Whatever Happened to Good Old-Fashioned Shame?

What does it mean that the former mayor of Washington, D.C.--videotaped smoking crack and convicted of drug possession--runs again for mayor and wins the Democratic primary? Or that in Virginia, a man convicted on felony charges of lying to Congress--later overturned on technicalities--is the Republican candidate for U.S. Senator?

Or that a Long Island man who committed adultery with the teen-ager convicted of trying to kill his wife becomes a household name and celebrity on the talk-show circuit?

Have these people no shame?

Should they have any?

Or is shame an outdated concept, merely a relic of more repressed times?

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In therapeutic circles, shame, long neglected, has emerged as a critically important emotion, a governor that regulates much of our interior and exterior lives.

High-profile therapists such as John Bradshaw have popularized the notion of shame--instilled from early childhood--as an invisible, corrosive force that drives people to alcoholism and other forms of self-destruction.

Psychologists who study it make a distinction between different kinds of shame--the internalized self-doubt and self-hatred that spring from, say, poor parenting, and the externalized kind that arises from public actions, the type experienced (or not--see above) by disgraced public figures.

In a long, 1992 rumination in the Atlantic on the nature and function of shame, author Robert Karen distinguishes between three specific types: existential shame, class shame and situational shame. Existential shame, he writes, “arises from suddenly seeing yourself as you really are--too preoccupied with yourself to notice that your child is sinking, too frightened of the opinion of others to stand up for someone you love. . . .”

Class shame is “the sort of shame one feels for having the wrong skin color or accent, or the shame that is stamped on one at birth because of one’s social class. . . . The crippling self-hatred that class subjugation often instills can be alleviated by class unity and closeness (as in the traditional black church), by the mobilization of anger (as in the recent power and liberation movements). . . .”

And situational shame, he writes, “is usually a passing shame experience that arises from rejection, humiliation, allowing one’s boundaries to be infringed, or violation of a social norm. . . . It serves as a fiery perimeter around social convention, accounting not only for our modern delicacy about urinating, spitting, breaking wind and nose-blowing, bodily functions that were performed openly and shamelessly in medieval times, but also for many of the subtler responsibilities and obligations of social life.”

Such as--presumably--not using illegal drugs when holding elective office, never lying to Congress or cheating on a spouse.

Clearly, we live in a world with conflicting metaphors and expectations for those who are publicly disgraced--the scarlet letter for banishment, the ascending phoenix for redemption.

Our scales of justice balance on the premise that the debts incurred by criminal behavior can--and should--be repaid (banishment). Yet we also endorse the idea of rehabilitation (redemption). But when it comes right down to it, we reserve the right to be outraged by those who rehabilitate themselves too enthusiastically, daring to reclaim their public lives. (Not enough shame, too much chutzpah.)

In interviews promoting his new movie about the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, Robert Redford has pegged the beginning of the loss of American innocence and faith in our institutions to those events, which occurred in an era when public disgrace carried a price.

“Nowadays that kind of thing--deception, lying to the public--wouldn’t even raise eyebrows,” Redford has said. “The concept of shame carries no weight anymore.”

He has a point.

Consider the burden borne by the men depicted in his movie: Contestant Charles van Doren has never spoken of the experience and contestant Herbert Stempel broke his silence only recently. And the son of the late quiz show producer, Dan Enright, published a moving defense of his father in Calendar last week, writing that Enright “lived in his shame until the day he died, trying for years to make amends, haunted by his history in everything he did.”

Had the television scandals unfolded in this decade, the cast of disgraced characters would probably have ended up taping a reunion show.

Doubtless, the ratings would be boffo.

* Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.