The Phenomenology of Shame, Guilt and the Body in Body Dysmorphic Disorder and Depression

From a phenomenological viewpoint, shame and guilt may be regarded as emotions which have incorporated the gaze and the voice of the other, respectively.The spontaneous and unreected performance of the primordial bodily self has suffered a rupture: In shame or guilt we are rejected, separated from the others, and thrown back on ourselves. This reective turn of spontaneous experience is connected with an alienation of primordial bodiliness that may be described as a “corporealization”: The lived-body is changed into the objective, corporeal body or “body-for-others.” The polarity of “bodiliness” and “corporeality” may further a phenomenological understanding of several mental disorders connected with shame and guilt. This is shown by the examples of body dysmorphic disorder and melancholic depression. Shame and guilt belong to the self-related and selfevaluating emotions which constitute a peculiarity of human development: to the best of our knowledge, even higher developed animals know neither shame nor guilt. This points to a connection of those affects with the formation of self-consciousness which I will investigate from a phenomenological viewpoint. My Žrst focus will be on the alteration brought about by shame and guilt in prereective bodily experience. This alteration is essentially linked to the Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 33:2 © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2003