Shame and Norms of Action in the Clinical Encounter: An Essay on the Phenomenology of shame

In this article, I intend to think about vulnerability through the lens of shame in the clinical encounter. I want to suggest that shame is a kind of vulnerability that is revealed through the body’s visibility and that this awareness entails the development of strategies diminishing the body’s visibility. To account for this form of vulnerability –of which I become aware through experience and that cannot be reduced to passivity–, I will first discuss the ontological and phenomenological perspectives on vulnerability. Thus, I will start with the remarks made by Judith Butler on bodily vulnerability and the descriptions that have been made from Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology on the limits of the body’s capacity. I will do this to retake each perspective’s strong points, namely, Butler’s remarks raise the question of how we assume vulnerability, whereas phenomenology gives a face to these descriptions by insisting upon its character of a lived experience. Based on this, I will second argue that a phenomenology of shame (particularly when focused on the clinical encounter) makes it plain that vulnerability is an experience I live, and that it makes me behave in some ways as to avoid the exposure to which my own body’s visibility subjects me.

clinical encounter, phenomenology of shame, embodied vulnerability, the look, chronic shame

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