ABSTRACT
Self psychology gives the author further templates for understanding shamed clients and for reconstructing their stories with them. People carrying chronic shame will be especially prone to judge others as well as themselves harshly and to rely on binary schemes of good/bad or admiration/contempt in their relationships with others. Attachment theory describes the outcomes of different patterns of parent-child affect regulation. Disgust is easy for a child to translate into a self-concept. This is a third reason that shame dysregulation and disintegration so easily become disgusted thoughts about oneself. Right-brain relational connection supports the experience of a coherent self, a self that grows stronger and more expansive as it connects, also with parental help, to left-brain concepts about emotions and relationships. Disgust sensitivity is elevated in trauma-related disorders and this self-disgust is also likely to be dissociated. Self object failure is complex too, creating many different kinds of problems.
