Painful Emotions (painful + emotion)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


The Descent of Shame,

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2010
HEIDI L. MAIBOM
Shame is a painful emotion concerned with failure to live up to certain standards, norms, or ideals. The subject feels that she falls in the regard of others; she feels watched and exposed. As a result, she feels bad about the person that she is. The most popular view of shame is that someone only feels ashamed if she fails to live up to standards, norms, or ideals that she, herself, accepts. In this paper, I provide support for a different view, according to which shame is about failure to live up to public expectations. Such a view of shame has difficulties explaining why an audience is central to shame, why shame concerns the self as a whole, and why the social rank of someone affects their ability to shame others. These features, I argue, are best explained by reference to the descent of shame in the emotion connected with submission in nonhuman animals. The function of submission,to appease relevant social others,also throws light on the sort of emotion that shame is. From the point of view of other people, a subject who experiences shame at her own failing is someone who is committed to living together with others in a socially sanctioned way. The argument is not that we must understand the nature of shame in terms of what it evolved for, but that its heritage is important to understanding the emotion that shame has become. [source]


Creativity and oedipal fantasy in Austen's Emma: ,An ingenious and animating suspicion'

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 4 2003
Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick Hanly
Austen's Emma is one of the great novels of the Western tradition. In this paper the author explores the meaning of Emma's ,ingenious and animating suspicion' that Jane Fairfax seduced her best friend's husband, Mr Dixon. The interpretation that a psychoanalytic understanding makes possible shows how this suspicion represents an oedipal fantasy projected on to Miss Fairfax. Further exploration demonstrates how the fantasy is linked both to Emma's systematic unkindness to Jane Fairfax and to Emma's famous insult to Jane's aunt, Miss Bates. Emma's suspicion projects an oedipal fantasy with its incestuous impulses on to her rival and satisfies an envious aggression at the same time. The author's purpose in this paper is to bring to light through psychoanalytic understanding Austen's dramatisation of the complexity and creativity of the oedipal situation. In addition to the regression in oedipal fantasy, the primary process also functions with a progressive quality that expands and enriches the ego, a double movement described in Keats's ,negative capability', which has been elaborated by Bion. The primal-scene fantasies are often brought alive in the analytic transference. These situations and painful emotions are dramatically portrayed through Austen's genius as vehicles for change. A sudden integration follows a phase of disorganization: ,It darted through her with the speed of an arrow. Mr Knightley must marry no-one but herself'. Emma, who is Austen's ,imaginist', moves from the projected fantasy of the sad love triangle through envy aggression and the narcissistic blows of self-doubt and loss of love to moments of illumination and connection. [source]


Giving voice to experiences: parental maltreatment of black children in the context of societal racism

CHILD & FAMILY SOCIAL WORK, Issue 4 2002
Claudia Bernard
ABSTRACT This paper seeks to explore the ways in which black children who have been maltreated within their families come to voice to tell their stories. A discussion of black children's recovery from maltreatment necessitates understanding how they interpret and name their experiences as abusive. Research indicates that while many factors mediate the effects of abuse on children's development, telling your story about childhood trauma is critical in the healing process for promoting psychological well-being. However, what does the naming and speaking of trauma entail for black children when the broader context of their lived realities is embedded in racism that confers on them a stigmatized status? Where black children's lived experiences encompass the complexity of societal racism as a mutually reinforcing and contradictory reality in their lives, their capacity to name the maltreatment they experience will be particularly problematic. Essentially, parents' issues silence children and can encourage them to block out painful emotions, ultimately putting their emotional and psychological well-being at risk. Taking race and gender as benchmarks for analysis, the complexities involved in giving voice to childhood maltreatment are discussed to consider how these dynamics contribute to black children's resilience and adaptive behaviours in the aftermath of abuse. [source]


A qualitative exploration of the perception of emotions in anorexia nervosa: A basic emotion and developmental perspective

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOTHERAPY (AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THEORY & PRACTICE), Issue 4 2009
John R. E. Fox
Abstract Difficulties in emotional processing have long been regarded as a core difficulty within anorexia nervosa. Recent research and theory have started to highlight how eating disorder symptoms are often used to regulate painful emotions. However, there has been a lack of theoretical sophistication in how emotions have been considered within the eating disorders. This study was designed to use qualitative methodologies to address these inadequacies and provide a richer, more thorough account of emotions within anorexia nervosa. It used a grounded theory methodology to gather and analyse interview data from 11 participants who had a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, being seen at a regional eating disorder service (both inpatient and day patient). The results highlighted two main overarching themes regarding the perception and management of emotions within anorexia nervosa: (1) development of poor meta-emotional skills; and (2) perception and management of emotion in anorexia nervosa. These two categories comprised of a significant number of components from the qualitative analysis, including difficulties with anger, meta-emotional skills and poverty of emotional environments while growing up. Once the data had been collected and analysed, links were made between the findings of this research and the current literature base.,Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message: Practitoners needs to consider the importance of poor meta-emotional skills within anorexia nervosa. These meta skills appears to be more complicated than the simplistic notion of alexithymia. The routes to these difficulties in emotion appear to be drawn from a complicated developmental picture. The role of anger needs to be considered more fully in the psychotherapeutic work with people with anorexia nervosa. This study's findings suggest that increasing levels of anger may play a role in increased eating disorder symptomatology, especially vomitting. [source]