ABSTRACT
My aim in this chapter is to make a case that shame is a pervasive feature of the human response to death and other loss, to indicate the signi- cance of shame in grief and trauma, and to expand our understanding of shame. In both our common and scientic views of grief, shame is barely recognized; there is broad sociocultural support in the belief that shame is not central to grief. The argument in this chapter, however, is that shame is both a general and a particular feature of grief. Shame is present in the grieving self’s experience of itself, and it is a particular feature of grief, co-occurring with other features of the grief experience, as in shame associated with any particular thought, feeling, or meaning.
