Comment

• Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
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    • Narcissism, Shame, and the Taboo on Neediness Could Be Understood When the Mental Health Profession Understands Sympathy by Jim Duffy, 3/20/97
      
      

Jim, Margaret, Chauncy, and Ed, Thank you all for for your comments which I experienced as a ‘welcome back’ to the forum after my relative absence over the past few weeks. I have been ill with the flu, busy at work, and participating in a list specific to group work. I suppose it is a bit of a reach to refer to Ed’s post as a ‘welcome’ given his horror at my apparent lack of anything resembling a moral compass, yet his post does serve to illuminate an attitude with which one who approaches DV offender treatment as I do must, in these times, be prepared to cope. I take some comfort in Don’s previous advice not to “worry about those who try to shame those of us who look for causality beyond the dichotomy of good and evil”. Jim, I am not only not THE expert, I’m not even AN expert. I’m more like Diogenes running around with my lamp LOOKING for an expert. Actually, I believe Diogenes was looking for an honest man, which you don’t always get even if you DO find an expert :-). I appreciate your thinking regarding the lack of sympathy engendered by abusive people being due to their APPARENT inability to meet the ‘three requirements’ ( “insofar as sympathy requires a belief that the other is suffering, is conscious of the suffering, and is unable to choose not to”). I also appreciate your willingness to ponder theories. I am short of time at the moment but hope to ‘ponder’ with you more in a day or two. I confess I am also pondering the linguistic choice of sympathy vs. mature empathy and I remain open to being persuaded by Don of the greater usefulness of alternate language provided I can be convinced we are truly all talking about the same thing.

Margaret, your comments were generous, timely, and much appreciated! Chauncy, for a glimpse of the sort of ‘collegial shaming’ to which I have previously referred, Ed’s post will do quite ‘nicely’. Ed, I appreciate that you have strong feelings about the issue under discussion, nor am I a sranger to the expression of such feelings. My experience is that those truly interested in civil discourse on the matter express those feelings differently than you have.

• Faith, Hope, Love, and Science Sustain Us Through a Shame Darkened March of History by Jim Duffy, 3/27/97
  • Men and Shame....Enormous Issue Now Faced Directly by Jim! Thank you! by c.h., 3/28/97
    • Chauncey, I Love the Work You Do by Jim Duffy, 3/28/97
    • Enormous issue by Margaret Blakely, 3/28/97
    • Oil and Water by Ed Riemann, 3/30/97
  • Men and shame by Margaret Blakely, 3/28/97
    • I Know What You Mean, Margaret by Jim Duffy, 3/29/97
      • Woops, I Goofed Again on My Web Page Address by Jim Duffy, 3/29/97
    • What Can Women Do about Men's Needing to Adapt to (Shaming) Systems? by c.h., 3/29/97
  • Ed...I'm Laughing... by c.h., 3/31/97
    • How You Play the Game by Ed Riemann, 3/31/97
• Beggars Banquet by Ed Riemann, 3/30/97