In Defence of Shame

by Tanveer Ahmed

Psychiatrist Dr Tanveer Ahmed looks at the history and contemporary rise of shame and its overlap with group identity and mental health. Dr Ahmed argues that the stigmatisation of shame is part of a wider “tyranny of the positive”. This stigmatisation of negative emotions limits human flourishing and contributes to the growth in disorders such as anxiety and self-harm, aspects of which are often grounded in unnamed and tamed shame.

“A thoughtful and beautifully-researched exploration of shame, and the modern permutations of this ancient and uniquely human emotion. Fascinating. Ahmed brings clinical expertise and a journalist's curiosity to this eminently readable exploration of shame, and its surprising contemporary uses.” -- Annabel Crabb ABC broadcaster and author

“Fixing community is intertwined with mending ourselves. Blending vignettes from his patients with insights from social science, Tanveer Ahmed dives deep into the emotions of shame, anxiety and how they affect the ties that bind society together. A riveting read.” -- Andrew Leigh, ALP Shadow Finance Minister

“This book succeeds in engaging with some of the most deeply entrenched problems facing society from a perspective that brings together the insights of psychology and cultural analysis. It provides a remarkably astute analysis of the relation between anxiety and shame and a compelling account of the real meaning of self-harm.” -- Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology, University of Kent


Dr Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatrist, author and columnist for the Australian Financial Review.

116 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2020

Reviews

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

He’s not a great writer. Probably more suited to journalism than book writing. Lots of pithy paragraphs that didn’t seem to have much cohesion. That said, it’s a really interesting topic and I liked how he dealt with it. He talked very openly about his own experience of shame when he was found to have plagiarised and I found this refreshing. The way he explored the different cultural dimensions of shame was very interesting too.

[Brian Virtue · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of seeds of interesting possible conversations in the book, but not sure I felt like any of them got resolved or fleshed out like I would like. The writing style is not super coherent, but he has done a good job of surveying most of the current voices in the shame discussion. I've done a lot of shame research and he covers a lot of ground. But at times it's hard to tell what his real argument regarding shame is. It was well worth reading it for me because I have a lot of exposure to some of the sources he's drawing from, but people new to the discussion may be frustrated. He writes like a medical professional and not like a social science researcher so that is part of the limitation of the book as are the immense punctuation errors. But I found it helpful as it raised different questions worth thinking about and I thought the analysis and critique of positive psychology related to shame was a worthy discussion in some of the ways he pursued it. I was motivated to read this book because like the author, i believe in the west, some of the positive nature of shame in terms of society and collective identity are often neglected or demonized. Shamelessness has its dark consequences , which are not often part of the shame discussion. So the conversation is an important one for sure.

[An]

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