3. Describe Nussbaum’s account of the development of children in relationship to primitive shame. How can shame be mishandled/how do children experience underdevelopment in relation to shame? Nussbaum explains firstly how shame is an emotion experienced as a sense of failure in reaching an ideal state. Those who are shameful feel inadequate as a whole person, lacking, unable to reach a type of wholeness or perfection. She then goes on to explain how shame arises early on in childhood. Infants begin in a place of omnipotence.
In the comfort of the womb, the infant is part of an environment in which the world is fully arranged around the fulfillment of his needs. After birth, the infant is thrust into world of objects in which he must depend on external sources and people for survival. Though the infant is removed from the original ideal state, he is not aware of the distinctions between himself and outside objects, himself and caretakers, but can begin to experience the differences between comfort and discomfort, fullness and emptiness.
After around a half a year, the infant can discern the differences between himself and his environment, his caretaker and himself, although he can still only focus on the attainment of his own needs. Soon, the infant becomes progressively aware of the caretaker as a distinct being who does not always fulfill his immediate needs. The infant notices how dependent he is on the resources provided by external objects and of his own weakness in self-fulfillment. The infantile need for omnipotence nd comfort are immediately connected to an awareness of mortality and helplessness, a dependence on others for the fulfillment of personal needs and a realization of inadequacy.
An expectation of worth and perfection is sustained by the infantile omnipotence, how all objects revolve around the needs of the baby, but collapse when one is aware of the distinction between one’s own being from sources of comfort and sustenance. This primary narcissism in infants, as Nussbaum states, “gives rise to a particularly primitive and pervasive type of shame, as the infant encounters inevitable narcissistic defeats” (Nussbaum 184).
Primitive shame is this experience, the first understanding by the infant of their own dependence on others and their inherent lack of omnipotence. Further, Nussbaum explains how primitive shame is key in the development of children, how the understanding of distinctly individual and outside needs fosters a strong self of self. A child will learn to “relax its omnipotence,” (Nussbaum 187) and the demand to be constantly attended to, to become independent and selfsustaining. Relationships become more guided by a sense of reciprocity than by narcissistic motivations.
However, children that do not experience primitive shame in this ideal form can develop inharmoniously, facing problems with the need for control, total omnipotence and perfection. Patient B perfectly exemplifies the dangerous consequences of a distorted shamefilled upbringing. His mother was an irresponsible parent who showed B no real love. Her own demand for perfection overshadowed any of B’s needs, as she rejected any of the “humanness” of his infancy; whining, crying was treated as imperfect and met with rejection.
The message he received from his mother in childhood was that “perfection is the only tolerable state and that anything else will be repudiated” (Nussbaum 190). Himself, obsessed with appearing perfect, patient B came off to his colleagues as cold and distant, boring and anti-social. This character was created in an attempt to maintain control over all aspects of his life. The idea that he was dependent upon anybody else was the thought that most frightened him, and caused him to act in this way.
It was this expectation he had for himself, that he be perfect in all respects, that covered up his real insecurities over the perceived lack of perfection in his life. To B, the shame he experienced as a child at the hand of his mother, who emphasized the importance of perfection above all, forced B to adopt the attitude that he could not allow himself to become dependent upon anyone else. Her demand that he be without need, without dependence upon anyone else, exacerbated the element of primitive shame in B’s psyche and creates psychological pain.
To him, “Imperfection means being rejected” (Nussbaum 189). As a result, patient B adopts an attitude that does not resemble his own “true” being. Alice Miller best describes this phenomenon of “false self’ in the context of depression. Depression is not the absence of joy but rather the loss of identification with the self. When one is identified with one’s own feelings, he can experience anger, joy, sadness and elation in a true sense, that those feelings are really their own.
A depressed individual, on the other hand, only can experience this feelings through a filter, a “robotic false self” (Nussbaum 209) which creates an obstacle between the agent and his “true” self. The fantasies from the robotic false self, of wholeness, perfection, and independence, interferes with the agent’s ability to identify with any emotions that might suggest a rejection from others, an imperfect picture of themselves. B’s rigidity, “attempt to maintain omnipotent control over his inner reality, so that he need not feel the shame of allowing his needy dependent self to manifest itself, even when no others are present” (Nussbaum 191).
