The psychotherapeutic treatment of child and adult victims of sexual trauma reveals a characteristic feeling of shame. This sense of shame, this mask or blushing face, is first and foremost a social feeling: it always appears as a reaction to how someone else looks at us. Here we discuss the hypothesis that in psychotherapeutic treatment, the subject’s expression and recognition of shame, far from being epiphenomenona, constitute an essential aid to affirming and reconstructing identity. This means that rather than reducing shame to a symptom, it should be included in a more global understanding of how the psyche functions. Recognising oneself and being recognised as a shameful subject is an affirmation of the self as subject.
A clinical situation will be discussed to show how, in post-traumatic consultation, taking account of the sense of shame has positive effects on the subject’s mental dynamics.
Feeling of shame; sexual trauma; narcissism; identity; psychotherapy