New theories upset old certainties

• Welcome to the BOL Forum on Shame and Affect Theory by John Grohol, 2/10/96
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    • A difficult issueAndy Morrison by Michèle Paquette, 4/18/96
      
      

All of the scholars who study and write about shame work from their understanding of the adult experience of shame (what they have learned from analysis of their own experiences and those of their patients) and work backwards to define shame in that language. This, of course, was Freud's archaeological approach, which said that we could understand the past by studying the potshards of a previous civilization.

Tomkins said that each of the nine innate affects is triggered by some alteration of physiology, and that our adult experience of any emotion is actually the result of a lifetime of the experiences of an affect, these summated or arranged in scripts to form our personal emotion definition. Mel Lansky and Andy Morrison are psychoanalysts who still believe that shame is its adult presentation.

I take the position that if you study affect itself, and think about the various responses to any impediment to positive affect, you begin to see that ADD/ADHD fits well into our understanding of shame psychology. My friends and colleagues are understandably confused and perhaps a bit affronted that I don't see things as they do.

This is the normal response to new theory, and something I'm quite used to. Wait until you start to use these ideas---you'll find that your patients prosper, your understanding of cases moves very quickly, and your attempts to explain your cases to supervisors and colleagues gets you branded as weird.

As for your wish that we could alter such patterns of behavior without medication, I share Jim Pfrommer's flexible approach to the treatment of affective disturbance. Sometimes the trouble is in the software, sometimes it is in the hardware. We've got to try everything and shift approaches every time the patient changes.

• In all new there is some old! by Michèle Paquette, 4/19/96
  • AD/HD Neuroimaging. by Fiona Geiser, 4/21/96
    • Neuroimaging of Affects, studies needed! by Jim Pfrommer, 4/21/96
• doctoral research on shame by Mary Byrley <byrley@ix.netcom.com>, 4/28/96
  • research on shame and domestic violence by Keith Wiger / <kw@lasertone.com>, 5/31/96