Up: [[Anger]] Related: [[Nine Innate Affects]] Course: The Body in Individuation with Kathleen Wiley for Washington State Jung Created: 2024-11-05 Back in the early 60’s, a developmental psychologist named Silvan Tomkins identified shame as one of [[Nine Innate Affects]] that he noted in infants. He did say that shame and fear weren’t observed in infants until they were a few weeks old. So shame might not be truly innate. A Freudian psychoanalyst, Erik Erikson, identified autonomy versus shame and doubt as the primary developmental task of ages two through four. Autonomy is about having a separate self. A parent or caregiver needs to be able to support a young child’s desire for autonomy while still managing problematic behaviours. If that doesn’t happen, and the child is made to feel as if they are “bad”, that’s when shame and doubt kick in. So our relationship to shame is going to be based on our early childhood experiences. Note that shame is believing that you are bad, whereas guilt is recognizing that your behaviour was bad. Shame isn’t always terrible. It can be a healthy response if you feel it when you do something that goes against your values. But toxic shame paralyzes, destroying our sense of agency. If unconscious shame gets activated, that will trigger a negative [[Projection]] on to another person quicker than anything. That’s why it is so important to stay grounded in our bodies, conscious of physical sensations and the emotions that accompany them.