Post-Quiz Thought

• Quiz Time by Jim Duffy, 4/29/97
  • The Answer to: What is Perhaps the Deepest Sickness of the Human Spirit? by Jim Duffy, 5/7/97
    
    

Jim,

Wonderful quiz--thank heaven you're the one who replied to your own quiz. I would add a thought to this sickness of the soul. Your remarks remind me of Erik Erikson's stage of "intimacy vs isolation." I have suggested in some of my work (for instance, the chapter in "Knowing Feeling") that shame is the primary affect involved in this stage. Such a statement is, of course, an oversimplification. However, Don often reminds me that shame in the adult is seldom in the "pure" form. Rather, it is very often, through script formation, found as self-dissmell and self-disgust (perhaps Don will elaborate on this further). I think you have found a passage in Tomkins describing one of the scripts involved in Erikson's "intimacy vs isolation," and I suspect the more we look at it, the more scripts we would find that involve shame, disgust, and dissmell in isolated behaviors.

One brief note on the term "lazy." It is my belief that judgemental terms such as lazy are intended to shame more than to cause distress-anguish, although they can do that too.

• Neat Post-Quiz Thought! by Jim Duffy, 5/8/97
  • Correcting a Blunder by Jim Duffy, 5/8/97
  • Shame without Distress-Anguish by Vick Kelly, 5/12/97
    • Thank You, Vick, for a Really Clarifying Reply by Jim Duffy, 5/13/97