2018/06/14 by Judith Lewis Herman · 1 citation
Psychology · #Attachment and Relationship Dynamics #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Child Abuse and Trauma
paper · doi:10.4324/9780429480140-4
openalex publication_date 2018/06/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This chapter traces the role of shame in traumatic disorders and disorders of attachment should be a potentially fruitful area for further study. Under ordinary conditions of peace, this chapter suggests that shame is one of the primary regulators of social relations. Fear is the primary regulator only in circumstances where social structures for maintaining peace have broken down and social relations are ruled by violence. Developmentally, shame appears in the second year of life. Properly speaking no toddler is autonomous; rather, one might formulate the toddler&s;s developmental task as learning to regulate body, affect, desire, and will in attunement with others. Originating in the primary attachment relationship, shame generalizes to become an emotion that serves to regulate peer relationships, social hierarchy, and all the basic forms of social life. According to Lewis addressing shame directly in the psychotherapy relationship facilitates therapeutic work, by normalizing shame reactions and by giving patients a relational framework for containing and understanding them.