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Epilogue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Stephen Pattison
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
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Summary

My main motivation for writing this book was better to understand my own experience of shame, particularly in relation to my engagement with religion. As the volume has progressed, I have occasionally illustrated it with examples drawn from my own history. It may be appropriate now to say a little about where I have been left at the end of this project.

The whole of this book has been composed under the watchful gaze of the Angel of the Judgment (see Plate 1) who appears in the Roger Van der Weyden's altarpiece for the Hospices de Beaune painted in the early fifteenth century (Gondinet-Wallstein 1990). I first saw this heavenly being in about 1990, but I felt that I recognised him and, indeed, had known him all my life. The Angel was for me a physical portrayal and externalisation of the sense of shame-producing self-surveillance that had accompanied me all my life. It was, as it were, ‘his’ critical gaze (or rather, my projection of that gaze) within me that epitomised my sense of shame, defilement and inadequacy. It may be that one of the innovations of the picture is precisely that it invites people to judge themselves internally rather than being judged by an external accuser (Gondinet-Wallstein 1990: 111–12).

Subsequently, I have spent many hours in Beaune staring back at my glorious persecutor. Furthermore, a miniature version of the altarpiece has been attached to the front of my word processor throughout the writing of this book as a symbol of my attempt to come to terms with shame.

Type
Chapter
Information
Shame
Theory, Therapy, Theology
, pp. 310 - 316
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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  • Epilogue
  • Stephen Pattison, Cardiff University
  • Book: Shame
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511612411.017
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  • Epilogue
  • Stephen Pattison, Cardiff University
  • Book: Shame
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511612411.017
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Epilogue
  • Stephen Pattison, Cardiff University
  • Book: Shame
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511612411.017
Available formats
×