The Art of Intimacy and the Hidden Challenge of Shame

The Art of Intimacy and the Hidden Challenge of Shame

Published by Vernon C. Kelly, Jr. M.D. at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 Vernon C. Kelly, Jr. M.D.

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form without permission, except for brief quotations used in reviews and critical articles.

The Wild Rose from ENTRIES: POEMS by Wendell Berry, copyright © 1994 by Wendell Berry. Used by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Excerpted passages from Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self by Donald L. Nathanson, by kind permission of the author and W. W. Norton.

Excerpt from Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein by permission from Penguin Group.

These Ain’t Tynan’s Blues by Danny Schmidt. Copyright © 2001 Live Once Records. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

New Yorker cartoons by William Haefeli and Paul Noth courtesy Condé Nast.

Photograph Il Bacio (The Kiss) ©1947 by Furman Baldwin.

Kind permission for use of their children’s photographs:

Hanna and Scott Sanoff

Molly and Christopher Todd

Marcye Shayer

Other photographs of babies courtesy Classicstock Vintage Image Resources.

Permission to reprint email communication granted by Ronald Denis.

Creative Commons License for use of the homunculus illustration.

Praise for

The Art of Intimacy and the Hidden Challenge of Shame

Vick Kelly’s The Art of Intimacy and the Hidden Challenge of Shame is an absolutely marvelous book. Dr. Kelly describes the foundation of human motivation – our feelings – and then uses his decades of clinical experience to show how shame can disrupt or save a marriage. This is the finest book available for therapists who work with couples and for couples who want to better understand and enhance their marriage and themselves.

—PAUL HOLINGER, M.D., M.P.H.

Dean, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

Professor of Psychiatry, Rush University Medical Center

Author of What Babies Say Before They Can Talk

(Fireside, Simon & Schuster, 2003)

This book will be useful for a far broader audience than couples hoping to understand and improve the dynamics of their relationships. In the practice of Restorative Justice (an emerging field in criminal justice, school discipline, community, workplace and family relationships), wrongdoing is seen as a violation of people and relationships. Knowing more about shame is helping the restorative community reach a deeper understanding about the motivation for, and the impact, of crime and wrongdoing. Vick Kelly’s book, in giving the restorative community a theory about the emotional dynamics of our relationships with each other, will help us improve our professional practice and our personal relationships.

—MARGARET THORSBORNE

Director, Margaret Thorsborne and Associates

Vice Chair of Restorative Practices International

Co-author of Restorative Practice in Schools: Rethinking Behaviour Management (Inyahead Press, 2003)

The best way to think about shame is that it is a message that contains very important information. With this simple statement, Vick Kelly sets the foundation for a perspective that will help every couple deal productively with the most powerful and potentially destructive force in their relationship—their capacity to feel shame. Kelly uncovers the widespread (though often invisible) influence of shame and helps us understand the nature of the emotion, the underlying affect that drives it, and how it penetrates intimate relationships.

I love this book for several reasons. Vick Kelly introduces the revolutionary new understanding of emotion contained in Affect Psychology. He is a marvel at getting to the heart of complicated ideas and using examples that bring them to life. Affect psychology is a form of self-knowledge, and Kelly makes himself accessible in the process of teaching. His open manner and wise voice help readers to see the unseeable and speak the unspeakable—to deal with their shame. He guides couples to use their shame instead of fearing it. The result is resilience—both individually and relationally. This book will benefit every couple; it should be required reading for engaging in relationships.

—DON R. CATHERALL, PH.D.

Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University

Author of Emotional Safety: Viewing Couples Through the Lens of Affect (Routledge, 2007)

The Art of Intimacy and the Hidden Challenge of Shame will be a powerful tool in the kit of any couple that wants to create and maintain a close and loving partnership. Dr. Kelly cuts through the clichés and gives us the science. He explains why we feel the way we do, and in turn how we behave in the relationships that matter the most; for better or for worse. Vick’s writing is clear, caring and punctuated with wonderful anecdotes from a life rich in human connection.

—KATY HUTCHISON

Author of Walking after Midnight

(New Harbinger, 2006)

For Sharon

Sometimes hidden from me

in daily custom and trust,

so that I live by you unaware

as by the beating of my heart,

Suddenly you flare in my sight,

a wild rose blooming at the edge

of thicket, grace and light

where yesterday was only shade,

and once again I am blessed, choosing

again what I chose before.

—From The Wild Rose

by Wendell Berry

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Preface By Donald L. Nathanson, M.D.

Introduction

1 The Art Of Intimacy

2 The Shame Family Of Emotions

3 Why People Want To Be Together

4 Emotional Connections & Disconnections

5 Impediments, Impediments, Impediments

6 A Compass & A Triangle

7 Your Anger Is Lying To You

8 When Relationships Go Bad: Compass Of Shame Spirals

9 The Art of Shame in Intimacy Home Remedies: Part I

10 The Art of Shame in Intimacy Home Remedies: Part II

11 Sex & Shame

12 Medication For Intimacy?

Appendix I: A Primer Of Affect Psychology

Appendix II: Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Simply put: This book would never even have been conceived of had it not been for my mentor, colleague, and friend, Donald L. Nathanson, M.D. His prodding as my mentor, his brilliant insights as a colleague, and his unending support as my friend gave me the courage to step past the challenges of my own shame and expose my ideas about intimacy and shame. Thank you, Don, from the bottom of my heart!

Speaking of courage, I am deeply indebted to the many couples who have shared their stories with me over the years. I feel honored that they allowed me to see into their inmost selves as they strove to improve their ability to practice the art of intimacy. Their struggles often paralleled my own, and their insights always helped me improve my art.

To Gary David and Ron Denis, who read every word of my early manuscripts and offered suggestions, humor, and songs, I thank you for your cognitive abilities and the steadfastness of your friendships.

Thanks also go to special friends Nick and Jackie Scharff, Marg Thorsborne, Mick Brown, Peta Blood, Katy and Michael Hutchison, the hardworking Charles Gaby, and the marketing skills of Tom Hinkel, who helped me get my thick head past the original title that just didn’t work.

To my colleagues Paul Holinger and Don Catherall, thank you for your generosity in sharing information about the world of publishing and for your brilliant books that make such good use of affect script psychology.

To the late Silvan S. Tomkins for his interest in hearing my ideas relating affect script psychology to intimate relationships, and, of course, for the stunning genius of his mind as he explored the question, What do human beings really want?, I offer thanks that I wish I could have given him while he was still with us.

To Wilson Brown, Bob Patrylo, Bob York, and CR my thanks for the many years of regular get-togethers on the first tee that, paradoxically, relieved the distress of writing while we practiced the art of golf with its not-so-hidden challenge of shame. And thanks also to Ronda Throne, C.M.T., and Austin Noonan, D.C., for their help keeping my back in shape to play golf; and also to Ed Lawlor and Pete for carrying the load.

To Jane, Genie, Colleen, David, Cheryl, and everyone associated with Maine Authors Publishing: Who knew that publishing one’s book could be made so easy and so affordable? Thank you.

Besides my mother, father, and brothers, Fred and Greg, an understanding of the art of intimacy at the deepest levels of my heart and soul would have been impossible without the presence in my life of Molly, Hanna, Maddy, Collin, Louisa, and Katie. And I thank my lucky stars for the gifts of Chris Todd and Scott Sanoff. It would make all the hours of toil converting my ideas about the art of intimacy into written words worthwhile if Molly and Chris, Hanna and Scott gain a few tools from this book that enhance their own practice of the art of intimacy.

And last but really first: To my love, Sharon, whose grace, steadfastness, and work ethic put us all to shame—Here’s looking at you, kid.

Preface

I suspect that you will enjoy this book far more than you expected. Even though its title momentarily focused your attention on the uncomfortable matter of shame, this is an engaging, remarkable, and fascinating story about some of the most common unpleasant experiences in our lives. Vick Kelly, a master psychiatrist who has always regarded the treatment of couples as the center of his career, insists that we recognize that people join together in intimate relationships to share such feelings as the pleasure of interpersonal safety, as well as the excitement of sexual interaction. Sure, the most passionate of courtships and the happiest of marriages must crash into discord from time to time, but we seek and strive for the most pleasant possible balance between these poles.

In contrast to the general mass of books and videos purporting to teach anyone how to assemble and maintain a successful marriage, Dr. Kelly explains clearly and simply how a relationship forms, defines and names the forces that hold together or threaten a relationship, and what to do when nothing seems to work right. Rather than make everything seem obvious and simple, he takes the reader along with him on a tour through the unnecessarily frightening world of human emotion in such a way that we find that when it comes to what does and doesn’t work, we know far more than we thought. Different about his way of viewing couples is Vick Kelly’s insistence that all of us must understand the real language of human emotion in order to build relationships that can withstand both the joys and pains of a normal marriage. All of us who’ve learned from him start using his ideas and language right after attending one of his public presentations.

Most of his colleagues have for years pestered him to do a series of videos about his work with couples, and he’s always maintained that, independent of its unquestionable pleasures, marriage requires harder work if any couple is going to stick together through the squabbles that inevitably discolor our lives. He’s written this book to convince the reader that all of us have a lot to learn about ourselves, about each other, and about what makes marriage work. I wish I could look over your shoulders as you read this fascinating book, and I know you’ll be glad that you did.

I’ve spent several decades trying to understand why we humans experience emotion, what purpose it serves in normal life, how from time to time we are thrown into confusion by the occasional explosions of our own emotions experienced in situations that caught us unawares, and how we are affected by the intense, apparently uncontrolled emotion of others. I’d come to understand that tranquilizers helped us control emotions that we were otherwise unable to modulate. Using this kind of logic, depression was easy to understand as the inability to modulate painful emotions like sadness or gloom, and the antidepressants seemed to help us reestablish whatever balance of pleasant and unpleasant emotions made us more comfortable.

I’d written a lot about what we psychiatrists call the shame family of emotions—painful feelings ranging from slight decreases in self-esteem (our appraisal of ourselves) to emotional pain so horrific that people sometimes preferred to die rather than experience it anymore. As I studied these emotions, most episodes of rage, fury, explosions of temper, throwing things around the room until the rage seemed to decrease, and physical attacks on other people turned out to be reactions to shame that felt so awful and made such individuals feel helpless, worthless, and utterly incompetent unless or until they could become powerful by terrifying someone else into submission or utter helplessness. I came to understand that, for many people, ordinary alcoholic beverages were capable of reducing the pain of shame to such a degree that these folks learned to live with alcohol as either their personal tranquilizer or the elixir that could turn them from shame-ridden, helpless adults into raging monsters who felt competent only when the subjects of their rage had themselves been humiliated. The study of shame allowed me to understand a great deal that had been left out of my professional training, and I spent many years explaining to my professional colleagues what I had learned about this previously ignored emotion.

Throughout several decades of such work, Dr. Kelly was both a partner in my work on these puzzles and a remarkably talented designer of ways to help people gain control of their shame-based rage. He and I lectured together on many occasions, and we organized large meetings in which we taught our colleagues how to operationalize the concepts we’d developed. Yet there was one significant difference in our approach to the management of shame: my focus started and remained on the internal life of individual adults, and Dr. Kelly became intensely interested in the way the personal shame of one individual could affect the emotional life of that person’s significant other. For all of us who do psychotherapy, Kelly showed that the way each person handles his or her shame within the borders of an intimate relationship was a major factor in the degree of intimacy possible for that couple, and the degree of safety that might be experienced by both partners.

This book, then, is his conversation with the reader. It explains Dr. Kelly’s long-studied and quite inspiring ways of teaching people how to deal with their own shame in ways that produced the least amount of damage to their intimate others. His ability to find humor in some of the most difficult situations imaginable will both amuse and enlighten you. He’ll tell you about the strategies he’s devised to help people out of shame-based binds that so often trap couples in fights that seem to go on forever.

In other words, I rather think that anyone who has ever tried and failed to manage an intimate relationship will enjoy this book. People who’ve survived a divorce will shake their heads as they come to understand what no one had ever explained before. Men and women, gay couples, senior citizens who have nearly given up any hope of changing what appears to be an unchangeable spouse, teachers who feel helpless with students who become explosive for no obvious reason, parents who feel unable to explain the complaints of their adolescent children, dating couples who wonder why their significant other seems to refuse any attempt to talk about what went wrong, and so on. The list can go on and on, for these shame-based conflicts are for many people the bane of their existence, the social traps from which they have never been able to escape. This, then, is your book, and I hope you enjoy learning from Vick Kelly, my distinguished colleague and closest friend, known on the title page of this book as Vernon C. Kelly, Jr., M.D. Read, learn, enjoy.

Don Nathanson

Wynnewood, PA

February 2011

Introduction

This is a book about the feelings that lead to success or failure in relationships. Based on my experience working with couples since the late 1960s, and the findings from the psychology of affect and script originated by Silvan S. Tomkins and furthered by Donald Nathanson, I have concluded that hidden shame is the primary reason once close intimate relationships fail, and that shame is the leading cause of divorce.

That this is so is counterintuitive and hidden from most people in Western culture for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most significant is the generally held belief that the word shame means only that one has done something to be ashamed of. I have devoted Chapter 2 to a discussion of the shame family of emotions in order to demonstrate that the inborn capacity to experience shame leads—in addition to feeling ashamed—to a varied and complex group of emotions.

Secondly, Western culture focuses more on behavior than on the feelings that motivate behavior. Because of this, what we usually encounter when studying the reasons that relationships fail is a list of behaviors. This list includes such items as infidelity; inability to communicate; inability to agree on important issues like money and sex; lack of commitment to the relationship; failed expectations; physical, sexual or emotional abuse; alcoholism and other addictions; growing apart because of a change in priorities; and falling out of love. Thinking only of specific behaviors as the reason a relationship fails rather than of the feelings that motivate the behaviors is backwards. It is an artifact of early explorations into human psychology based on the false belief (or perhaps the wish) that man alone is THE rational mammal on planet Earth. Therefore, grounded as they were in this belief, early psychologists explained feelings as aberrations that only arose in crisis situations or in the mentally infirm. They were severely limited in their ability to explain human motivation because they had no good theory about how normal feelings arose.

Appendix I is A Primer of Affect Psychology. This is a partial summary of the original work of Silvan S. Tomkins. In my opinion, Tomkins described the most complete and compelling theory of how affects, feelings, and emotions arise as a normal part of our biology. To understand better my perspective on how feelings motivate relationships, I suggest you read the Primer and/or go to the Tomkins Institute website at www.tomkins.org where following the link Affect/Script Psychology will provide you with further readings and articles to study.

Thirdly, shame is such a negative feeling that a patient once said to me, "I hate that word shame. Can’t we call it Harvey or something?" She is not alone in her desire to avoid saying the word shame out loud, or even thinking about it for that matter. It is a difficult word for everyone because it conjures up too many negative experiences and feelings that most of us would rather forget, especially since the memory of those events often recreates the sense of helplessness or feelings of inferiority we had at that time. Tomkins wrote that negative affects—wired into our brains before birth—are inherently punishing. It is part of our nature to want them to stop. Since shame can range from the slightly unpleasant experience of mild embarrassment to the deepest depths of humiliation and mortification, nobody would consciously want to relive such feelings.

And finally, the defenses all of us erect to protect us from the shame experience obscure shame and hide from us the prevalence of shame in causing the dissolution of relationships. Every one of the reasons or behaviors for relational distress listed above is a cause of shame and can by caused by shame. Chapter 6 outlines the specific patterns of defense that lead to the behaviors found in that list. Donald Nathanson first described these patterns in his 1992 seminal work, Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self. My insights into intimacy success and failure are a direct extension of the discoveries elucidated in that book by my friend and colleague decades ago.

Despite the power of shame to destroy relationships, it is my happy task—and the major focus of this book—to inform you about another side of shame, a side that makes it one of the most powerful and potentially useful features of our biologic makeup. In this regard, I would compare shame to our immune system—a system that usually operates completely outside of our awareness, removing dangerous viruses, bacteria, and toxins from our bodies. At other times, however, immune reactions cause symptoms that we become painfully aware of. They can be minor things that range from a mild sore throat, achiness, and slight fever to serious incapacitation from high fever and the inability to get out of bed. Furthermore, the immune system has an extremely toxic side. It can turn against the body and cause terrible chronic illnesses such as lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and ulcerative colitis, to mention just a few.

Like the immune system, shame’s normal, out of awareness (unconscious) function in adults allows us, among other things, to live harmoniously in dyadic personal relationships, families, and society because we care about how we come across to others. This is in dramatic contrast to isolated cases of shamelessness which present a serious problem in all cultures. Imagine what a disaster it would be for human societies if no one had a sense of shame. People might go around spitting on anyone they didn’t like or making rude, nasty comments about the noses, bodies, faces, skin color, and other traits of ordinary folks. Instead, for the most part, the adults in our culture experience shame if they treat others that way and therefore avoid doing it. This is normal healthy shame guiding us