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Why Shamelessness Doesn't Make You Free | Gabriel Ellis, PhD · Gabriel Ellis, PhD | The Curious Mind Podcast

0:01
Hello and welcome. My name is Gabriel Ellis and I'm
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your host of the Cures Mind podcast.
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I'm a psychologist, a therapist, and a philosopher.
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My interest is in this podcast to reflect on everyday topics in
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a deeper way, because often enough I find that topics that
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are relevant to our lives, to our relationships, to work, to
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our mental health are dealt with, especially in social
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media, in a superficial way. And in my experience, my
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personal life and also in my clinical work, I can always see
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how deeply rooted and complex phenomena are, that everything
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that it basically pertains to our normal life has a deep
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layer. And I think that without
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understanding those phenomena in depth, we will always be trapped
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in a cycle of trying to apply simple but unsustainable
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solutions to actually complex issues.
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What I want to talk about today is the topic of shame.
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It has gained some popularity, I think over the past years,
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especially through the work of Brené Brown, and I wanted to put
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it in a bigger context. And bigger context for me always
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means that I reflect on and I research what other thinkers who
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were quite well versed with the mind had to say about these
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phenomenon. And thus try to contextualize it
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in a meaningful way for you, so that next time when you reflect
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on it, when you hear about it, so that you have a little bit
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more background to base your further discussion on.
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As most philosophical topics, we can always rely on Plato and
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Socrates to have contributed to this.
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And Plato in particular had a very specific idea about shame,
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which by the way, he shares with Immanuel Kant, who basically had
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a similar perspective as Plato, which is that shame is an aspect
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of the inner compass of our mental life.
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Shame for Plato and for Socrates is the reaction of the soul when
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we recognize that we have acted against our own good reason,
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against the good inside of us. So basically there is an
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understanding in Plato and it's Socrates, that we have an
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internal law knowledge, a divine knowledge, so to speak, those
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Platonic ideas about how things are and how things are good and
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well. This is the source of virtues,
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and shame for them is a good thing because it helps us to
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connect with the morality inside of us, the divine morality
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inside of us, and helps us to restrain the unhealthy and the
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excessive desires inside of us. So for them, shame is a good
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thing, and especially when you keep in mind that philosophy in
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the old days always had a perspective and a component of
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contributing to society, to the the social environment around
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us. Shame has the particular
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function of keeping us in check against the greedy, the
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aggressive elements inside of us that always threaten to impair
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and to reduce the social cohesion, the the glue, so to
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speak, that holds us together working as a society.
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So we'll keep that in mind and we'll come back to this position
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later on because obviously it's not a point that I think is
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widely shared today. And today we'll look at
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phenomena like shame in a very different light.
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One of the main followers and students of Plato was of course
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Aristotle, who for many centuries was considered to be
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the greatest of the ancient Greek philosophers, and without
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good reason. I think he has been largely
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maybe not forgotten, but neglected.
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He was a great thinker. He didn't contribute that much
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to the philosophy of shame, but for him, for Aristotle, he
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regards shame less as a stable virtue in itself, but more as an
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effect, as an emotion, and specifically as the fear of a
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bad reputation. For him, especially in the
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young, shame helps to restrain impulses.
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So in that respect he agrees with Plato and with Socrates.
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But for him, in mature virtuous adults, shame has no specific
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reason anymore. It should hardly occur because
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virtuous adults already do the right thing.
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They don't need a monitor, they don't need a sensor that keeps
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the passions in check, because they have already achieved
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virtue. There is the next philosopher
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that I want to add here is Baruch de Spinoza.
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He was a Dutch philosopher and he in the medieval times and he
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was sorry, it was in the, in the modern times, in the in the 18th
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century. And he was interesting in the
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sense that he brought in a quite psychological perspective.
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For him, shame is a form of sadness that arises when we
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believe others disapprove of our actions.
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And since shame weakens a person's power of action, this
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was for him the most important point.
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Shame makes a person dependent on the opinions of others, which
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is for him not a virtue. This power of action, this
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personal power, for Spinoza was the most important things, the
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source of virtue. To limit this power, to make
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people inhibited, to make them anxious, is not an expression of
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virtue. And so a free person must
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realize the truth in things. And thus they base their
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motivations in reason, not in fear, and not in fear of social
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condemnation, which shame particularly contributes to, for
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Spinoza, an effect which brings suffering.
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And this is important psychologically because we it's,
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it's part of the foundation of modern psychology and therapy.
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An effect which brings suffering ceases to cause suffering as
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soon as we form a clear and rational understanding of it.
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So when we feel suffering, according to Spinoza, we apply
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our sense of reason, we imply our understanding, which is not
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just intellectual. And once we have understood it,
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once we grasped it, we are free from the suffering aspect in it
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because we have penetrated it, we have understood it.
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So shame is a source of weakness.
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It is in that sense irrational, and once we have understood what
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shame is, what it makes us do, what healthy ways are to achieve
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the same positive goals, what healthy ways are to get rid of
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the negative effects of shame, then it becomes integrated and
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reason, and then it contributes to our personal power.
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But Spinoza was realistic enough to know that if irrational man
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felt no shame, that then there would be little that would hold
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them together. Because not all humans, not all
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people, are particularly driven towards rationalizing, grasping,
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deeply understanding their passions and their feelings, the
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things that weaken them. So for him, this path of reason,
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the path of deep understanding, is unfortunately preserved to a
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few. And so he concedes that shame
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has a particular position in our society.
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Shame is good, and so far as it gives people a desire to live
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decently even without fully understanding the irrational
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aspects in it. Then we come to Nietzsche, the
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great philosopher of the 19th century.
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For him, freedom. And it's difficult to summarize
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Nietzsche, but freedom is one of his key topics.
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He wanted to be free himself. He wanted to free people through
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his philosophy. For him, freedom meant to no
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longer being ashamed before oneself.
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This is taken from his book The Gay Science.
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The meaning is that whoever is ashamed before himself.
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Shame is of course, negative emotion that arises inside of
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us. Whoever is ashamed before
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himself is still a slave. A slave to what?
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A slave to foreign values and judgements of other people, of
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parents, of society, of religion, for example.
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But true freedom means accepting one's own nature without the
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internalized self hatred. So for Nietzsche, this shame is
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sickness because it weakens the individual.
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And here he clearly relates to the idea of Spinoza, who was
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first in highlighting this aspect, which we consider today
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as quite a modern perspective on shame.
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Shame is a sickness that weakens the individual for Nietzsche,
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and we should get rid of it because ultimately Nietzsche saw
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as a vision for people that they live by their own laws, by their
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own rational understanding, by their own responsibility.
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And this inflicted shame, which we internalized from parents,
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family, friends, society has no place in this idealized world of
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Nietzsche. Now let's jump to a important
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and influential, yet somewhat obscure psychoanalyst, Jacques
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Lacan. He developed his ideas beginning
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from the 30s, but most importantly the 50s and 60s in
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France, and he had quite a specific understanding of the
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human mind, of desires and all of these complex feelings.
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What he said about shame is it's the feeling that one feels for a
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moment and that one seizes to be fake.
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So we have our facade, we have our social persona, and in that
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we're trying to be somebody who we would like to be, be it for
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our own ideas and purposes, the person that I would like to see
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myself as, or we want to please others, or we are afraid of the
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judgements. But in any case, there is often
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a sense of fakeness, a sense of performance, of wishful thinking
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in our behaviour. And when that facade falls, in
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that moment we are exposed, we are naked.
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And in this seeing this nakedness, we feel the shame.
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By the way, with this understanding, he nicely
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connects to a philosopher that I don't mention today, but I've
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dealt with a lot in past episodes, which is Hegel.
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And for Hegel this was an important aspect.
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Shame appears when I see myself naked.
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And he connects that, for example, to the story of
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Genesis. When after eating the apple from
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the forbidden tree, Adam and Eve can see that they are naked and
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then they're ashamed and then they want to cover themselves.
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So Lacan kind of connects to this set of ideas around shame
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that comes from Hegel. And saying it again, shame is
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what we feel when we see ourselves in a moment of
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nakedness, because then we drop this facade of who we like to
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be, how we like to see ourselves in the narrative, the story that
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we're told tell ourselves we are that we're good, bad, and so on.
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And we see ourselves maybe through the eyes of others, but
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we see ourselves in our nakedness.
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And then this is kind of a shock that is kind of a reality that
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we're ashamed of it. Another quote by Lacombe is that
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shame is the response to be seen in my nakedness as an object.
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Here he puts this, quite frankly, what I was talking
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about right now. And a third quote by Lacombe.
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We live in a world, and this he said in 1972.
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We live in a world that has liquidated shame, but whoever no
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longer has shame no longer has access to the truth of desire.
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Now this is important for Lacan. The whole idea of desire is
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crucial for Lacan. For us, for him, we as subjects
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are subjects of desire, and desire for him is quite a
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complex thing. It is connected to the
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recognition by another. It can be society, it can be
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very specific people, it can of course be the parents by whom we
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were raised. And there is a complex dynamic
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in desire. It's both something inside of us
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and drives us. It motivates us.
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And at the same time, it is a lack.
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It is something that is missing. And this missing, this lack
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creates in US strive. We want to fill a hole, a
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bottomless hole, because we can never fully satisfy our needs.
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And here he argues that when we live a shameless life, when we
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liquidate shame, that we forget to see something crucial about
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desire. Shame exposes that we have not
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reached, for example, who we are, who we want to be, who
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others want to be. And if we can live in a state of
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shamelessness, then we forget to deal with this existential
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situation of being some sort of a lack or developing around a
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centre of lack and becoming this complex person in the process.
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And so we can live in a fantasy land when we have lost our
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shame. To live with shame, to take
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shame as a source of self understanding and self growth
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allows us to situate ourselves as humans, as subjects of desire
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and as subjects of lack. Now the sounds all complex, what
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it means, I think, without trivializing it.
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The effects of shame, the feelings of shame allow us an
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insight into our own complexity. It helps us to grow and when we
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raise children, youths. And again, this was said in 1972
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where France had to deal with the fallout of the Students
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revolution or students movement in the late 1960s when it was
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perceived that many people have lost their sense of shame.
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Then it is an obstruction to us becoming more mature because we
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are stopping in a way, a self development that necessarily is
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built around understanding of our structures of desire, of
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what we want, of what we need, and that partially, partially,
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we can never achieve what we actually want or need for
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ourselves. It's worth looking into it.
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There are books around, of course, the philosophy of Lacan.
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And if you're interested, I don't claim that it's easy to
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understand, but to make small steps in the understanding of
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this dialectic, of this complexity around desire and of
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shame for Lacan, I think it's quite worthwhile for people who
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are interested in psychology. OK, And I'll come to a modern
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intellectual, Brené Brown, who has popularized, I think, part
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of the discussion around shame. For her, she distinguishes
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between guilt and shame. For her, guilt means that I did
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something bad, and shame means that I am bad and that this, of
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course, is a problem. To do something bad can always
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be rectified by an understanding of what I did and by doing it
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better next time. If I am bad, or if I consider
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myself to be bad, or others consider me to be bad, then
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there's something irreparable about this.
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Then there's a sense of brokenness in that.
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And that of course, creates a lot of pain when people live
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their life with such an understanding that they're
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somehow broken or fundamentally deficient.
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There's a quote that, I don't know how literal it is, but it's
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relatively close, of brown shame is the intense, painful feeling
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or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore
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unworthy of love and belonging. So this is exactly what I tried
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to describe. This understanding of me being
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fundamentally flawed is a source of never ending pain and grief
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for people. So in that respect, it's
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understandable that it was important for her to contribute
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to people stop feeling that they are deficient.
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So, she argued, she was advocating building up a shame
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resilience so that we don't feel this sense of fundamental
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deficiency anymore. She conceded that we cannot
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completely eliminate shame, but the right countermeasure is to
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become resilient towards it. And for Brown, this happens.
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And four steps. First step is to recognize the
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triggers to recognize my physiological reactions when a
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situation properly. Labeled as shame occurs.
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The second is to understand and to investigate how that shame
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comes from unrealistic social and societal expectations.
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This is what is behind the mental framework that creates
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shame. It's social values, social norms
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with the expectations, and those expectations can never be
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fulfilled. And so inevitably, again and
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again, I experience situations where shame arise in me with the
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invitation to think that I'm fundamentally deficient.
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The third step for her is to speak about it, to stop this
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taboo, to bring it into conversation and to eliminate
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the important aspects around the the silence of it, the taboo of
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it. So for her, shame thrives in
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secrecy and in silence and in judgement, and it dies when it
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is spoken about. So speak about it.
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The fourth step finally, is to talk about shame with the right
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people, with people that we trust and the people we have
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trust in. They will shower us, they will
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contribute with empathy because of course, most typically the
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things that we are ashamed of, the behaviours when we're goofy,
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when we've embarrassed ourselves, when we have thoughts
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that are difficult, difficult, problematic, judge, mental and
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so on. Other people have experienced
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similar things. And so when we talk to people
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that we can trust and those trusted friends express their
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empathy, they can share that they have experienced something
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similar as well. And this gives me the
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understanding, This gives me the insight that I'm not
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fundamentally deficient, that I'm sharing my uneasiness with
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wanting to be good or wanting to be perfect with a good part of
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humanity, that my friends have a similar experiences.
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And so it normalizes what I went through.
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It normalizes the pain that I went through.
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And again, it helps me to understand that what is behind
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the shame are unachievable expectations typically infused
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in us by parents, family, circles of friends, media,
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society and so on for her vulnerability, The vulnerability
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to express, to understand and to think about the triggers of
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shame and the shame general vulnerability is not a weakness,
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it's the only path to courage. So courage, another antidote to
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cope with those shameful situations and perfectionism,
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which is a feature that many people have included in their
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life today, is for her a sign of avoidance.
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The avoidance to be judged, the avoidance to be shamed.
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And while the idea of it is honorable, but it does not work.
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I cannot be perfect. And the collateral damage, the
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price I pay for wanting to be perfect is too high without the
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willingness to be vulnerable. And again, the emphasis on
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vulnerability for Brown, we cannot build genuine connections
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with others because we need to understand how unperfect we are.
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And we have to understand how the others cannot be perfect as
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well. And so this allows us the the
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acknowledgement of imperfection allows us to truly connect
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because then I can get a glimpse into the real person, the real
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personality behind the words, behind the actions, and not to
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be confused by the perfectionism of the facade that people try to
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apply to their thoughts, to their feelings, to their
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behaviours and communication. So to sum it up for her, shame
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needs three things to grow. It's against secrecy, it's
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silence and it's judgements. And the big antidote for her is
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empathy. Now with that, if we connected
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to the the philosophical concepts that I've described
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before, she clearly connects with Nietzsche and in a way she
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connects with Spinoza because they emphasized the weakening
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aspect of it. Nietzsche was a fierce opponent
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to internalized societal norms and pressures, and Brown picks
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that aspect up. What she under emphasizes,
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though, is the aspect of contributing to a society and
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its norms. And here I think I speak in a
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more general, I try to address a more general topic, which is how
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to connect the level of the individual back to society.
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I think that in the past decades we have seen a development where
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we and the industrial West or in the Western world and Northern
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Western world, we have become more and more individualized.
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And as such, we, without knowing it, we have tried to internalize
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a value system that is closely related to what Nietzsche had in
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mind, minus the philosophical depth.
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So we have become more individual.
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We try to live the life as we want to and so to rid ourselves
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from uncomfortable feelings and from societal pressures and of
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the sense of shame that had a backlash if it's not done
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deeply. And what I mean with deeply is
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in a way that Nietzsche emphasized in his in his
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detailed analysis of power structures, internal power, self
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weakening, ethics and so on, but also in the sense of Spinoza.
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So to remind us again of Spinoza's argument, he was in
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favor of eliminating pain and suffering through a deep insight
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into the matter. But he also knew that many
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people don't have the fortitude, the courage, the insight, the
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time, the ability, the resources to do that work.
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And so when this is missing, then we still need a functioning
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society. We cannot just throw overboard
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the societal norms that keep our society together.
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And this aspect I think we have neglected both in the individual
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work that psychotherapy does, but also in the reflections on
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the development of humanity, the raising of children, the school
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system and so on. There was more and more emphasis
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on individuality to free ourselves from societal norms,
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but without giving us tools, the understanding, the inside, the
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courage and the strength in order to pull it off.
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It needs this second part in order to really make up, make
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obsolete, the internalised norms of family, peer group and
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society. So here I want to, I want to
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speak for and I want to bring back older aspects of social
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norms in the sense that shame as expressed by Plato, for example,
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shame had a function of limiting the passions, limiting the
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destructive elements within us when we don't have those kind of
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virtues. Now they consider shame as a
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virtue, as a as a as an expression of the inner compass.
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When we don't have those virtues, then the
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destructiveness and the passions take over.
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And not only will they make the individual do harmful things to
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society. Here I put on a more
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psychological perspective on this.
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They will do things that harm themselves.
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They will not know why it's difficult for them to make
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friends. They will not know why people
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pull back from them, why they have difficulties and the
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relationships at work and so forth.
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People who are shameless, I'm simplifying this now, will do
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harm to themselves and to others.
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And so to bring back not necessarily shame and the
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weakening aspect of it, but to bring back the understanding
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that shame is a cheap method to regulate one's behaviour, to
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prevent us from doing the worst things to ourselves and to
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others. With doing that, I want to
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acknowledge that there is a necessary regulation for our
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mental health and to prevent us from doing harm to others that
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is connected to the to shame and to what is behind shame.
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So I want to rehabilitate, not shame as a feeling, because I
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couldn't agree more that shame is harmful and weakening.
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But shame is an expression of something that should be kept in
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mind when we discuss becoming a law to ourselves, of getting rid
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of societal norms and just live a life based on oneself.
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We need to be strong. We need to be courageous,
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virtuous, insightful in order to live a life without shame.
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And as long as we don't achieve that, we need some form of
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regulation that keeps us together as an individual and
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keeps us connected to the people around us so that we don't have
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too many destructive elements on our social environment.
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And with that, I want to end this overview and this
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discussion. I hope it was interesting to
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you. Like and subscribe if you're
31:38
interested to see more content like this.
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And let me know what your thoughts are on shame.
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Can you connect to my attempt to rehabilitate shame in this
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modern life that we have that is so individualized?
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Or do you think there are more effective counter counter
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aspects, countermeasures that still keep us together in a
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realistic way without everyone falling apart as an individual?
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And so I'm interested in the debate around it.
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Let me know what you think. I hope you come back to watch
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further episodes in which I will deal again with psychological
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and philosophical topics. Until then, goodbye.