Alienation and Hidden Shame by Thomas J. Scheff (Continued)

Media and Masses^[2]

In France during the period 1871-1914, the role of mass media in both generating and reflecting collective humiliation and anger is quite blatant. The French public and its leaders experienced their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (l870-71), and the Treaty of Frankfurt, which ended the war, as humiliating (Kennan, l984, Sontag, l933, Weber, l954).

Revenge themes were common in the popular literature of the time. The poetry and novels of that era serve as examples. The war poems of Deroulede, Chants du Soldat (Songs of a Soldier, l872) were wildly popular. Here is a sample stanza (quoted in Rutkoff, l981, p. l61):

Revenge will come, perhaps slowly
Perhaps with fragility, yet a strength that is sure
For bitterness is already born and force will follow
And cowards only the battle will ignore.

And hoarded with such jealous care,
With all the force of right robust,
Although revenge is not mentioned explicitly, the last line implies what might be called the honor-insult-revenge cycle (Scheff and Retzinger, l991).

The idea of bimodal alienation has already been discussed with respect to pairs of multiple killers, suggesting that just as they were isolated without, they were engulfed within. This idea might help understand the type of multiple killing that Websdale called civic respectable, a spouse calmly killing a spouse and one or more of the children. In ordinary terms, it seems difficult to understand any killing, but especially a parent who would kill his or her own children. The theory presented here suggests the possibility that the civil reputable parent who kills is so engulfed with his family, and so isolated without, that he or she projects his own unbearable emotional pain on the family members. If that were the case, the killer would think that he or she is helping by ending their pain.

Films and Courses

This section will outline a course on emotions that could be made available to everyone: both students and non-students. The shape of this course is based on my own experience in teaching emotions. To bring attention to the new courses, films could be made for public broadcast, as discussed below.

The second way that emotions are like sex is not at all obvious. In fact, it is necessary to go out on a limb to make the point, since there is no agreement among experts. I propose that emotions are also like sex in the sense that they are bodily processes that can be resolved through a climax, parallel to the idea of orgasm. The emotion of grief can serve as an example. (As is often the case with emotion words in English, other words are also used to designate what seems to be the same emotion: sadness, sorrow, inability to mourn and so on). I try not to use the idea of catharsis, which is actually valid, because experimental psychologists have mistakenly dismissed it.

Suppose that the feeling of grief arises out of bodily preparation to cry. A state of grief or sadness occurs when the body prepares to cry, but actual crying is delayed. Grief counselors are often told by their clients that they are embarrassed by crying, even in therapy. Most people have a long history of unresolved grief.

My courses based on these ideas have always been highly successful over the forty years that I have taught them. Students often comment that everyone probably needs such a course. Many of the male students learned to cry, although not necessarily in public.

Films for the Public

In schools, these courses need not begin as late as college, but could begin early in grammar and high school, then in universities and professional schools. Most of the students who enrolled in my classes were profoundly ignorant of their own emotions and the social-emotional world, but they were quick to learn.

Summary

1. Hidden shame and alienation, in conjunction, are the main causes of both withdrawal and violence.
2. Feedback loops of shame, shame/anger, and alienation give rise to the extraordinary power of violence.
3. Feedback loops are also produced by avoiding emotions: avoidance gives rise to backlogs of emotion that get larger and more frightening the larger they grow.

These four processes, in combination, are threats to the continued existence of our civilization, unless steps are taken to reduce their power. One approach would be to teach classes on emotions for both students and adults. One such class is outlined.

_______________________

 [2] This section summarizes part of Chapter 6 of Scheff (1994).

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_________________1995. Identifying Shame and Anger in Discourse. American Behavioral Scientist 38: 541-559.

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______________1994. Bloody Revenge: Emotions, Nationalism and War. Boulder: Westwick.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2011.03.007

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 What's Love Got to Do with It?: The Emotional World of Popular Songs (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers) 2011

 

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