*Familiarity Breeds Contempt* and Other Things

I am intrigued by the close relationship that Tomkins reveals between affects shame-humiliation and contempt-disgust (AIC-2, Ch's 16 and 18). As a pastoral counselor I note this in the Biblical book of Hebrews where the Messiah is described as "despising the shame" of his crucifixion, because he experienced a hope greater than shame (12:2; Psalm 53:5. Cp. Viktor Frankl Mans's Search for Meaning on the Holocaust.). Again and again, these Scriptures warn the reader never to regard his neighbor, friend or stranger with contempt. Contempt, it describes, is the operative force behind hypocrisy.

Shame from the victim's self-perspective often seems to be enmeshed in self-contempt as the therapist views the victim. Forces that shape a script of self-perpetuating intense self-contempt within a person set the stage for many negative consequences. In some exchanges the contempting client locks into the role of therapist of the therapist by repetitiously mirroring back observations in accusatory reaction.

A therapist-friend of mine who deals with judicial court referred sexually abusive male teens, uses interventions that reach within their own self-contempt which they project as contempt onto others and gets them in touch with the shame affects of themselves and thus of their victims.

Knowing how important the shame-humiliation affect is, I welcome readers' thoughts and feelings and comments here on dynamics of and therapy for self-contempt.

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