ABSTRACT
Andrew Morrison suggests that "envy also serves as a protection against the experience of shame, at least with respect to another object". Human existence is it as important to understand how shame figures in the birth of the self. Shame is to self psychology what anxiety is to ego psychology, although it has received much less attention in the literature than anxiety, guilt, and depression. The literature has either overlooked shame as an independent affect, or has only discussed it in terms of emotions such as social anxiety, a sense of inferiority, or narcissistic injury. Shame's potential relationship to defences, such as anger, rage, and envy, is often the underpinnings of narcissistic rage. Envy seldom occurs in isolation but is usually an aspect of a more complex set of dynamics operating in an individual. Shame denotes an underlying state of self-loathing brought about by the loss of personal integrity.
