Even when you' re confessing your own sins, penitence is no longer a requirement in the talk show revival tent. That's bargain-basement salvation. We are ashamed of our parents' mistakes and our children's missteps. We are even, sometimes, ashamed of our own shortcomings and sins. The problem, psychologist Kaufman says, is that the experience of shame is so painful we can't bear to bring it out into the open.
People can appear shameless and still be riddled with shame.
That may be why so many people feel acute shame about things that were done to them. The shame of rape victims and abused children can be unbearable, despite all rational explanations that they've done nothing wrong. When they've been subjected to an act so shameful and confronted a perpetrator so apparently shameless, there's so much unclaimed shame left floating in the air that it has to land somewhere. The trouble is that many psychologists make little distinction between unearned shame and shame that is richly deserved. The culture of psychotherapy has long embraced the idea of being value-neutral.