Histories, Traumas, and Emotional Foreclosure from Manhattan to Dublin and Back

The present paper begins with the particulars of clinical practice in Ireland. Through clinical example, it examines the emotion of shame, widely paired with blame, as a socially acceptable admission of psychological functioning, both in exercising and in denying the communication of more profound feeling. As a necessary emotional outlet, shame authorizes aggressions both large and small. Shame demands that certain acts, often seemingly random and subjective, are to be judged disgraceful in others. Shame demands that someone, everyone, endures hurt, at least through social judgement. Passing through the armoring of shame as social defense, clinical examples focus on the defensive action of foreclosure as an interpersonal act of nihilation, reducing another to no-thing, while at the same time diminishing one’s own sense of inadequacy. Discerning this clinical pattern, the author generalizes from practice in a particular place to similar observable patterns, both with different populations, and in different contexts.