Games children play

For the love or money


This is an associated game of Stupid and is sometimes called the game of Spoilt Child. Here love and money get mixed up. The parents believe they can express their love to a child by giving it things. They may even end up saying to the child, “Of course I love you look at all the things I have given (done) for you”.

The parent is for what ever reason unable to express feelings of love or affection to the child. (Their parents may have done the same to them, they have a “Don’t show your feelings” injunction, they may have their own closeness issues, they may equate affection feelings with sexual feelings and that scares them, they may just be self centred and have little interest in giving affection to the child because they want it themselves, and so on).



So the parents give things instead showing love or affection. A prime example can be boarding school in some instances. “I have sent my daughter to a very expensive boarding school so she gets the best education”, (and by the way it also gets her out of the way so I can go and do all my things).

In this game, over time the child’s bedroom begins to start looking like a shop of “Toys-r-us”. The child gets a never ending series of toys and things with which it can play or be entertained by. Computers, computer games, bikes, flat screen TV, pets, DVD player, CD player, overseas holidays, swimming pool, and so on endlessly. (This is of course encouraged along the way by all the marketing which often portrays the line that if you buy this gift for your child then he/she will feel loved by you.)




The problem with this game is that it half ‘hits the spot’. And that can trick both parties’ Child ego states. They think they are being shown love when in fact they are not. All humans have a need for love. That need can only be fully met when:

It is shown to the person first hand (so not mother telling the child that father loves her)
Is face to face (so not via email or even the phone to some extent)
Has emotion involved
Has some form of physical contact.

If these conditions happen then the Free Child need of the person for love is met and satisfied. Indeed the child will feel loved by its mother or father if the love is expressed to the child in ways like this.





I sometimes hear clients say; “I know my father loved me, even though he never told me that”, or “I used to over hear my father tell others how much he loved me but he never actually told me”. Unfortunately these only half meet that Free Child need for love.

Societies will even formalise times when the Free Child need for love is meant to be met. In our country it is often birthdays, and the birthday gift is meant to be an expression of love for the other person. But the physical gift is only a symbol of that love and to the Free Child that does not mean much.

This is summed up well by Coleman & White (1988), “To clarify this point, consider the example of a parent and child playing a game of cards. We would invite such a parent to consider the following question : Are you playing cards with your child, or are you playing with your child and that just happens to be cards at the moment? Toys, games and play activities can provide an effective way of avoiding contact with a child. They can allow the parent and child to become side-tracked into the activity and avoid closeness, contact or openness with each other. Parents who provide children with expensive toys particularly need to consider how they play with their children.”(P13).




In the wall of trivia ‘things’ get in the way of the two parties actually getting close and having intimacy. The Free Child to Free Child transactions get blocked. Indeed in some marital counselling, the counselling can become a thing that gets in the way as well. It gives both parties a ‘thing’ to talk about other than themselves and their feelings for the other party.

A derivative of the game, “for the love or money” is the game of “Childhood obesity”. In this game love does not get mixed up with an expensive gift but instead love gets mixed up with food. The parent has the mistaken belief that it can express its love to a child by providing it with food and the child begins to take this on and when it feels full it feels loved. So it is provided with lots of food and it eats the food in its desire to feel loved. Again this only half “hits the spot”. For a brief while the Free Child need for love is met when it eats but it does not last because the need is not really getting met in the way I described above. (Note there are many other reasons as well for the over weight child).



The other derivative of the game, “for the love or money” is the game of “Higher, faster, longer”. In this instance love gets mixed up with achievement in the child’s mind. “If I can jump higher, swim faster or run longer then mum will love me”. “If I can win the gold medal then dad will finally notice me” The child believes that if it can achieve success in sport, business, education and so on then the parental love that it craves will finally be given. I would suggest that many high achievers are of this ilk. Again, it works for a little while, and the parents may in fact provide the contact with the child when it does achieve. The problem is there is always another race, there is always more that could be achieved. So the child never gets to the end and often high achievers are left with a hollow feeling as they look at their trophy cabinet, investment portfolio or degrees hanging on the wall.

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Insomnia

One could diagram the state of sleep as such:



The Parent and Adult ego states are decommissioned and one is left with the Free Child alone. That is why sometimes dreams are referred to as the windows to the soul. It is truly a way to see into the unconscious and the primal needs of the person.

With the two ego states decommissioned the FC is allowed to roam free and create what ever it wants which is what it does with dreams. It provides such a rich source of psychological material but many disagree on what it means and what is the best way to use it with clients. There are many, many different varieties of dream work.


To have good sleep the adult woman has to somehow psychologically get like the girl.



However getting into the state of sleep that is diagrammed above involves an interesting psychological process and this is why some have difficulty with insomnia. The way people talk about sleep states it fairly well. People are said to FALL asleep. People do not run into sleep or jump into sleep but they fall asleep.

People have to kind of surrender into sleep. It is a letting go process. To decommission the Parent and Adult and access pure FC involves the person giving into or surrendering to sleep, like letting self fall. Some have a lot of trouble doing this because it means they have to let go and trust. Letting go of the conscious and surrendering to the unconscious if frightening for some and hence they experience insomnia.

The same applies for the experience of love. People do not run into love or drive their car into love instead they FALL in love. To understand and experience this people have to do the same kind of surrender or submission that is required for the sleep state. Those who say they do not know what love is, can be because they are too frightened to do this letting go and falling process. Hence they can never experience the Free Child as it is shown in the diagram above and hence never have a true experiential understanding of love.



Finally sex also requires a similar psychological state, especially for the male. Some men who have difficulty obtaining or maintaining an erection, can be because they have difficulty with the same letting go process. If they cannot decommission the Adult and Parent ego states adequately enough that can lead to sexual difficulties as described.

The diagram shows a very child like state. When each of us are born we are psychologically like this. So in one way it is such a natural state to be in. However to release our control and indeed our very way of understanding and viewing the world is difficult for some. Also it seems safe to say that when people fall they quickly and instinctually reach out and try and grab onto something. To fall asleep one has to trust the fall process such that they do not instinctually grab onto their Parent or Adult ego state.

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Larissa - anger case study and results

I appreciate your posts on anger because it’s a huge problem issue for me. I’m not really sure how to answer these questions because my parents left when I was young (around two). They came to visit sometimes so I had parents, but they were more like guests and not really like parents. I think my parent ego state is based on my father’s parents (grandparents). So if there's anything I've said here that would help me deal with anger better, I'd love to hear it.

My Parent ego state and anger

When my grandfather was angry he would (Hit, withdraw and sulk, shout, swear, give a lecture, get sarcastic, eat, fight, get depressed and so on)

Say - nothing

Do – slam the door on the way out and leave for awhile

When my grandMother was angry she would:

Say – curse, call me bad names, scream, rant

Do – threaten to send me away, threaten to send my brothers away, threaten to hurt me, blame me for ruining her life

My Child ego state decisions about anger

When I was angry grandmother would

Say – I was ungrateful, call me names, scream at me

Do – whip me, blame me, hurt me

Feel – she hated me more than usual

When I saw grandmother or grandfather angry I would

Say - nothing

Do - hide

Feel - scared

What did your grandmother and grandfather say about expressing anger. (OK, not OK, good, bad, time & place, men & women, etc) I learned very young that it was not acceptable for me to be angry or even look angry in front of them…ever. I don't remember them ever saying anything about it.

As a teenager did you get rebellious and angry? If so how did you express it and how did the parent figures respond? As a teenager, I hated everything about living. I did a lot of drugs and drank. I was not good to myself and did dangerous things. Sometimes I ran away. I stayed away as much as possible. Sometimes my grandmother found my stash and she flushed it (or hell, maybe she really kept it for herself) and she'd tell me I was trash like my mother and a nutcase like my mother's father. Fortunately, I had a couple of really good teachers in high school who motivated me to stay out of trouble and encouraged me to escape home by finding work rather than laying drunk in the alleys. They saved my life.

Summation of early decisions = Anger is forbidden.

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Results

This case study is a good example of how a person can acquire contradictory script messages about anger and its expression. As we can see Larissa made a Child ego state decision:

“Don’t feel anger”

or at least

Don’t express your anger”

This is held in the Child ego state. At the same time she would have introjected her grandmother’s anger expression into her Parent ego state. This is shown with the statements like:

When my grandMother was angry she would:

Say – curse, call me bad names, scream, rant

and

When I was angry grandmother would

Say – I was ungrateful, call me names, scream at me

Do – whip me, blame me, hurt me

Thus she has a strong model which shows that it is OK to feel angry and to express that anger in a forthright and demonstrative way. Thus Larissa has a contradiction in her personality in this way.

It is probably safe to say that the early decisions are more influential in the personality than the models, however at the same time the modelling of behaviour is recognised as a significant factor in personality development.

Logically there are 4 possibilities
1. Decision made with consistent modelling
2. Decision made with contradictory modelling
3. Decision made with no modelling
4. No decision made but with modelling of behaviour

Larrisa is possibility number 2 and this could lead to some outright
contradictory behaviour with anger at times. Or what is more likely is that the decision behaviour will by overt with the modelled behaviour being expressed in a more convert way. Indeed this may be the case with Larissa (however this is based on very minimal information)

She says:
As a teenager, I hated everything about living. I did a lot of drugs and drank. I was not good to myself and did dangerous things.


This could indicate that the permission to express anger has resulted in her expressing anger at herself. Which resulted in some self destructive behaviour. In relationships with others there maybe a suppression of the anger as the decision demands.

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Final fantasy 7

The P1 ego state.

As mentioned in the previous post, Final fantasy 1, the fantasy stage of child development and the development of the P1 ego state are closely linked.



Reference
Pam Levin, 1974. Becoming the way we are. Berkeley: Transactional publications

She states that when people develop problems about this stage they can often have a scary, sinister and demonic quality about them. Children can report nightmares and can have a particular interest in magic.

Levin refers to this stage of development as the Supernatural Child lasting from 3 to 6 years of age. The stage of fantasy and magic and scary things. Witches, potions, spells, dragons, flying broomsticks are all part of this magical, devilish, scary and a bit of fun part of the personality which TA theory would say is the P1 part of the personality. We all know magicians fake it but there is still that part of us that likes to see some magic in action.

This part of the personality is engaged with things like the Harry Potter stories. It can also be found in Batman with characters like the Penguin, the Riddler and the Joker. They are presented as mischievous, irreverent and yet appealing characters.



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Two other pieces of research state:

Bouldin, P.
An investigation of the fantasy predisposition and fantasy style of children with imaginary companions. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 2006, 167(1), 17 - 29.

According to Piaget (1962) (Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New York: Norton.) fantasy play, daydreaming and dreaming all evolve from the same mental process.

Children who engage in extensive fantasy play tend to be more imaginative. Thus they have an imaginative predisposition.

Children with imaginary friends were more predisposed to engage in fantasy than those children who did not have such friends. (Mean age of children in study was 6 years old)

Children with imaginary friends:
1. Reported they daydreamed more often
2. Daydreamed when alone
3. Felt they could almost see and hear the contents of their daydreams in front of them.

These children are able to create vivid mental images and tend to use these in times of solitude. And more likely to play solitary games with a mythical theme. They are seen as having enriched fantasy lives and are seen as highly imaginative.



Heuvelman, L.R. & Graybill, D.
Assessment of children’s fantasies with the Make A Picture Story: Validity and norms. Journal of Personality Assessment, 1990, 55, 578 - 592.

The younger the child the more fanciful the fantasy

Behaviourally aggressive children tended to have more aggressive fantasies but it is also noted that normal children also make frequent use of violence and aggression in their fantasies. Thus caution must be taken when children display violent fantasises to assume this is a sign of potential aggressive behaviour problems.

Children rarely will have nude figures in their fantasies.

Children will generally have child figures in their fantasies and usually select those of the same sex as the child.

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The schizoid personality

The DSM notes of the schizoid personality, “Excessive daydreaming is often present”. Based on the research above one can begin to identify those children who have the potential to develop the schizoid personality. For instance those children with fantasy involving imaginary friends.

Once identified one can then adjust their parenting style to make sure the schizoid personality development remains within the normal range. Some key features of the schizoid structure are as such:

Core decision
The world is scary so withdraw from it (people) and don’t show any of your feelings

Other injunctions
Don’t show your feelings
Don’t be close
Don’t belong
Don’t get your needs met

Ego states
Commonly high in Conforming Child ego state as ‘rocking the boat’ will attract attention and make people focus on them which is scary. The “withdrawn Child ego state” best describes them. They have little desire for social interaction. Often good thinkers and so they can be high in Adult ego state. The quiet achiever is a common style for them and thus they make good employees. Low Free Child ego state as that involves the expression of feelings and can also attract attention. They can give the appearance of being cold or aloof.
They in particular find it difficult to express anger (and assertion which is a derivative of anger). So Rebellious Child ego state is not often used. This can make them appear indecisive and not clear in their goals. Often present is a lack of social skills.




The demon or lillith.
Other than schizoid personality problems, the P1 stage of development (3 - 6 years of age) can result in the formation of the demon or lillth part of the personality

Consider this quote from Eric Berne who wrote about the demon in his book, ‘What do you say after you say hello’.

He stated, “The demon is the jester in human existence and the joker in psychotherapy.... No matter how well the therapist plans his psychotherapy, the patient always has the upper hand. At the point when the therapist thinks he has the four aces, Jeder plays his joker, and the demon wins the pot. Then he skips merrily off, leaving the doctor to leaf through the deck trying to figure out what happened. Even if he is ready for it, there may be little he can do..... The demon first appears in the high chair, when Jeder scatters his food on the floor with a merry glint, waiting to see what his parents will do. If they make friends with it, it will go onto later mischief, and then perhaps into humorous fun and jokes. If they beat it down, it will lurk surly in the background, ready to leap out at an unguarded moment and scramble his life as it originally scrambled his food.” (Pp 122 - 123).

Berne, E. 1972. What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Bantam: New York.


A fixation at the P1 stage of development can result in this type of behaviour becoming prominent in the personality.



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Empathy

My blogger friend Linda asks about empathy. I wrote this some time ago for a workshop.

Empathy is quite a complicated psychological process when one gets down to describing it theoretically. I suppose this is to be expected as it is considered one of the more ‘higher’ forms of communication compared to the more basic and primitive processes such as simply communicating feelings to another.

Carl Rogers states that empathy is not just the cognitive understanding of the client‘s experience, but actually experiencing it without getting lost in it.


He says to sense the client’s confusion, timidity or anger as if it were the therapist’s own but without getting lost in it. That is without it becoming to big in the therapist or negatively impacting on their ability to function. The therapist can then communicate that understanding to the client.

Reference
(Rogers(1962), The interpersonal relationship: The core of guidance. In Rogers and Stevens (eds.) “Person to Person”).

These are some examples I found in the text books of empathy being expressed

“It must be very frightening to be so uncertain about your job security.”

“I think I see what you are saying. In some ways you like coming here and talking to me, but you’re not sure it’s really doing very much for you.”

“My goodness, you really love her, don’t you?”

This process described however rests on magical thinking and thus is a flawed process or at least a flawed description of the process.



Lets examine the process of empathy from an ego states perspective.

1. Therapist is aware and comprehends their observations of the client.

The Adult ego state of the therapist observers the clients behaviour and verbal reports of what they are experiencing.

2. Therapist has their feeling reactions to the awareness and comprehension of the client.

3. Therapist’s Parent ego state keeps the Free Child reaction in check such that it does not get too large or debilitating to the therapist and that the gaol remains the welfare of the client rather than the therapists own Free Child needs.
4. NP caring combines with FC feeling reactions and Adult ego state understanding to have an empathetic response to the client. As you can see quite a complex psychological process.



It should be noted that one can not experience what the client is experiencing, one can only have a feeling reaction to it. This feeling allows the therapist’s experience to be what he perceives is a copy of the client’s experience but this is only ever a guess as one cannot experience what another person is experiencing.

Ironically in this way empathy is quite self centred and narcissistic process. It is about me and my understanding of the experience of the client. It becomes about the other in the last stage of the process with the NP involvement. The therapist’s personal experience of the client is then used in a caring way to the benefit of the client.

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Shame - edit #4 (Part 1)

This post will develop over a couple of days

When one reads the literature on shame one finds a bit of confusion as to what shame is and is not. Or perhaps it is better to say that people have differing views on it. One commonly finds three things mentioned in relation to shame.

Internalised anger
Guilt &
Shame

These three things are often mentioned as relating to or being part of shame. My own view is that each of these constitute three separate psychological processes. They are three separate entities. However they can and often do occur contemporaneously.



This would explain why some people may see guilt as being part of the shame experience or internal anger as defined as being shame on occasion. They can occur at the same time and often do. If one can define the three separate psychological processes this would clarify the nature of shame and its associated processes.

There are two ways in which internal anger can occur as shown in the diagram



People can express anger at themselves from their Child ego state. When this occurs people will do negative internal self talk such as I am stupid, I was a geek talking to that girl and so on....

Anger can also be expressed from the Critical Parent ego state to the Child of the person. In this case the internal self talk does not start with a “I” statement but with a “You” statement when an internal ‘telling off’ occurs. Examples may be “You were such a jerk talking to that boy”, “You can’t even get a simple report right”, You stupid f**k” and so forth.

Guilt occurs when the person has a sense of breaking an internal rule which they have for them self. If a husband thinks the woman next door is hot and foxy but he has a rule inside his Parent ego state which says, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours wife” then he can end up feeling guilt for having such thoughts and feelings.



Or a person may steal money from a brother and later feel guilt about it because he has the rule in his Parent that you don’t steal from your brother. People can feel guilty the next day after a night of drinking too much. Alcohol decommissions the Parent ego state and thus people behave in such ways that they usually wouldn’t. The next day after the alcohol has worn off they feel guilty because the Parent ego state becomes active again.



Finally we have shame which is a natural feeling reaction to a particular environmental stimuli. Often, but by no means always, it is associated with sex, nudity or intimate bodily processes such as urinating or defecating. A prime example is the enuretic child who wets his bed at night. When the child wakes up and realises he has wet the bed it is very easy for him to feel shame about that and he can go to extensive lengths to try and hide it. Indeed parents need to be very careful not engender a sense of shame in a child when he wets the bed. It needs to be dealt with very carefully so as to avoid this. Thus we have the shame transaction.



As you can see this differs from the guilt transaction in that there is no Parent to Child transaction before for emotion is experienced. This is consistent with Freud’s presentations on shame which is probably best summed up by Lynd(1958) who notes that guilt is usually more related to transgressions of clear moral codes and rules. No better example of this is found in religious texts which define what behaviours, thoughts and feelings are regarded as sinful. These are incorporated into the Parent ego state by the young child and when transgressed the individual most often will expoerience guilt.

With shame the rules are much less codified and clear. Transgressions of them are more by tactlessness, errors in taste or bad luck. As a result the Parent ego state is much less involved in the process. Again the example of the enuretic child demonstrates this. Wetting the bed does not break a Parent ego state rule and generally would not be regarded as sinful. Instead it result from bad luck or factors outside the child’s control.

Lynd, H.M. (1958) On Shame and the Search for Identity. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.


This indicates that there are three separate psychological processes - inward anger, guilt and shame. They can occur on their own or they can occur together. However if we see them as separate processes then the situation as to what shame is and is not can be kept more clear.


The separateness of these three psychological processes can be understood experientially as well. In therapy I may ask the client the following questions:

Recall a time when you felt guilty.
What happened and describe the feeling? Use a few words to describe what the experience of guilt feels like for you?

Recall a time when you felt shame.
What happened and describe the feeling? Use a few words to describe what the experience of shame feels like for you?

Recall a time when you felt angry at yourself.
What happened and describe the feeling? Use a few words to describe what the experience of self directed anger feels like for you?

Most people find this quite easy to do and report that the experience of shame and guilt are different which supports the contention that they involve discrete psychological operations.

If any one here wants to do this exercise I would be interested to hear your answers.




Shame and embarrassment

Under normal circumstances shame is not an emotion that is experienced all that often. The feelings chart shows there are various groups of feelings.



I have purposely used the word “Family” because they are like that. There is a commonality amongst the feelings but they are also all different. Just like members in a family, they all have a basic commonality and they are also all different.

It is proposed that shame and embarrassment are like this. Embarrassment is a minor version of the full shame reaction and thus embarrassment is a much more common feeling for people to experience. It is safe to say that most people could relatively easily recite situations where they have felt embarrassed. Under normal circumstances there would be far less events to recall where the person felt shame.

They both come from the same emotion but vary in their impact. Whilst embarrassment is an unpleasant emotion to experience it does not have the devastating effect that shame can have. Charles Rycroft notes that shame is the cinderella of the destructive emotions. The experience of shame tears at the core of who we are. It effects us at a deep level and the understanding of who we are.



With guilt people can have the experience of,

“I am bad for doing that thing”

whereas with shame the person is more likely to end up with the feeling of,

“I am bad”
Whilst the shame will be connected to a certain event occurring the resultant comprehension of it is more about me as a person rather than about something I have done. Shame has far more destructive power than most other emotions.

As stated above under normal circumstances shame is infrequently experienced. It tends to only be experienced in relation to quite unusual circumstances, where as embarrassment is more frequently experienced in reaction to a wider range of events. There is however an exception to this.


Will he feel embarrassed about ending up like this? Lots of people are watching!


Parents quickly learn that emotions are a effective way to get children to conform.

They can use guilt.

“Mummy will feel sad and hurt if you don’t eat up all your food”.

They can use fear by threatening abandonment.

“Unless you have your bath now mummy will get a policeman to come and take you away”.

These emotions cause pain in the child and thus the child will tend to behave in order to avoid the painful experience. The same applies for shame which can be a very unpleasant emotion to experience. Thus parents can say things like,

“You should be ashamed of yourself for.....”

It works in getting a child to behave in a certain way but it is also particularly destructive in the ways described above. I would strongly advise parents not to employ this kind of child rearing practice.


This will get people to conform, but at what long term psychological cost?

If you are working with a client who reports this kind of parenting in their childhood then you know the person may be damaged psychologically at quite a deep level. Also they will tend to report the experience of shame in the present more than average. They will tend to react to events with shame whereas others would tend to only experience embarrassment. This of course just amplifies the problem.

Rycroft, C.
1971. Reich. Fontana: Great Britain

The discussion about using shame as a parenting technique provides insight into the difference between neurotic shame and Here and Now (H&N) or reality based shame.



This figure shows the two different types of shame are functions of two different parts of the personality. Reality based shame is a function of the Free Child aspect of the personality and the Adapted Child ego state is where neurotic shame would result from.

This proposal rests on the assumption that shame can be a normal and natural human emotion. An assumption that gets plenty of support. Firstly Freud (1942) notes that shame is “,,, organically predetermined...”(p.46). Then English (1994) discusses the topic in some depth. As she notes it would be impossible to instil shame in a child who did not already have the organic receptors for it. The ability to feel shame can be seen to have some evolutionary advantages as well.

English reports that Charles Darwin suggested that shame had certain evolutionary advantages. Shame is often around nudity and sexual matters and that covering up the genitals afforded more protection of them which also increased the likelihood of the propagation of the species. The expression of shame often involves blushing and a desire to hide which corresponds to the feeling of being dangerously exposed.


Why only cover up those parts of the body?



English, F. (1994) ‘Shame and Social Control Revisited.’ Transactional Analysis Journal. 24, 2, 109 - 120.

Freud, S. (1942) Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex. London: Imago.



As a result humans are so constructed that should a particular set of circumstances arise they will naturally feel shame. To make the assessment of reality based shame versus neurotic shame one needs to judge the appropriateness of the circumstances that have lead to the shame reaction.

Sometimes this is clear but at other times it is harder to assess. As said before shame is often, but by no means always, associated with nudity, sex or intimate physical and psychological factors. Below are some instances where many would feel shame as an appropriate H&N reaction.

The child who wets its bed or soils itself.
A woman discovers her ex-partner has placed intimate nude photographs of her on the internet for all to see.
A man is publicly exposed as an adulterer in his church group.
A man publicly jokes about his wife’s vaginismus.
A woman pokes fun at her husband about his baldness which she knows he is very sensitive about.



If a person reports feeling shame in such situations these could be diagnosed as Free Child shame reactions.

Some times the circumstances are less clear.
A teenager gets an F for his maths test.
A lecturer trips on steps as he walks up onto the stage to give a lecture.
Is it appropriate to feel shame in these examples, is harder to judge.

Many people with a social phobia report shame and embarrassment that is neurotic in nature. They feel as they walk into a social gathering that everybody is looking at them, they look awkward and odd such that they experience shame. Or as they talk they think they are blushing and saying stupid things and feel shame as a result.

These are likely to be Adapted Child ego state responses of shame. One reason why these occur can be due to the parenting styles as described above. If the parents have used shame as a method of punishment and said things like, “You should be ashamed of your self for...” the person is primed to have shame reactions as an adult. As a result they will have reactions of shame when most others would not.



This leaves us at the next juncture of what does one do when they feel shame? Thus the distinction between neurotic and reality based shame assumes some importance.


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