ABSTRACT
The sexual instinct has to struggle against certain mental forces which act as resistances, and of which shame and disgust are the most prominent. However, often a singular feature has been used to construct a theoretical perspective on the nature and causes of shame, muffling the concept in a splendid simplicity and thus limiting any effort to understand the intricacies of how shame and adult development impact upon one another. A central feature of adult development involves the ongoing attempt to consolidate one’s identity and to determine how to retain a unique sense of identity while also ensuring that one is capable of intimate relationships and of being part of the wider world of friends, peers, and society. W. Kinston describes how a retreat to object-narcissism, that is, negating one’s sense of separateness, acts defensively to reduce the awareness of shame.
