Combines shame studies and literary criticism to uncover new perspectives on Dostoevsky as writer and psychologist, with his lying characters as case studies.

A book for psychotherapists and their clients - and for anyone who wants to make the journey from shame to unshame. Carolyn Spring, author of 'Recovery is my best revenge: my experience of trauma, abuse and dissociative identity disorder', documents in this, her second book, her journey through psychotherapy to heal and resolve trauma-based shame, which had resulted in a catastrophic mental breakdown in her early thirties and an eventual diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID). She then embarked on a nearly ten year journey of psychotherapy through which she came to realise that shame had actually saved her life. However, the cost to this protective function is a life lived dissociated from feelings of joy, connection, love and belonging. This book explores Carolyn's pathway towards 'Unshame'. Suitable for both professionals and survivors alike, it is a fascinating insight into that most private and mysterious of places - the therapy room, and the mind. About the author Carolyn Spring helps people recover from trauma and to reverse adversity. She is author of numerous books and articles and has delivered extensive training throughout the UK for both dissociative survivors and professionals working with them. She set up PODS (Positive Outcomes for Dissociative Survivors) in 2010 to promote recovery from dissociative disorders. She now works more widely in the field of mental health and adversity and combines a wealth of personal experience with research in her writing and training, bringing a rare positivity and the belief that no matter what people have experienced, recovery is possible. For more information go to www.carolynspring.com.

This book provides new ideas on how to work with and constructively transform shame on a theoretical and practical level, and in various socio-cultural contexts and professions. It provides practical guidelines on dealing with shame on the basis of reflection, counselling models, exercises, simulations, specific psychotherapeutic approaches, and auto-didactical learning material, so as to transform shame from a negatively experienced emotion into a mental health resource. The book challenges theorists to adopt an interdisciplinary stance and to think “outside the box.” Further, it provides practitioners, such as coaches, counsellors, therapists, trainers and medical personnel, with practical tools for transforming negative experiences and emotions. In brief, the book shows practitioners how to unlock the growth potential of individuals, teams, and organisations, allowing them to develop constructively and positively.

Chronic shame is painful, corrosive, and elusive. It resists self-help and undermines even intensive psychoanalysis. Patricia A. DeYoung’s cutting-edge book gives chronic shame the serious attention it deserves, integrating new brain science with an inclusive tradition of relational psychotherapy. She looks behind the myriad symptoms of shame to its relational essence. As DeYoung describes how chronic shame is wired into the brain and developed in personality, she clarifies complex concepts and makes them available for everyday therapy practice. Grounded in clinical experience and alive with case examples, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame is highly readable and immediately helpful. Patricia A. DeYoung’s clear, engaging writing helps readers recognize the presence of shame in the therapy room, think through its origins and effects in their clients’ lives, and decide how best to work with those clients. Therapists will find that Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame enhances the scope of their practice and efficacy with this client group, which comprises a large part of most therapy practices. Challenging, enlightening, and nourishing, this book belongs in the library of every shame-aware therapist.

This is a revolutionary book about the nature of emotion, about the way emotions are triggered in our private moments, in our relations with others, and by our biology. Drawing on every theme of the modern life sciences, Dr. Nathanson shows how the nine basic affects--interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, surprise-startle, fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell, disgust, and shame-humiliation--not only determine how we feel but shape our very sense of self. For too long there has been a battle between those who explain emotional discomfort on the basis of lived experience and those who blame chemistry. As Dr. Nathanson shows, chemicals and illnesses can affect our mood just as surely as an uncomfortable memory or a stern rebuke. He presents a completely new understanding of all emotion, providing the first link between the exciting affect theory of Silvan Tomkins and the entire world of biology, medicine, psychology, psychotherapy, religion, and the social sciences. Shame is the least understood of the painful emotions, although it affects every phase of life. We have all been made to feel foolish just at the moment we most wanted to appear wonderful; we have all been rebuffed by those we wished to court. Not one of us looks exactly as we might wish. Shame haunts our every dream of love, and influences how we experience ourselves as sexual beings. We react to shame by withdrawing, by making painful alliances with those who humiliate us, by calling attention to what brings us pride, or by attacking whoever has made us feel inferior. The comedian, as Nathanson shows in his discussion of Buddy Hackett, makes us laugh at what we try to keep hidden, transforming shame intoacceptance and even pride. This book explains everything that can possibly make us proud or ashamed. All are in this book; nobody who reads it will be quite the same again.

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE "My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon," begins Shame, the probing story of the twelve-year-old girl who will become the author herself, and the single traumatic memory that will echo and resonate throughout her life. With the emotionally rich voice of great fiction and the diamond-sharp analytical eye of a scientist, Annie Ernaux provides a powerful reflection on experience and the power of violent memory to endure through time, to determine the course of a life.