Resumo

GRECCO, Daniel. Shame and norms of action in the clinical encounter: an essay on the phenomenology of shame. En-clav. pen [online]. 2023, vol.17, n.33, e604.  Epub 12-Maio-2023. ISSN 2594-1100.  https://doi.org/10.46530/ecdp.v0i33.604.

In this article, I intend to think about vulnerability through the lens of shame in the clinical encounter. I want to suggest that shame is a kind of vulnerability that is revealed through the body’s visibility and that this awareness entails the development of strategies diminishing the body’s visibility. To account for this form of vulnerability -of which I become aware through experience and that cannot be reduced to passivity-, I will first discuss the ontological and phenomenological perspectives on vulnerability. Thus, I will start with the remarks made by Judith Butler on bodily vulnerability and the descriptions that have been made from Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology on the limits of the body’s capacity. I will do this to retake each perspective’s strong points, namely, Butler’s remarks raise the question of how we assume vulnerability, whereas phenomenology gives a face to these descriptions by insisting upon its character of a lived experience. Based on this, I will second argue that a phenomenology of shame (particularly when focused on the clinical encounter) makes it plain that vulnerability is an experience I live, and that it makes me behave in some ways as to avoid the exposure to which my own body’s visibility subjects me.

Palavras-chave : Clinical encounter; phenomenology of shame; embodied vulnerability; the look; chronic shame.