ELINA M. REENKOLARitokalliontie 8 E,00330 Helsinki, Finland [email protected]
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
3
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
4
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
5
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.
6
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
7
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
8
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
9
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
10
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
11
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
12
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
14
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
15
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
16
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
17
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
18
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
21
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
22
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
23
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.”
24
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
25
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
26
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
27
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
28
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,
29
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.
30
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
31
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
32
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.
33
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
34
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
35
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
36
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
37
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,
39
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.
40
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
42
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
43
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
45
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
48
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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Green, A. (1999). The work of the negative. London: Free
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Hutton, P. (2003). Panel in the APSA Winter
Meeting. New York.
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Ikonen, P. & Rechardt, E. (1994). Thanatos, häpeä ja
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Lax, R. (1997). Becoming and Being a Woman. Northvale:
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