Mario Jacoby, Shame and the Origins of Self-Esteem
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANING OF SHAME; SHAME IN THE BIBLICAL PARADISE NARRATIVE
What is archetypal about the emotion of shame? In the last chapter, we found that shame can be seen as an innate affect (Izard 1977), which suggests that it is irreplaceable in the economy of the psyche.
Over the ages, archetypal experiences and behaviors have crystallized in the form of
mythical ideas.
Myths provide an array of expressive possibilities that in their symbolism, sensuality, and imagery move us to a process of endless contemplation and interpretation.
As the Indologist Heinrich Zimmer observed:
Those who wish to discuss a symbol say more with their explanations about their own limits and biases—especially if they are caught up in its meaning—than they do about the symbol’s depths. ~Zimmer 1938:11)
Nevertheless, an exploration of myth broadens our understanding and stimulates new psychological insights.
In our own cultural sphere, the most important myth dealing with the theme of shame—and guilt—is the biblical Paradise narrative (Gen. 3:1–24).
The report derives from the so-called “Jahwist” and can be dated approximately to the tenth or ninth century before Christ, or the Solomonic Enlightenment, a time of crisis for many ancient sacred traditions.
In the paradise narrative, feelings of both shame and guilt are depicted as originating in an act of disobedience to God, who had strictly forbidden humans to eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
Before this violation, the biblical text claims, “And they were both naked, the man
and his wife, and were not ashamed.”
But after they tasted of the tree of knowledge, their eyes were opened “and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons” (Gen.
3:7).
As God was walking in the cool of the day, they hid themselves so that He had to call out to Adam, “Where art thou?” Adam hid because he had realized that he was naked. “I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
“Who told thee that thou wast naked?” was God’s reply.
Adam’s awareness of his nakedness is what exposed his violation of God’s
commandment; it was proof that he had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge.
From that moment on, he knew about good and evil, and therefore forfeited the experience of paradisal “unitary reality” (Neumann 1988).
It should be noted that the motif of a loss of a paradisal, unitary reality is not unique to this Jewish creation story, later adopted by Christianity.
Many African myths also tell of how a mistake or violation of a commandment results in a momentous loss.
The Greeks also saw their own Golden Age as having been lost due to human fault.
Hubris, which literally means “pride” or “presumption,” is the word they used to describe human behavior that oversteps limits set by a divine order of being.
We find a classical example of hubris in the myth of Prometheus’s theft of fire.
Here humans steal something that belongs to the gods; they take divine privilege into their own hands.
The biblical God suggests Adam has committed this same transgression when He says, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” (Gen. 3:22; see also Jacoby 1985).
The capacity to distinguish between the opposites is at the very root of human consciousness—indeed, it virtually defines human nature.
Paradoxically, it is both an offense against God’s creation and an opportunity given by God.
According to Herder, the human being is a creature set free from nature.
Unlike other creatures, humans are not completely bound to nature by means of their instinctual endowment.
They can and must pit themselves against nature; that is the source of their
presumption, forlornness, and disorientation.
Adolf Portmann described human nature as “openness to the world” and “freedom of choice,” qualities that distinguish humans from animals, which are “environmentallyembedded” and “instinct-secured” (Portmann 1958).
Openness to the world and free will imply a certain loss of instinctive confidence.
Still, human beings cannot divorce themselves entirely from their biological and instinctual foundations, however rudimentary these may be.
One of the most difficult tensions that human beings have to cope with as a species comes from simultaneously belonging to nature and reflecting consciously on it.
It is no wonder that we experience consciousness as a double-edged sword, even as “original sin.”
The doctrine of original sin as it is generally understood today can be traced to Augustine, who lived from AD 354 to 430.
It was he, above all others, who reduced this original guilt to sexuality.
In this, he was clearly influenced by the contemporaneous movements of Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, which posited that the spirit had to be liberated from its imprisonment in corporality and instinctuality.
It is well known that after his conversion to Christianity Augustine, who had led an active erotic life in his youth, wanted to drive out the devil of sex with the Beelzebub of intolerance.
For him, the Fall entailed, above all, a transformation of sexuality—the beginning of all “lust” or “concupiscence.”
On the other hand, Augustine wanted to show that sexual relations without carnal desire are possible, and this formed the basis for his elaborate theory of “marriage
in Paradise” (Grimm 1972).
Since Augustine, the Fall has been interpreted primarily as a matter of sexuality, although this view is not necessarily grounded in the biblical text.
I believe Augustine has caused a great deal of damage with his theory of “marriage in Paradise.”
This doctrine, I believe, has led to an unrealistic conception of sexuality and a sense that sexual lust is something that can be curbed at will.
Augustine’s theory was seminal in the development of a sexual ethic hostile not only to instinct but also to women.
In my book The Longing for Paradise, (1985) I reflected on several aspects of the Paradise narrative from a psychological point of view.
In that account, I was especially interested in the idea of original sin in relation to the psychogenesis of conscience and guilt.
But I did not deal with the feelings of shame also mentioned in the story, and I would like to fill that gap now.
The feeling of shame emerged for the first time after Adam and Eve’s “eyes were opened.”
Having tasted the fruit of knowledge, they realized that they were naked.
Obviously, they had been naked before, but this was no cause for concern—or shame—since it was nothing out of the ordinary.
Reactions of shame are sparked off by awareness.
The following observation is also of psychological interest: the feelings of shame were so unbearable that “the man and his wife” found it necessary to do something.
The solution lay in Grafting protective loincloths for themselves out of fig leaves.
This was a creative act, motivated by shame, for the sake of civilization.
Nevertheless, the question remains as to why the first humans had to be ashamed in front of each other and even in front of God once they became conscious of their nakedness.
In the story, this is related matter-of-factly, as if it required no further explanation.
As I have said, it may simply be that the shame of completely exposing oneself has an archetypal foundation.
It eems to be a trait of the species, a primal symptom of humanity’s fall from unity with nature.
In this respect, it does make sense to speak of a Fall.
Humans no longer enjoy the condition of acting naturally in relation to what is natural.
And this is precisely what tips God off to the fact that the “sin” of consciousness has taken place.
Of course it would not be wrong to interpret the tasting of the fruit of knowledge as the first act of love.
This somewhat prevalent view builds on the Old Testament association of sexual relations and knowledge.
In numerous places one reads that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and other patriarchs
“knew” their wives in the night, after which the women bore sons.
Even today, we describe the first act of love as a loss of innocence.
In the Sumerian-Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, the link between the growth of human consciousness and the sexual encounter is even more explicit than in the Paradise narrative.
In it, Enkidu, a natural man who lives with the animals and understands their speech, is seduced into an act of love by a “Hierodule,” a sacred prostitute.
Performing this act alienates him from his original nature and deprives him of his understanding of the language of the animals.
Here, the symbolism suggests that the human sexact is not merely an “instinctual-animalistic” phenomenon, but includes a rich realm of subjective experience—ideas, fantasies, and thoughts.
Being human entails a recognition that the shame of physical nakedness
also has a psychic and therefore a symbolic significance.
The first people’s realization that they were naked coincided with a first perception of their own body image or body pattern.
Distinctions were thus drawn; along with the knowledge of good and evil, there arose the capacity to distinguish I from Thou, subject from object.
Adam and Eve are no longer one; they become conscious that they are two different persons—his naked body and her naked body.
Each has a need to hide his nakedness from the other—a need that leads to mutual differentiation and also to the process of individualization.
At the same time, Adam realizes that God is a power separate from himself.
From this power he hears the call, “Adam, where art thou?”
Psychologically, this is to say that a differentiation has occurred between a
consciousness centered in the ego and a consciousness of “something larger within us.”
(Jung called this greater something the “Self” and saw it as the imperceptible center of the entire personality, conscious and unconscious.
The Self cannot be distinguished from the various god-images of the psyche.)
The myth of Paradise portrays an essential paradox in the growth of human consciousness.
From the perspective of God, the human has become “like one of us, knowing good and evil.”
This knowledge produces a degree of “god-likeness” within the human.
From the human perspective, however, it is this very growth of consciousness that brings man to recognize his limitations, his “nakedness” before God.
Growth of consciousness creates a fear of God, a fear of being subjugated to something larger and more powerful.
“I was afraid, because I was naked.”
Humility and consciousness of the limits of the ego are some of the most
difficult and important achievements along the path of psychic development.
The ego must not identify with the supraordinate Self, for this would mean a fall into illusory or delusory fantasies of grandiosity, indeed into mental illness.
At best, the ego stands in relationship with that which is greater in us, the Self, drawing a certain confidence from it: “selfconfidence” in the deepest sense.
We will return to this idea later on.
The growth of consciousness, symbolized by the eating of the fruit of knowledge, leads to a loss of paradisal unitary reality.
No longer does one enjoy blissful ignorance of the painful conflicts caused by the polarization of inner and outer, subject and object, ego and Self (Neumann 1988).
Consciousness centered in the ego is based on the differentiation of these
opposites and the suffering of their polarity.
There are many positions one can take in regard to the proverbial fig leaf.
Indeed, plenty of hypocrisy has hidden behind its protective veil.
And yet, staying with the symbolism of the myth of Paradise, the fig leaf seems
to be connected to the first creative act of human beings:
“They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.”
The feeling of shame motivated them to find a remedy for their nakedness; it led to an invention.
Adam and Eve attempted to cope with shame rather than remaining helplessly subject to it. In the process, they discovered the specifically human capacity for altering what is given by nature.
Like anxiety, shame can be seen as a driving force of civilization.
THE BASIC FUNCTION OF SHAME
Why are we ashamed?
This is a question of major psychological import.
In the case of nakedness, for example, just what is it that we feel we have to
Our physical make-up is basically the same as that of everyone else’s of our gender.
And almost all of us are more or less ashamed to let our naked bodies be seen.
By exposing ourselves we even run the risk of being charged with “offending public decency.”1
Still, naked bodies do not by themselves harbor any great mystery.
“Don’t act so modest; I know what boys and girls look like,” one hears
adolescents say in an attempt to overcome their shame about investigating each other’s bodies.
Bodily evacuations, urination, and defecation are natural and common to all, and yet they take place in a “closet” (or “closed” place)—as if there were something degrading about such animal necessities.
Hence expressions such as, “Now I have to go find that little place where the Emperor (or the Pope) also kneels down.”
Sexual activities as well generally take place in an enclosed, private area, because sex partners would feel disturbed if they were observed during their love-play.
(Such disturbances often take place in dreams, however; often the observer
appears in the guise of father or mother!)
It seems logical to interpret such shame reactions as defenses against
exhibitionistic or voyeuristic tendencies, tendencies that undoubtedly would lose some of their fervent appeal if they were not bound up with a collective taboo.
Izard expressed the view that from a biological, evolutionary perspective, shame is probably the fundamental motive that leads people to seek privacy for sexual relations.
Adherence to rules protecting privacy has long been in the interest of social order and harmony.
In many ways, shame continues today to serve these functions in contemporary society (Izard 1977:400). ~Mario Jacoby, Shame and the Origins of Self-Esteem, Page 16-20
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