SAARA REI: HUMILIATION & SHAME PLAY

The Latin root of ‘humiliation’ is ‘humus’, which translates as ‘earth’ or ‘dirt’. Humiliation is the public failure of one’s status claims. In private, such feeling amount not to humiliation but to painful self-realizations, such as embarrassment. Humiliation is not necessarily shameful. For instance, one could claim that Jesus was crucified and this humiliated, but that he did not feel shame (or so I was told, I was not there). Shame, on the otherhand, is a sort-of subset of humiliation; it is a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness…