Hochschild let them eat war
let them eat war.
Hypermasculinity: Goffman unbound
of California, Santa Barbara
Emotions in Current Studies of Warfare
Family Systems Theory and Sociology of
Emotional Sources of Vengeance
Emotions as Explanations
Pride and Shame
Studies of Shame and Aggression
between individuals and between
groups. Solidarity is the opposite of alienation,
since it implies trust, understanding, and
mutual identification. Alienation implies distrust, lack of understanding
or misunderstanding, and misidentification. Alienation comes in two forms:
isolation (own person or group
overwhelmingly dominant) and engulfment (other person or one’s group
are acknowledged when they are named correctly and expressed
respectfully. They are denied, in the psychological
they are defended against by projecting them onto others, ignored and avoided.
emotions; on the contrary, since when
underground, they lead extended lives independently
of conscious individual or collective
Feelings that have a genetic basis. Commonly
named emotions are joy, interest, surprise,
grief, anger, contempt, and disgust. Although
the genetic basis of emotions is universal
human species, it is acknowledged that the
of emotions, and therefore their manifest
appearance, is culturally conditioned. In particular,
the patterns of suppression and denial of emotions
are culturally learned.
signal of threat to the social bond. It is therefore
of premier importance in understanding the
social bonds, and in identifying the state
between individuals and between groups. Humiliation is usually understood to be
shame, originating in public exposure of self
The occurrence of shame is not always
since in Western societies it is usually disguised,
denied, or ignored.
are little favored in current explanations
causes of war. If they are referred to at all, it is
only indirectly and casually.
Frequently used concepts such as prestige, honor, and morale are directly linked
to emotions, but this link is never investigated. If emotions are mentioned
directly, they are not indexed or theorized. For example, the emotion of
humiliation is often mentioned in studies of quarrels, feuds, vendettas, and
wars. But none of these studies see this emotion as part of the process of
causation. Fear of opponents is another emotion that is often mentioned, but
again is seldom part of the central argument. Most serious studies of warfare
seem to presume that although emotions are present among the combatants, they
are not a significant causal force.
Current explanations of the causes
of war and peace are dominated by a “realist” ideology. This view assumes that
human behavior is motivated by “objective,” that is, nonemotional elements, and
that conscious calculation of material benefits and losses figures prominently
in the instigation of war. In this article, I will not argue against the
importance of objective motives and calculation in human affairs, but I will try
to frame the “realist” view within a larger perspective that includes both
emotional and non-emotional elements.
Michael Billig (1995) has
brilliantly made the point that nationalism, a strong emotional attachment to
one’s own nation, is probably the single most significant causal element in wars
between nations. That is to say that the leading motive for killing in the
modern world is not in the name of one’s self or family, one’s city or state,
but one’s nation, an imagined community, rather than the people who one actually
knows. Billig’s thesis points toward the necessity of understanding collective
emotions: why are so many so desparately and intensely attached to their
homeland that they deem it more important than their own lives and those of the
“enemy?” Although this question seems shockingly obvious, most current studies
do not ask it, much less provide a plausible answer. We may need an analysis of
the dynamics of individual and collective emotions in order to answer such a
Billig’s book points toward one
important reason for the cataclysmic power of nationalist emotions: they are so
taken for granted that they are seldom noticed. The most powerful forms of
nationalism, he argues, go completely unnoticed. Nationalism is so much a fabric
of our everyday life that we are not aware how frequently and how fervantly we
reaffirm it. For this reason, he calls this most prevalent form “banal
nationalism.” Of the many dramatic examples he offers, I give only one from the
life of Samuel Johnson, scholar, poet, novelist, and maker of the first English
dictionary, as reported by his biographer, Boswell. In a conversation at the
house of a friend (Mrs. Dilly) Johnson stated “I am willing to love all mankind,
except an American.” At this point, according to Boswell, Johnson’s highly
charged nature was bursting “into horrid fire.” This particular episode occurred
at the time the American colonists were rebelling against England. To quote
Billig: “Johnson was, of course, expressing his own views and emotions. But he
was doing more than that; he was repeating commonplace themes of his times: the
virtues of loving all mankind and being brimful of patriotism; and the
naughtiness of enjoying an explosive hatred of Americans. All these matters
stretch beyond Johnson, the individual; they reach into the ideological history
of nations and nationalism” (Billig, 1995: 18–19).
Billig’s comment on Johnson’s
intense feeling of hatred exactly catches the confluence between individual and
collective emotions in moments of crisis, the taken-for-granted character of the
emotion, and its insult to logic (universal love and hatred for the enemy are
expressed in the same sentence).
The example of Johnson’s outburst
against Americans suggests a potentially important link between Billig’s concept
of banal nationalism and the emotion analysis to be described here: Johnson was
probably unaware of the intensity of his nationalistic emotions, since they were
so habitual to him, and fit so perfectly with the emotions of his associates.
His emotions, as powerful as they were, went unacknowledged by him and by
others. I will return to the issue of unacknowledged emotions in the analysis
below. Before doing so, it is necessary to discuss the background for it
provided by the avoidance of emotions in most contemporary research on warfare.
I. EMOTIONS IN CURRENT STUDIES
Billig makes an important point
about research on international relations. He points out that banal nationalism
is so taken for granted that even scholars are ensnared in it; their attachment
to their nation is so much part of the fabric of their lives that they are
oblivious to it. Their obliviousness can be seen in many contemporary studies.
Although there are several broad
surveys of studies of warfare, I will single out one by Vasquez (1993), because
it seems to be the most precise and comprehensive. It references almost 400
studies, most of which are empirical investigations of actual wars. From these
studies, the author generates some hundred propositions about the causes of war.
Here is an example:
7. More interstate wars will occur
between contiguous states than non-contiguous states (Vasquez, 1993: 310).
All of the propositions cite
studies which provide supporting evidence. The list of propositions is broken
down into several sections, Territorial Contiguity (from which #7 above was
selected), Rivalry, Alliances, Arms Races, Crises, and Domestic Politics. The
style of reasoning is atheoretical, that is, inductive and correlational (#7
implies only a correlation between warfare and contiguity of the opponents). But
the large number of studies that use one or more of the section headings
suggests a view of causation that is part of the habitus of the political
scientists and others who study war. That is to say, they believe that
territorial contiguity, rivalry, alliances, arms races, crises, and domestic
politics are causes of wars.
The massive number of studies
actually tells us little about the causation of war because they are low-level
generalizations, perilously close to being truisms. They are too abstract to
include any of the ambient details in the social and psychological process that
leads to war. But it may be these very details that are needed to develop a
useful theory. Does one need careful empirical studies to find that wars are
more frequent between states that are contiguous, or rivalrous? Or that arms
races, crises, and domestic politics figure in the instigation of war? These
“findings” can be seen as a variation of the cargo cult science that Feynman
The only direction not flirting
with truism are the 15 propositions about the types of alliances that precede
wars, as against the types of alliances that do not precede wars. But even these
propositions are stated in vernacular, rather than theoretical terms, and tell
us little about causal process: “15b. When the global institutional context
limits unilateral acts through the establishment of rules of the game, alliances
tend not to be followed by war.” Once again, this proposition is only
correlational, and does not furnish any information about the step-by-step
process which leads to war.
No studies that provide
step-by-step details are included in Vasquez’s study, since he favors
generalizing studies over case studies. Kennan’s brillant study (1984) of the
political process that led to the formation of what he called “the fateful
alliance” between France
and Russia prior to the First World War is not referenced. The idea of
nationalism, which Kennan and many others have named as a powerful cause of war,
is mentioned only once in the proposition section of Vasquez’s book. Nationalism
is not actually involved in any of the hundred propositions; it is mentioned in
a query following 44c, and then only along with several other factors. It
appears that the idea of nationalism as a powerful force for war is not part of
the conceptual equipment of the political scientists of warfare, perhaps
because, as Billig suggests, they take it for granted.
Even those concepts that imply
that nationalism involves emotions are used in a way that glosses over this
link. An example of such a gloss is provided by the idea of ethnocentrism. This
concept was introduced into social science by Sumner (1911), who apparently
borrowed it from Gumplowitz. He defined it as the practice of viewing all
matters from the standpoint of one’s own group. This usage is still current in
social science, as in the discussions by Levine and Campbell (1971), and Staub
The concept of ethnocentrism masks
several significant dimensions of social process and social structure. First of
all, it is static, individualistic, and simplistic. As the term is usually used,
it refers to a fixed attitude of individuals, rather than one aspect of a
complex social process. Secondly, it subsumes only the perceptual and cognitive
aspects, excluding emotions. As did Sumner, current discussions assume that
ethocentrism is a viewpoint or a set of beliefs, with no concern for the
emotions that may also be present.
Current studies of ethnocentrism
gloss emotions in their analysis of the genesis of conflict, particularly the
emotions of pride and shame. The distinction made in this article between pride
and false pride is particularly important in understanding the causes of
conflict. Most current discussions of “national pride,” “race pride,” “group
pride,” and so on, confound pride with false pride, that is, authentic,
justified pride, with a show of pride that is only a disguise. A person or group
in a state of normal pride is usually not hostile or disparaging toward others.
False pride, however, a mask for shame, generates hostility toward others.
Finally, classic and current
discussions usually do not attempt to assess the intensity of ethnocentrism
relative to other forces, and therefore their importance in relationships
between groups. This flaw is apparent in the idea widely held in current social
science that ethnocentrism is universal. Although this doctrine may well be
true, it avoids a crucial issue: what are the conditions in a society that
encourage runaway, exploding ethnocentrism? That is, when does ethnocentrism
become the leading force in a society, to the extent that other issues, even
survival, seem to fade from consciousness? In order to explore this issue, it
will be necessary to review some basic ideas from family systems theory and from
the sociology of emotions.
II. FAMILY SYSTEMS THEORY AND
THE SOCIOLOGY OF EMOTIONS
I begin with communication tactics
and alienation in family systems. Family members are alienated from their own
conflicts, to the extent that they are deceptive with each other, and
self-deceptive. To the degree that the basis of their own conflicts is invisible
to them, they see them as exterior and constraining, as inevitable. This
attitude toward conflict provides a strong link with Durkheimian theory:
nationalism and warfare are social facts, social institutions that are
reaffirmed in the day-to-day organization of our civilization. To the extent
that individuals and groups deny conflict and/or their own part in conflict, it
will be seen as inevitable, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Although family systems theory is
useful, a necessary component is missing if we are to understand interpersonal
and intergroup conflict, the role of emotion sequences. In our theory (Scheff
and Retzinger, 1991), we emphasize the way in which the emotion of shame is
managed. Pride and shame are crucial elements in social systems. Pride signals
and generates solidarity. Shame signals and generates alienation.
The emotion of shame can be
directly acknowledged by referring to one’s inner states of insecurity, or
feelings of separateness or powerlessness. Often it goes unacknowledged to self
and others. Following the important distinction discovered by Lewis (1971),
unacknowledged shame takes two different forms; overt shame is signaled by
furtiveness, and emotional pain that is misnamed. In bypassed shame, one tries
to outface the other, masking one’s shame by hostility toward, or withdrawing
from, the other.
Acknowledging shame helps connect
parties; admissions of feelings of weakness or vulnerability can build
solidarity and trust. Denial of shame builds a wall between parties. If shame
signals are disguised and/or ignored, both parties lose touch with each other.
Pride and shame cues give instant indications of the “temperature” of the
relationship. Pride means the parties are neither engulfed (too close), a “we”
relationship, not isolated (too far), an “I” relationship, but are emotionally
and cognitively connected in what Elias called interdependence (1972). Overt
shame usually signals engulfment, bypassed shame, isolation.
Unacknowledged shame appears to be
recursive; it feeds upon itself. To the extent that this is the case, it could
be crucial in the causation of interminable conflict. If shame goes
unacknowledged, it can loop back upon itself (being ashamed that one is ashamed)
or co-occur with other emotions, such as grief (unresolved grief), fear (fear
panics), or anger (humiliated fury). Unacknowledged shame seems to foil the
biological and cultural mechanisms that allow for the expression and harmless
discharge of these elemental emotions. In the absence of shame, or if it is
acknowledged, grief may be discharged by weeping, under culturally appropriate
conditions of mourning. But if shame is evoked by grief and goes unacknowledged,
unending loops of emotions (shame-grief sequences) may occur. The individual
will be unable to mourn.
If shame is evoked but is
unacknowledged, it may set off a sequence of shame alternating with anger.
Shame-shame sequences are probably much more prevalent than shame-anger
sequences. Elias’s (1978, 1982) analysis of changes in advice manuals over the
last 5 centuries implies that shame-shame sequences are a central core in the
development of modern civilization, to the extent that they occur in the
socialization of children.
Another direction in the
management of shame is to mask it with anger. Shame/anger may be interminable in
the form of “helpless anger,” or in the more explosive form, “humiliated fury.”
The shame-anger loop may be central to destructive conflict. If one is in a
shame state with respect to another, one route of denial is to become angered at
the other, whether the other is responsible or not. That is, if one feels
rejected by, insulted by, or inferior to another, denial of shame can result in
a shame-anger loop of unlimited intensity and duration.
One difficulty in communicating
the new theory is that emotions have virtually disappeared as creditable motives
in modern scholarship, as already indicated. One would hardly know they existed
from reading the analyses of causes of conflict in the social sciences. When
references to emotions are made, they are likely to be abstract, casual,
indirect, and brief. For example, emotions are sometimes invoked under the
rubric of “nonrational motives,” but with little attempt to specify what this
category might contain.
III. EMOTIONAL SOURCES OF
The identification of shame-anger
sequences in the causation of conflict may help to solve the problem of the
causation of revenge. Although there is a very large literature on vengeance, it
is almost entirely descriptive in nature. The largest literature is the
anthropology of duels, feuds, and vendettas. Another source concerns the revenge
genre in world literature, especially in drama. A third, smaller and less
defined literature is on conflict in families.
These literatures testify to the
way in which the revenge motive leads to interminable conflicts in human
affairs, and to the widespread popular appeal of dramatic portrayals of this
motive. However, these sources limit themselves to descriptions of the behavior
involved. None offer substantive theories of the causation of revenge. A similar
paucity of explanations of revenge is also found in theories of human behavior.
Surprisingly, there is only one book-length treatment of revenge in the entire
human science literature, by Marongiu and Newman (1987). Although these authors
attempt an explanatory formulation, it sheds little light on the problem. Rather
than ask the critical question, the specific conditions under which revenge
occurs and the conditions under which it does not occur, this book offers a
general and vague explanation for the existence of revenge in the human species.
Predictably, given their framing
of the problem, one explanation they offer is genetic; they propose an
evolutionary account of the origins of revenge. They also offer a what they
think of as a psychological alternative, drawing upon Freud’s mythic formulation
of the primal crime of the sons against the father (Totem and Taboo,
1918). Freud’s formulation is basically another version of the genetic
explanation. He thought that the revenge motive might arise out of genetically
driven sexual and aggressive instincts. For reasons already given, this approach
is useless for explaining specific acts of vengeance. In this article I propose
that a viable explanation should deal with emotions. In particular, my
formulation suggests that emotional arousal leads to vengeful actions only if
that arousal is denied.
IV. EMOTIONS AS EXPLANATIONS
There is a strong tradition in
modern scholarship in the human sciences of ignoring emotions as causes. Even
when words that reference intense emotions are used directly, the author often
obscures the specifically emotional component by confounding it with a more
rational motive. An example of the kind of confounding that frequently occurs
involves humiliation, one of the most direct ways of referring to shame (Jervis,
Lebow, and Stein, 1985: 140): “The dangers of humiliation, of conveying the
appearance of weakness to real adversaries, were too great to permit
acquiescence in the triumph even of apparent ones.” The analysis is referring
the American government’s tendency to react a communist nation that is not
in the same way as to one that is dangerous (USSR).
At first glance one might think
that the analyst is implying that governments, like individuals, sometimes act
in the way that they do because they are attempting to avoid shame. Although a
word is used that is clearly in the family of shame terms, invoking an emotional
motive, the sentence also invokes the idea of avoiding not just shame, but the
appearance of weakness. This is the modern lexicon of military strategy, of
credibility and deterence. By invoking this lexicon, the analyst managed to
avoid the “nonrational” implications of his statement, that is, the specifically
emotional components of motivation. The entire literature on the strategy of
deterrence is pervaded by exactly this confound.
In the narratives of these texts,
such as the one by Jervis, Lebow, and Stein (1985), there are many references to
humiliation, particularly in the discussions of concrete instances of conflict,
as in the case of the Falklands War and Israeli-Arab conflicts. But this word
does not appear in the introduction, conclusion, or index. It does not have the
conceptual status of a real motive. It is too useful to avoid entirely, but too
embarrassing to elevate to the status of a concept.
There are a number of
psychoanalytically derived approaches to conflict that treat emotions directly.
For the most part, however, following Freud, these studies ignore shame. An
example is provided by a study of the need to have enemies and allies (Volkan,
1988). This work focuses on the inability to mourn (unresolved grief) in the
exacerbation of conflict. Other studies emphasize the other two emotions which
Freud recognized, anxiety and anger.
Emotion is widely recognized as a
cause of conflict in only one area, conflict and war among traditional peoples.
Students of feuds and vendettas are apt to see humiliation and revenge as causal
agents among pre-moderns, not “us,” but “them.” In his assessment of the causes
of primitive warfare, Turney-High gives revenge pride of place (1949, pp.
149–150, and passim 141–168):
Revenge is so consistently
reported as one of the principal causes of war that it requires detailed
analysis. Why should the human personality yearn to compensate for its
humiliation in the blood of enemies? The tension-release motives plays a part
here: Revenge loosens the taut feeling caused by the slaying or despoiling of
one’s self, clan, tribe, nation. Even the hope for revenge helps the humiliated
human to bear up, enables him to continue to function in a socially unfavorable
environment. Fray Camposano wrote of the Mojos of southwestern
to Phillip II of Spain
that, “The most valiant were the most respected and their patience under
injuries was only dissimulation for subsequent vengeance.” Revenge, or the hope
for revenge, restores the deflated ego, and is a conflict motive with which
mankind must reckon with universally.
Even in this realm, explicit
analysis of emotions as motives is an endangered species. Turney-High’s
explicitness occurs in a volume published 42 years ago. In the next generation
of analysis, reference to avoidance of shame is considerably blunted.
In 1966, Peristiany edited a
volume on feuds in Mediterranean society. It contained the word shame in its
title, and mentions in the chapters, but most of the authors carefully refrain
from considering emotions to be motives. The exception is Pitt-River’s chapter
on honor and social status. In his analysis of honor and shame (verguenza)
among the peasants of Andalusia, he is direct to the point of bluntness
about emotion words and their cognates (1966: 42): “As the basis of repute,
honor and shame are synonymous, since shamelessness is dishonorable; a person of
good repute is taken to have both, one of evil repute is credited with neither.”
For most current scholars, the way
in which Pitt-Rivers identified honor and shame as interchangeable parts of a
larger cultural system of motivation and action would be utterly unacceptable.
Pitt-Rivers must have been an entire generation older than the other
contributors, putting him in the same cohort as the equally blunt Turney-High.
In recent treatments of primitive warfare, references to emotions have all but
disappeared. Even more indirect references, for example, to actions such as
revenge, which are closely related to emotional motives, are less frequent and
more dispersed. This is not to say that the analysts completely avoid the
consideration of emotional motives. What has happened is that such motives are
treated, but distantly and briefly, in terms that are more diffuse: prestige,
face-saving, and status-competition. The vagueness of these terms facilitates
the kind of confounding already mentioned above: emotions lead only a shadow
life these days. Shame, particularly, has dropped out of the discussion, along
with other emotions and personal motives. Lust for possessions or power is seen
as real, for honor, unreal.
It is difficult to locate the
exact time in which shame and humiliation dropped out of the lexicon of
respectable motives. Strong decrements seemed to occur in the two eras just
preceding and during the two World Wars.
In the 19th century, it was still possible to name
“national honor” as a reason for going to war, as in the origins of the
Spanish-American War. But by the beginning of World War I, this kind of motive
no longer had full legitimacy. Even in pre-WWI
France, where there was still much
public talk of the honor, glory, and triumph associated with war, revenge was
seen as too coarse a motive to countenance openly.
This timing might correspond to
the lowering trajectory of shame thresholds that has been traced by Elias (1978,
1982), which he proposes to be one of the key characteristics of modernity.
Increasingly, as shame thresholds and open acknowledgement of shame both
decrease, social scientists, like most others in our civilization, are too
ashamed of emotions to give them serious attention as causal elements.
This one change may have wrought
havoc with our understanding of human motives in general, and specifically with
analyses of the causes of conflict. Governments and their analysts seem
forbidden to talk or even think about emotional motives. Instead, duplicity,
indirection, and silence reign. If we cannot talk openly about the emotional
causes of conflict, we may embarrass ourselves to death.
In one of the press conferences
during the Iran hostage
crisis (Nov. 28, 1979), a reporter bluntly asked President Carter about an
emotional motive: “How can you satisfy the public demand to end such an
embarrassment?” Most of Carter’s response sounded as if he had not heard the
question, since he talked in the main about abstract legal and ethical issues,
in an extremely detached manner.
Only toward the end of his
statement, and obliquely, did he respond to the emotional content of the
question, saying that “… acts of terrorism may cause discomfiture to a people or
a government.” Discomfiture is one of many codewords for shame (Gottschalk and
Gleser, 1969), but its use and the indirection of the sentence (not “us,” but a
hypothetical people or government) essentially denies the existence of shame.
This stance is expressive of the isolated form of alienation, and the bypassing
Where Carter favored denial and
silence, not just in this instance but in all of his press conferences, Reagan
was more duplicitous. One example will give the flavor. In his statement of
September 5, 1983,
regarding the downing of a Korean jetliner by a Russian fighter, he said: “With
our horror and our sorrow, there is a righteous and terrible anger. It would be
easy to think in terms of vengeance, but that is not a proper answer.”
Reagan’s statement has it both
ways; it acknowledges anger and vengeance but also denies it. Especially in the
Iran hostage crisis, he used this maneuver to great advantage. This stance is
expressive of the engulfed style of alienation, and the overt, undifferentiated
style of shame (Lewis, 1971, and Gottschalk and Gleser, 1969; both list
self-righteous anger as one of the many cues for hidden shame.)
Elsewhere, Retzinger and I (1991)
have suggested an emotional basis for charisma; it may be the ability of a
leader to express the dominant emotions of his or her public, and anti-charisma,
a leader’s penchant for denying or even condemning these emotions. The contrast
drawn above between Reagan’s and Carter’s style illustrates this proposition, as
does my analysis of the emotional basis of Hitler’s appeal to the German people
The stance of the analysts of the
actions of governments is virtually always that of the isolated, bypassed style:
emotional motives are mentioned only casually and distantly (e.g., prestige) or
not at all. None of the many governmental and scholarly discussions of the
strategy of deterrence even acknowledge the possibility that there might be an
emotional, “nonrational” component in this strategy. Emotions have disappeared
not only from the statement and actions of governments, but from the writings of
most scholars. Humiliated fury is not a creditable, respectable motive like
power, territory, or other objectified motives. As Emerson said, “Things are in
the saddle; they ride humankind.” Objectification sets the stage for, and
reflects alienation between persons and between nations.
V. PRIDE AND SHAME
The psychoanalytic idea of
repression may be helpful in understanding defenses against inadequate bonding.
If the ideology of the self-sufficient individual is a defense against the pain
of threatened bonds, what is being repressed is the idea of the social bond.
Freud, however, argued that repression concerns not only ideas, but also the
feelings that accompany them. He thought that repression could be lifted only if
both idea and emotion were expressed. If modern societies repress the idea of
the social bond, what are the associated feelings that are also repressed?
I follow the lead of Cooley
(1922), who implied that pride and shame are the primary social emotions. These
two emotions have a signal function with respect to the social bond. In this
framework, pride and shame serve as intense and automatic signs of the state of
a system otherwise difficult to observe. Secure social bonds were unknown to
Hitler, and also seem to have been in short supply in the society in which he
grew up. To understand how this situation might have led to implacable
vengefulness, it will first be necessary to once more review how emotions can
cause continuous conflict.
VI. UNENDING EMOTIONS
I propose that unacknowledged
alienation leads to interminable conflict. Like Watzlawick and colleagues
(1967), I argue that some conflicts are unending, any particular quarrel being
only a link in a continuing chain. What causes interminable conflict?
There are two forms of
interminable conflict, the quarrel and impasse. Both forms grow out of
unacknowledged shame. Shame is pervasive in conflictful interaction, but
invisible to interactants (and to researchers), unless Lewis’s [or Gottschalk
and Gleser’s (1969)] approach is used. I connect the two forms of conflict with
the two forms of unacknowledged shame; quarrels with the bypassed form, impasses
with the overt, undifferentiated form. The two forms of shame are polar
opposites in terms of thought and feeling. Overt shame involves painful feeling
with little ideation, bypassed shame, the opposite pattern: rapid thought,
speech, or behavior, but little feeling. The two forms correspond to a
distinction in Adler’s (1956) theory of personality: children lacking a secure
bond at critical junctions respond in two different ways, either with an
“inferiority complex” (chronic overt shame), or the drive to power (behavior
masking bypassed shame). Lewis’s analysis parallels Adler’s, but also represents
an immense advance over it. Unlike Adler, she described observable markers for
the theoretical constructs, and specified the causal sequence, the unending
spiraling of emotion in “feeling traps.”
Overt shame is marked by
furtiveness, confusion, and bodily reactions: blushing, sweating, and/or rapid
heartbeat. One may be at a loss for words, with fluster or disorganization of
thought or behavior, as in states of embarrassment. Many of the common terms for
painful feelings appear to refer to this type of shame, or combinations with
anger: feeling peculiar, shy, bashful, awkward, funny, bothered, or miserable;
in adolescent vernacular, being freaked, bummed, or weirded out. The phrases “I
felt like a fool,” or “a perfect idiot” are prototypic.
Bypassed shame is manifested as a
brief painful feeling, usually less than a second, followed by obsessive and
rapid thought or speech. A common example: one feels insulted or criticized. At
that moment (or later in recalling it), one might experience a jab of painful
feeling (producing a groan or wince), followed immediately by imaginary but
compulsive, repetitive replays of the offending scene. The replays are
variations on a theme: how one might have behaved differently, avoiding the
incident, or responding with better effect. One is obsessed.
Lewis (1971) referred to internal
shame-rage process as a feeling trap, as “anger bound by shame,” or “humiliated
fury.” Kohut’s (1971) concept, “narcissistic rage,” appears to be the same
affect, since he viewed it as a compound of shame and rage. Angry that one is
ashamed, or ashamed that one is angry, then one might be ashamed to be so upset
over something so “trivial.” Such anger and shame are rarely acknowledged,
difficult to detect and to dispel. Shame-rage spirals may be brief, a matter of
minutes, but can also last for hours, days, or a lifetime, as bitter hatred or
Brief sequences of shame/rage may
be quite common. Escalation is avoided through withdrawal, conciliation, or some
other tactic. Wars are generated by a less common process. Watzlawick and
colleagues (1967:107–108) call it “symmetrical escalation.” Since such conflicts
have no limits, they may have lethal outcomes. In this theory, unacknowledged
shame is the cause of revenge-based cycles of conflict [this formulation was
anticipated in the work of Geen (1968) and Feshback (1971)]. Shame-rage may
escalate continually to the point that a person or a group can be in a permanent
fit of shame/rage, a kind of madness.
VII. STUDIES OF SHAME AND
The theory outlined here is
supported by several exploratory studies. Katz (1988) analyzed descriptions of
several hundred criminal acts: vandalism, theft, robbery, and murder. In many of
the cases, Katz found that the perpetrator felt humiliated, committing the crime
as an act of revenge. In some of the cases the sense of humiliation was based on
[A] … typical technique [leading
to a spouse being murdered] is for the victim to attack the spouse’s deviations
from the culturally approved sex role…. For example, a wife may accuse her
husband of being a poor breadwinner or an incompetent lover … or the husband may
accuse his wife of being “bitchy,” “frigid,” or promiscuous (Ch. 2, p. 8).
In other cases it was difficult to
assess the degree to which the humiliations were real and/or imagined. Whatever
the realities, Katz’s findings support the model of the shame/rage feeling trap.
In his analysis of the murder of intimates, he says: “The would-be-killer must
undergo a particular emotional process. He must transform what he initially
senses as an eternally humiliating situation into a blinding rage” (p. 11).
Rather than acknowledging his or her shame, the killer masks it with anger,
which is the first step into the abyss of the shame/rage feeling trap, which
ends in murder. Katz reports similar, though less dramatic findings with respect
to the other kinds of crimes he investigated.
One issue that Katz’s study does
not address is the conditions under which humiliation is transformed into blind
rage. Since not all humiliations lead to blind rage, there must be some
ingredient that is not indicated in Katz’s cases. Studies of family violence by
Lansky suggest this extra ingredient. In order to lead to blind rage, the shame
component in the emotions that are aroused must be unacknowledged.
Lansky has published three papers
on family violence. The first paper (1984) describes six cases, the second
(1987), four. The third (Lansky, 1989) analyzes one session with a married
couple. In most of the cases, he reports similar emotional dynamics: violence
resulted from the insulting manner that both husbands and wives took toward each
other. Although some insults were overt, in the form of cursing, open contempt,
and disgust, most were covert, in the form of innuendo or double messages.
Underhanded disrespect gives rise
to unacknowledged shame, which leads in turn to anger and violence, in the way
predicted by Lewis. It is difficult for the participants to respond to innuendo
and to double messages; these forms of communication confuse them, Instead of
admitting their upset and puzzlement, they answer in kind. The cycle involves
disrespect, humiliation, revenge, counter-revenge, and so on, ending in
The way in which both spouses seem
to be unaware of the intense shame that their behavior generates can be
illustrated in one of the cases (Lansky, 1984, 34–35, emphasis added):
A thirty-two year old man and his
forty-six-year-old wife were seen in emergency conjoint consultation after he
struck her. Both spouses were horrified, and the husband agreed that
hospitalization might be the best way to start the lengthy treatment that he
wanted. As he attempted to explain his view of his difficult marriage, his wife
disorganized him with repeated humiliating comments about his inability to hold
a job. These comments came at a time when he was talking about matters other
than the job. When he did talk about work, she interrupted to say how immature
he was compared to her previous husbands, then how strong and manly he was. The
combination of building up and undercutting his sense of manliness was brought
into focus. As the therapist commented on the process, the husband became more
and more calm. … After the fourth session, he left his marriage and the hospital
for another state and phoned the therapist for an appropriate referral for
individual therapy. On follow-up some months later, he had followed through with
The disguising of the wife’s
humiliation of the husband in this case is not through innuendo, since her
disparagement is overt. Her shaming tactics are disguised by her technique of
alternately praising her husband, by stating how “strong and manly” he was, then
cutting him down. Perhaps she confused herself with this tactic as much as she
did her husband.
Lack of awareness of shaming and
shame can be seen in Lansky’s report of a conjoint session with a violent man
and his wife (1989). In this session, Lansky indicates that the wife was dressed
in a sexually provocative way, and that her bearing and manner was overtly
seductive toward the interviewer. Yet neither spouse acknowledged her activity,
even when the interviewer asked them whether the wife was ever seductive toward
other men. Although both answered affirmatively, their answers concerned only
past events. The lack of comment on what was occurring at that very moment in
the interview is astounding. It would seem that blind rage requires not only
shaming and shame, but blindness toward these two elements.
The relationship between
collective violence and unacknowledged shame is suggested by an analysis of the
Attica riots (Scheff,
Retzinger, and Ryan, 1989). The violence of the guards toward the inmates began
with a series of events that the guards perceived as humiliating: without
consulting the guards, a new warden intent on reform increased the rights of the
prisoners, which resulted in a series of incidents with prisoners that the
guards experienced as humiliating. Since the guards did not acknowledge their
humiliation, their assault on the prisoners follows the sequence predicted by
the Lewis theory: insult, unacknowledged shame, rage, and aggression.
This formulation does not discount
the importance of the topic of conflict, be it scarce resources, cultural
differences, or any other issue. But it argues that in the absence of
unacknowledged shame, human beings are resourceful enough to be able to find a
compromise to any dispute, one that is most beneficial to both parties, or least
harmful. If shame is evoked in one or both parties, however, and not
acknowledged, than the content of the dispute becomes less important than the
hidden emotions, which take over. Unacknowledged shame is the basis of what
Goffman (1967) called “character contests,” conflicts in which the topic of
dispute becomes subordinate to the issue of “face,” which is a disguised way of
referring to matters of pride and shame, honor and disgrace.
The theory outlined here may
provide a solution to the problem of interminable and destructive conflict. It
can be summarized in terms of three propositions:
1. Bimodal alienation (engulfment
within, and isolation between groups) inhibits cooperation both within and
between groups. Understanding, trust, and cooperation become increasingly
difficult to the extent that social bonds are insecure (Persons on one or both
sides of a relationship feel threatened with rejection).
2. Bimodal alienation leads to
interminable conflict if, and only if, alienation and its accompanying emotions
are denied. This proposition may be true independently of the gravity of the
differences in interests between the two groups. That is, the most beneficial or
the last harmful compromise on differences of interests can be found if
alienation is acknowledged.
3. The denial of alienation
generates an emotional process which leads to escalation of conflict, a triple
spiral of shame-rage between and within parties to a conflict. Acknowledgement
of alienation and shame de-escalates conflict, independently of the differences
of interests between the parties.
This formulation has a number of
advantages over existing ones. Rather than being based on the assumption that
groups are made up of isolated individuals, it assumes a structure/process
composed of social relationships. It is not static, since it proposes that the
degree of conflict at any moment is based on the state of social bonds in and
between the contending parties at that moment. The formulation is exceedingly
complex, since it suggests an analysis of solidarity and alienation in terms of
actual social relationships between and within the parties to a conflict. Unlike
many theories of conflict, this one offers a description of the causal chain
that links social and psychological conditions to the generation of conflict.
Communication practices that serve to deny alienation and emotion generate
spirals in which emotions escalate to the point of intolerable tension,
explaining the origin of “war fever” and other highly irrational behaviors by
individuals and groups.
Finally, this theory is
potentially testable, since it provides detailed descriptions of its elemental
components, alienation and emotion. For this reason, it might be seen as a
“grounded theory” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). In our study of videotapes of game
shows, Retzinger and I (1991) have shown that markers of solidarity and
alienation can be rated systematically, and that alienation interferes with the
ability of contestants to cooperate, and therefore, to win. In her work on
marital quarrels, Retzinger (1991) has shown that shame and anger can be
systematically rated in videotape recordings. Her findings in each of four
quarrels suggest that unacknowledged shame always precedes rather than follows
the disrespectful anger which leads to escalation. At an interpersonal level,
her work supports Simmel’s (1955) conjecture that separation leads to conflict,
rather than the other way around.
I do not argue that the material
bases of conflict are unimportant, or that alienation and shame alone explain
all interminable quarrels. Rather I propose that these two interrelated
components are always present in destructive quarrels, feuds, vendettas and
wars, but have been neglected. Alienation and emotion are intergral to the kind
of internation conflict that is a central feature of our current world, and need
to be studied directly, along with the other components that cause conflict.
Also See the Following Articles
AGGRESSION, PSYCHOLOGY OF •
BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOLOGY • ENEMY, CONCEPT AND IDENTITY OF • ETHNIC CONFLICTS AND
COOPERATION • ETHNICITY AND IDENTITY POLITICS • EVOLUTIONARY FACTORS • FAMILY
STRUCTURE AND FAMILY VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE
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