for girls the feelings of their own

genital inner space can feel frightening at this

stage, since these, too, are uncontrollable. They

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can become blended with anal contents and evoke

fears of losing control.

The feelings of shame begin to emerge during the

rapprochement crisis. This critical stage requires

particular psychic work from the child. The child

is vulnerable and easily feels that s/he is not

loved, since s/he is, small, sexually deficient and

unable to control the body’s contents or orifices.

This is usually a passing crisis. However, longer

separations from the mother, hospitalizations,

surgical operations, maternal depression or

illness, the transition to daycare etc. can easily

feel intolerable and may subject the child to

powerful shame. Shame is especially reinforced if

the child feels that s/he is not receiving mother’s

compassion and love as the helpless and dependent

child s/he is. Primary shame is born in this

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landscape, in the struggle to find separate love

and, on the other hand, in strivings to remain

engaged in the symbiotic love and to keep the

mother under one’s control. Shame of not being

loved as a separate and desiring being is common to

both sexes.

Faced with his/her fumbling insecurity and

separateness, the child turns to the mother for

strength and reinforcement. Seeing his/her face

mirrored in the mother’s is important for

solidifying the baby’s ego, as Winnicott (1971)

discussed. If the baby “sees herself” in the

mother’s face, she feels that she has been seen, as

real and existing. If the baby does not see herself

reflected in her mother’s face, but instead sees

the mother’s depression, anxiety or rigid defense,

the result can be an experience of chaos or the

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threat of disintegration. This prepares the ground

for powerful shame. Subsequently these experiences

can be given new meanings in new stages,

nachträglich.

The origins of shame can also be analyzed through

the myth of expulsion. Adam and Eve lived in Eden,

naked and without shame, work or trouble, until Eve

defied God’s orders. Tempted by the serpent, Eve

ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and gave

some to Adam as well. From that moment their eyes

opened, they knew good and evil, and were ashamed

of their nakedness. God drove them away from

paradise to till the ground, and in punishment, Eve

would give birth with pain and Adam would have to

suffer hard work. Cherubs would guard the entrance

to paradise. Freud explains that “mankind was naked

in Paradise and was without shame in one another’s

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presence; till a moment arrived when shame and

anxiety awoke, expulsion followed, and sexual life

and the tasks of cultural activity began” (Freud

1900). Eating from the tree of knowledge was

forbidden and punishable by death. The Fall and

expulsion myth also highlights the close

relationship between shame and guilt.

Genesis can be viewed as a story of the loss of

mother’s symbiotic love, the birth of shame and

becoming aware of one’s desires, the “expulsion” or

the emergence of separateness and confronting one’s

oedipal insufficiency. The metaphor of paradise

describes the baby, content in the warm embrace of

the mother, with mother’s fruits - her breasts full

of milk - at the baby’s disposal without toil or

trouble. Shame is born when Eve acts as a separate

subject. The separate will has been projected into

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Eve who tempts even Adam to act disobediently

against God’s will. Expulsion from symbiosis leads

to observing separateness and gender differences

and to the burdensome road leading to the

possession of one’s genitality, becoming vulnerable

to shame. The little child’s rapprochement crisis

has similar dimensions.

Striving for reciprocity and being frustrated in

this striving is the most essential element in the

birth and nature of shame, both according to

Broucek (1982) and Ikonen and Rechardt (1994). They

argue that shame is born when a child’s striving to

accept reciprocity fails, when it receives no

positive reverberation from the mother. The child’s

desire to possess the mother as the object of

fusing love and oedipal love, of having intercourse

or a baby with one’s parent, turns out to be the

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rocks upon which the striving for reciprocity is

shipwrecked. A loved parent suddenly does not act

as the child would like, but quite otherwise.

Consequent feelings of disappointment and hate

clarify the separate desire of the child. I argue

that striving for reciprocity, fulfilling one’s

desire and separateness become intertwined.

Disappointment in strivings for reciprocity is an

essential factor in female shame, too.

Several of the above factors are prerequisites for

shame. Central elements predisposing one to shame

are the feelings of vulnerability and separation

anxiety. The three partial factors of the

rapprochement phase, weakness, defectiveness and

incontinence, lay the ground for shame.

Disappointments in desire for love and reciprocity

may predispose one to shame. However, I argue that

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shame arises only if these factors lead to an inner

conflict where a person judges his/her ego to be

insufficient compared to the ego ideal and feels

unloved.

Shame is a part of normal development. Could it

also be a constructive force which drives one away

from shameless fulfillment of impossible desires

towards their control, towards genitality? Shame

functions as a necessary protection in the striving

for the impossible. Viewed in this way, the

destructive force of the death drive is not

emphasized in shame. Shame becomes the prerequisite

for the formation of culture and civilization.

Shame can be a power which drives people towards

control of their circumstances and towards self-

sufficiency. It can motivate people to control and

sublimate their desires in a civilized, “pure”

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fashion and to strive to turn helplessness into

activity, into “cultural work.” Feeling shame is

also a prerequisite for reciprocity, taking care of

children and the aged. Striving to attain ego

ideals by avoiding shame also brings satisfaction.

However, powerful pathological shame, work of the

negative, the death drive (Green 1999) paralyzes,

causes anxiety and deep pain. Shame can prevent one

from expressing and defending one’s views, from

standing up for one’s rights and taking issue with

injustice. Shame can make a woman remain silent and

submissive. In the most extreme cases, a woman

hides behind a veil, accepts poor treatment and

conceals the violence she is subjected to.

The inner eye

The ego ideal is shaped out of primary narcissism

(Freud 1914). We are not willing to give up a

satisfaction we have once experienced, such as the

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narcissistic perfection of the childhood union with

mother. We attempt to rediscover this lost sense of

perfection in our ego ideal. Pursuit of this ego

ideal continues throughout our lives. The ideal

self can contain demands for perfection which are

predominantly visual and related to one’s

appearance, “an evaluating inner eye.” The woman’s

ego ideal is bisexual (Reenkola 2002). It contains

the possibility to grow up to be like her mother,

to give birth to a baby, to be a perfect mother and

an attractive woman. The feminine core of the

woman’s ego ideal consists of her striving to be

like the lost, perfectly satisfying mother of her

childhood. The ideal of motherhood can be “a

bountiful, nourishing breast” or “an always

comforting embrace.” A woman can also strive

towards the childhood’s lost state of perfection by

pursuing the undivided love of her mother through

phallic accomplishments such as visible academic

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achievement or success in her work or in the public

arena.

This combination of ideals expands the woman’s ego

and opens up potential in two directions, while

also creating conflict and tension from two

directions (Reenkola 2002). This demanding

bipolarity of women’s ideals further explains their

predisposition to shame. An unconscious conflict

between maternal and “masculine” ideals is one of

the fundamental conflicts causing women anxiety.

Especially for a working woman, this conflict is

exacerbated while she is pregnant and later if she

returns to work. There is no ultimate solution for

it, and the woman must keep processing it for her

entire life.

The gaze and being looked at are strongly linked to

shame. From birth onwards, the gaze, alongside with

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sucking and smelling, is important for the baby in

getting to know the mother and the rest of the

world. The gaze can signify active power over

another, spellbinding the other, hypnotizing the

other or being subjected to the power of another or

being fused with them. The gaze is a dangerous

force which must be tamed (Wurmser 1994). Powerful

magical properties are associated with the gaze.

Thus it is necessary to protect everything of

value, everything important, frail and uncertain,

to keep them hidden from the effect of the gaze of

others so they can not be destroyed, conquered or

taken away. In Finnish folklore, people believed in

the “evil eye,” the damaging influence of the gaze.

The evil eye would especially target anything

worthy of envy, such as a bride and bridegroom,

children, cattle, milk, butter, baked goods and

most specifically the harvest and fertility. One

could protect oneself from the influence of the

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evil eye by casting specific countercharms and by

reciting spells.

A central component in feelings of shame is an

“inner eye” which assesses and measures up the

self. A severely critical and disdainful inner eye,

which judges the self to be insubstantial and

imperfect when measured against the perfection-

demanding ego ideal, makes one especially

susceptible to shame. We also have a tendency to

project the inner, assessing eye outside of

ourselves, whereby we experience that others are

measuring us by their gaze. We project demanding

sides of our ego ideal into the audience, which

laughs, derides or despises us. At center stage,

however, is our own assessment of how we are seen

in the eyes of others, of our inner audience. When

we feel guilt, we meet an “inner judge”; in shame

we are measured by an “inner eye.”

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Double rejection

The vicissitudes of a girl’s love are different

from those of a boy, for she changes the love

object from mother to father. The girl’s love has

two objects and she suffers two rejections. The

first love ends in disappointment. The girl can

never become the lover of her mother nor satisfy

her desire which is at the core of the girl’s

shame. Childhood wishes to be the mother’s sexual

partner, are hidden behind deep shame, even in

psychoanalysis. In confronting the primal scene,

where the father satisfies the mother’s desire, the

girl’s narcissism suffers a severe blow. Being

loved and appreciated by her father can help the

girl move beyond this dilemma towards identifying

with her mother. The ambivalent love and hate

relationship with her mother crucially shapes the

vicissitudes of the girl’s aggression and colors

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them with guilt and shame. Moderate levels of shame

can give the girl an impetus to seek new frontiers

in life. However, if identifying with her mother

remains problematic, if the girl cannot love her

mother and feel loved by her, then her

susceptibility to pathological shame increases.

Without a loving relationship with the mother a

girl’s treasures may transform into dregs.

Love of the father and rivalry with the mother can

evoke not only strong feelings of guilt but also

powerful shame. Oedipal love of her father is

doomed to a defeat as well. This is another blow to

girl’s narcissism Securing love becomes essentially

important for the girl. Eternal pendulum between

two loves, between the father and the mother, and

between two identifications, a feminine and a

masculine swings in the woman’s mind. This opens up

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potential in two directions, but brings pressures,

disappointments and shame from two directions as

well. However, the girl can keep her primary

identification with her mother as the solid

foundation of her sexual identity. The two objects

of her childhood love and the two rejections are

the core of a woman’s shame. The cure for shame is

love.

Ugliness

In a woman, shame is often manifested as an

experience of bodily ugliness. Such a feeling can

be evoked irrespective of her actual appearance. A

beautiful woman can feel that she is ugly and

repulsive. Receiving admiration or praise only

provides temporary relief for it. The earliest

backdrop of this feeling of ugliness is the girl’s

experiences of not having been precious for her

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mother as she is, as a separate, little girl. If

the girl has not been mirrored enough nor

“celebrated” (Bollas 2000) or desired enough by her

mother, she is left with the feeling that she and

her body are repulsive. The sudden loss of the

mother’s love due to her depression, the dead

mother (Green 1986), may be experienced by the

child as a catastrophe, an eclipse. Consequently

the aggression is turned inwards. The daughter may

remain identified with the dead mother and the

internalized aggression of the mother becomes the

tie to the mother. This may lead to feelings of a

rotten core (Lax 1997) and an ugly body. The

maternal libidinal unavailability, her absence, may

elicit deep shame in the daughter in addition to

the reactions Green (1986) discusses. She may be

ashamed of her inability to evoke mother’s

goodness, to reanimate her, to reverse the eclipse,

to become like mother’s sexual partner, if these

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are discordant with her ideals. This earliest

experience of ugliness gets additional layers from

oedipal humiliations and rejection by the father.

In her analysis, Ada, 24 wanted to sit face-to-

face, and she looked at me with relentless

intensity. For a long time, she would not tolerate

analyzing the significance of this intense eye-

contact, nor would she give it up, preferring

instead to arrest my gaze. Ada had experienced the

birth of her sister when she was only 13 months old

as a sudden drastic loss of her mother’s symbiotic

love and as a drop into horrifying emptiness where

words lost their meaning. The bridge to her mother

was broken abruptly and cruelly. Significantly her

mother had spoken to her through merely long

correct sentences instead of babbling. This did

not create the transitional space of cooing,

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necessary for the baby to tolerate separateness.

Later in her analysis she was able to reconstruct

and partly remember her mother’s post partum

depression. During her first years of analysis, as

Ada worked through her anxiety over her loss of

symbiotic love, she experienced desperate

dejection, filled with self-destructive thoughts

which alternated with fits of rage. Giving up the

eye contact felt like falling into an abyss for

her. If I did not stay in eye contact, she felt

that I tormented her without consideration for her

agony. Ada was overcome by dark, inconsolable

anguish at the thought of losing me, being separate

from me. I felt like an acrobat moving carefully

between the necessary disillusion of the symbiotic

love and the equally necessary need to support a

quota of illusion of it.

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In the third year of her analysis Ada came to her

session after my fall vacation. In the waiting room

she often examined her reflection in the mirror

before and after the session and reported about it

to me. After moments of disappointment the mirror

reflected an ugly picture of her. When she had felt

that I had understood her and contained her anxiety

or rage about horrors of separateness the

reflection in the mirror was beautiful. At the door

I smiled at her, she smiled at me; I wished her

welcome back again after the break, as usually. Ada

came in, sat down and turned anxious and quiet.

After a while I asked about her thoughts and

feelings. “I was very eager to meet you and on the

way to your office I was telling you about my

thoughts, in my mind. Everything changed at once

after meeting you at the door. Then I looked at

the mirror and it reflected an ugly and repulsive

picture. I thought you can’t like me; you can’t

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accept me. I felt shamefully ugly and I wanted to

hide.” I asked her how this was connected to her

feelings of seeing me after the break,

disappointment, or hate about my vacation, being

left out alone, maybe. She could not find any

connection with such feelings and the experience of

ugliness. “The session before the break was very

impressive and touching, I thought I could continue

talking about it. Now I cannot. The ugliness fills

everything. I feel huge and ugly. I want to turn

invisible. Everything gets poisonous. Stay out of

it.” Later we could trace Ada’s unconscious wish

that I would have welcomed her with hugging and

holding her in my lap caressing her. These

unconscious longings became intensive during the

break and became thwarted when we met. She did not

feel the emotions of disappointment nor shame but

experienced this as bodily ugliness. Her desire

for physical touch and caresses led to an internal

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conflict with her ego-ideals. They were judged

ridiculous and improper by her ideals. She was

deeply ashamed of her longings of my lap and

caresses. Her lesbic desire was estimated

impossible by her inner eye at the moment we met

after the break. Becoming aware of her desire

revealed and emphasized the experience of being

separate from me, too. Consequent feelings of shame

she experienced as bodily ugliness and

repulsiveness and wishes to become invisible.

The experience of ugliness can arise in analysis

when feelings of shame evoke from preverbal desire

of symbiotic love of the analyst become conscious

revealing one’s separateness and are incompatible

with one’s ideals. Feelings of ugliness may also

arise when lesbic desire of the analyst is not

concordant with one’s ego ideals.

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Fantasies of omnipotence

The chasm between exorbitant ideals of perfection

and abysmal feelings of insignificance creates

shame. As a consolation for the feelings of

helplessness and lack of influence or inability to

vivify the depressed mother, fantasies of superior

power and influence may arise. Through achievements

approaching perfection, the woman can attempt to

hide her shameful insufficiency and unlovability.

The loss of the narcissistic omnipotence may elicit

feelings of a rotten core and an ugly body.

These strivings for omnipotence can, in turn, feel

shameful and thus be shrouded in modesty and

humility; one can attempt to be the “world champion

of modesty.” It is often easier to get in touch

with the sufferings which are colored by guilt than

with the unconscious omnipotence fantasies that

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exist in their background. Feelings of guilt can be

used to shroud shame and vice versa. Guilt and

suffering can be more bearable than shame arising

from not having been accepted by one’s mother or

father or not having been able to influence the

feelings or decisions of one’s loved ones (de

Saussure 1982). Ideas about the magical influence

and power that one’s suffering or thoughts have on

others can emerge as a consolation for the shameful

lack of influence one experiences. It requires work

to humble oneself into mutuality and taking another

person into account.

Shame and rapture of the body

Certain unique bodily experiences also shape

women’s shame. The locus of feminine pleasures and

treasures is within the body, invisible. Giving

representations to an invisible experience of her

inner space is a demanding task. Also, the

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potential for embeddedness, for having a baby

within her own body—as a part of the woman but also

simultaneously as something separate—is something

the woman must work through; in a process we can

call “woman’s work.” Understanding the female body

only through lack, deficiency and the phallic

castration complex without appreciating her

treasures serves to uphold woman’s shame.

Woman’s sexuality and genitalia are more integrally

linked to shame than man’s, both as words and as

experiences. The woman is easily ashamed of her

body, especially the visible body parts connected

with her desire. This is linked to the visual

images and demands of perfection of the woman’s ego

ideal. Incontinence and permeability of body

boundaries are not concordant with her ego ideals.

It is easier to project this shame and bashfulness

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outside the woman, to blame the media for it, than

to focus one’s attention on the woman’s

unconscious, inner world. Shame is manifested as

bodily reactions: blushing and paralysis.

For a small girl, the sensory feelings of her

genitalia can be unbearably powerful and elicit

fears of losing control. This can evoke unbearable

shame which can lead her to stop masturbating or to

numb her genital feelings. A woman may also fear

that an invisible orgiastic rapture will overtake

her ego like a flood or avalanche.

Freud (1950 [1892-1899]) also focused on gender

differences in experiencing shame when he noted

that repulsion towards sexuality emerges early in

girls, earlier than in boys. He hypothesized that

the girl feels overwhelming confusion and shame

because her clitoris is so sensitive to touch, and

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closely observed girls’ sensations. (However, he

also supposed that the vaginal area develops

similar tactile sensitivity only at a later stage.)

A girl’s inner genitals are invisible, besides they

have also been nameless. Naming the nameless is

important for binding. The way girls are told not

to masturbate is often through phrases such as

“stop groping your butt,” which is likely to

reinforce the vagueness of bodily boundaries and

different body zones. The girl’s genitals, anal and

urethral zones are seen as one, as the bottom, the

fanny. Feces and urine are linked together with the

genitalia. This emphasizes pleasure’s connections

to filthiness and vague boundaries, to that which

is particularly shameful. When boys are told not to

masturbate, the implicit threat is that his penis

38

will be cut off, and this threat clearly focuses on

the genitals and not other areas of the body.

In adolescence, the girl’s body changes;

menstruation starts and breasts grow. The girl

becomes similar to her mother and, simultaneously,

becomes separate from her. These visible body

changes can evoke pride in a girl, but they can

also evoke boundless shame and a desire to hide the

signs of her budding feminine sexuality. The

menarche is a harbinger of fertility and a visible

message of the inner space; a source of pride or

shame as well. The potential for babies like the

mother may be a secret joy but may bring immense

shame as well. The growth of breasts into visible

protrusions evokes shame and pride alternately; if

they are too small, they can be shameful, but the

same is true if they are too large. Hips, stomach,

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the shape of her thighs can feel shameful to a

girl. She might want to show off her body, conquer

men and enjoy being looked at. This desire can feel

ambiguous; it is simultaneously rapturous and

shameful. A loving boyfriend alleviates shame

already in youth.

Paradoxically, female sexuality can be a powerful

force which may also bring shame to her husband or

the whole family. Particularly in Islamic

countries, a woman’s relatives may commit so-called

honor killings if they believe that a woman has

brought shame upon her family through her

sexuality. In the popular tradition in Finland, a

woman might disgrace someone by baring her behind

to them.

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Being incontinent evokes shame from childhood

onwards. A woman’s body leaks fluids: menstrual

blood, milk, amniotic fluid, post-partum flow,

leucorrhea. These cannot be held back and, since

they are uncontrollable, can feel shameful. Milk

flowing uncontrollably may be shameful, although

breastfeeding itself is no longer hidden. One of

women’s primary horrors and causes of shame is her

menstrual flow unexpectedly leaking into the sight

of others. This shame emerges from her inner space

which she cannot control, from the permeability of

her body’s boundaries. Filthiness and dirtiness are

also often linked to menstruation. Bleeding can

also indicate a damaged or spoilt inner space.

Although menstruation is a visible, red message

indicating a feminine inner space and fertility, it

is nevertheless kept hidden. Menstrual flow is

considered to be a shameful stigma which should be

invisible. In advertisements red bloodstains on

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menstrual pads are blue. By contrast, bleeding from

a wound is not shameful. Feelings of ugliness often

grow more intensive before or during menstruation.

The end of menstruation, the phenomena of

menopause, may also feel shameful. Women want to

conceal the hot flashes, blushing, sweating, even

the end of menstruation. Aging and the

corresponding physical changes, wrinkles and

creases brought by experience, a bending back, are

all shameful, the ideal being a young woman’s body.

The onset of these biological changes in their own

rhythm, the changes of hormonal balance, can

threaten the woman’s sense of autonomy and thereby

increase her shame. On the other hand, shame can

also be alleviated during menopause if the end of

her fertile period means that the woman regains

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control of her body and possession of her

sexuality.

In the sensitive and vulnerable area of motherhood,

a woman’s shame can be intolerable and her efforts

to conceal her problems very intense. Women tend to

conceal problems they have with motherhood. Women

suffering from post-partum depression try to

conceal it as shameful. It is easier to talk about

fatigue, the baby’s crying or stomachaches, than to

talk about depression. On the other hand,

humiliation is used as an effective child-rearing

tool. Derision, humiliation and ridicule are

effective, whether they target helplessness,

incompetence, or incontinence.

The woman might feel that her worth is measured by

the yardstick of motherhood. Involuntary

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childlessness can bring not only deep sorrow but

also immense shame. The help of infertility

clinics; hormone treatments, sperm washing, in-

vitro fertilization with her partner’s or donor

sperm may be hidden as extremely shameful. Although

modern infertility treatments can help many people,

the couple often is ashamed of not being able to

create life between the two of them.

What could be mortal shame for a woman? Being

rejected can evoke lethal shame for one who trusted

a lover. For a woman longing for a partner, living

alone might be the deepest source of shame. Giving

birth to an illegitimate child and being shut out

of her social community as a consequence was

earlier mortally shameful for a woman. Women still

experience profound shame in the area of

motherhood; if children have problems, if they fall

44

physically or mentally ill. Problems with

motherhood evoke unbearable feelings of failure and

inferiority in comparison to the ego-ideal’s

demands of perfect motherhood. Women prefer to

conceal their sorrow and shame over their

children’s problems. Profound shame may be dealt by

nullifying the significance of motherhood or by

projecting shame outwards, into the unreasonable

demands made by society or the motherhood myth.

Intrusion into her inner space, such as rape,

incest or sexual abuse, can be a source of mortal

shame for a woman. A woman’s deepest anxieties

focus on vaginal injury or violence to her inner

space, the female castration anxiety, or genital

anxiety. This anxiety materializes in experiences

of incest or rape. She can then feel that her body

has changed into something desecrated, soiled and

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pierced, far from the beautiful and perfect body of

her ideals. A rape victim can experience

involuntary penetration of her body as her own

incompetence or loss of control. Incest victims

typically experience their bodies as being bad,

damaged and worthless. The perpetrator of the

incest has not respected her as a separate person,

a little girl, but only as an object – shamefully

insignificant- for satisfying his/her own sexual

desire. Shame over an incestual relationship can

paralyze the girl and can interfere with her

cognitive processes, concentration and learning for

a long time. Possible pleasure experienced during

incest, rape or sexual abuse evokes deep shame and

often also suicidal ideas.

When separateness is frail, it is necessary to veil

one’s ego and desire. Shame also protects the

46

woman’s innermost core. She conceals her opinions,

aggression and desire to secure love of the

important ones. In Nordic countries women are

expected to have highly individuated and

independent personalities. Independence and

individuality have become an ideal for women as

well. Women no longer wish to veil her ego and

desire. Contrary ideals of independence, open

expression of desire and being sexually experienced

are becoming more common. Being innocent, virginal

and obedient has become shameful. Shame has not,

however, vanished although its manifestations in

women are changing. The unconscious nucleus of

shame still is in revealing one’s separate

vulnerable self and desire that are not concordant

with her ego ideals.

Shame in analysis

47

Psychoanalysts have to work through the shame of

their insufficiency continuously. Repressed and

hidden shame can be problematic to the healing

process. The inability to understand the analysand

and being exposed as ignorant in comparison to

professional ideals can be intolerable and

threateningly shameful to the analyst as well. In

this profession, you cannot be omnipotent; you

cannot “heal” the analysand, nor change another

person. The analyst must humbly admit that you

cannot force another person to observe themselves

but only assist them in their self-observation

(Ikonen 2003).

A female analyst can feel shame for being

insufficient to represent the idealized father and

phallic power and for being particularly deficient

as an object of masculine identification for a male

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analysand. A male analyst may feel insufficient in

confronting the dynamics of the woman’s unique

physical experiences. It may be difficult for a man

to empathize deeply with the experiences and

conflicts brought by pregnancy, childbirth,

breastfeeding, and motherhood as well as the

significance of menstruation and menopause.

Understanding the female body only through lack

without appreciating the female treasures serves to

uphold woman’s shame. Powerfully protecting oneself

from shame and refusing to confront one’s

inadequacy easily leads to the death of

spontaneity, the graveyard of analysis. In life as

well as in the work of a psychoanalyst, it is

essential to admit one’s own limitations and

mortality. Although omnipotence is our desire,

dependency is our fate. So is shame.

49

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