ABSTRACT

With a broad pallet of referents and nuances, Bigliani explores in his core chapter many issues, some with a light touch and some more deeply. He takes us on a journey to Freud's family, then to explore anti-Semitism as well as bullying, and finally to share several clinical vignettes. This chapter discusses that he touches on only indirectly, through commentaries such as the one focused on the function of the gaze of the third party. The comments will be centred on the witness, a character who, while less recognised, is a key participant in the plots where shame and humiliation are embedded. The fact that those photographs were made public transforms those of us who saw those photographs into legitimising witnesses, adding us as accomplices to the dynamics of the social process of humiliation, and adding our voice of indignation in an effort to differentiate us from the perpetrators.