ABSTRACT
The Tippler’s story speaks directly to the entangled nature of shame. It shows how shame can wrap around itself like a spiral staircase, keeping us entrenched and compelling us to repeat the very behaviors that generate shame. Shame is a physical, biologically driven sensation as well as an emotional one. In many ways, shame lies at the heart of the analytic process, in that psychoanalysis is, in a sense, a quest to uncover what is hidden, to reveal what is concealed. Shame may also couple with other powerful emotional states, such as rage, anxiety, or despair, that render it even more tenacious and, at the same time, more nuanced. With some patients, the analyst’s sense of shame can be understood as a form of identification with a patient for whom shameful affects are disavowed, poorly metabolized, or inaccessible to the patient.
