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Humiliation
Running head: HUMILIATION
Severe Public Humiliation:
Its Nature, Consequences, and Clinical Treatment
Walter J. Torres
Private Practice of Clinical Psychology
Denver, Colorado
Raymond M. Bergner
Department of Psychology
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois
CITATION: Torres, W., & Bergner, R. (2010). Severe Humiliation: Its Nature,
Consequences, and Clinical Treatment. Psychotherapy, 49, 492-501.
Please direct all correspondence to: walterjtorres@gmail.com
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Humiliation
Abstract
In this paper, we present an analysis of what is involved when our clients undergo severe
public humiliation at the hands of another person or persons. We describe (a) the
structure of such humiliation; i.e., the factors that, taken collectively, render certain
interpersonal events and circumstances humiliating ones for people; (b) the most
common damaging consequences of being subjected to these, up to and including suicide
and homicide; and (c) a number of therapeutic interventions that have proven effective in
our own work with humiliated clients, as well as certain obstacles we have encountered
in this work.
Keywords: humiliation, public humiliation, degradation, psychotherapy, trauma.
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Humiliation
Severe Public Humiliation:
Its Nature, Consequences, and Clinical Treatment
“I learned that to humiliate another person is
to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate.”
--Nelson Mandela (1994, p. 16)
Suffering severe public humiliation often plunges individuals into major
depressions (Brown, Harris, & Hepworth, 1995; Kendler, Hettema, Butera, & Gardner,
2003), suicidal states (Hendin, 1994; Klein, 1991), extreme rage (Browne, 1993;
Gilligan, 2003; Klein, 1991), severe anxiety states (Beck, & Emery, 1985; Greist, 1995;
Kendler et al., 2003), and even psychosis (Klein, 1991). In this article, we explore in
detail the phenomenon of such humiliation and relate therapeutic interventions to
ameliorate its pathological effects. In part 1, we present an analysis of the structure of
public humiliation; i.e., a delineation of the factors that, taken collectively, render certain
interpersonal events and circumstances humiliating ones for people. In part 2, we review
and analyze the many damaging effects on individuals of being subjected to such events
and circumstances. In part 3, we present a number of therapeutic interventions that have
proven effective in our own work with humiliated clients, as well as certain obstacles we
have encountered in this work. The observations presented derive from clinical practice
of both a forensic and a therapeutic nature. The formulation of the structure of
humiliation originally appeared in Torres and Bergner (2010). This formulation, as well
as the approach taken to treating its victims, comes from an approach known as Status
Dynamics (Bergner, 1999, 2007; Ossorio, 1997, 1998, 2006; Schwartz, 1979). The nature
of this approach will become apparent in many respects in the discussions to follow.
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Humiliation
The Structure of Public Humiliation
The following are examples, drawn from actual events, in which three individuals
experienced severe public humiliation. The identifying characteristics of these
individuals have been modified to ensure confidentiality and protect their identity. These
cases range from the very painful but not overwhelmingly debilitating to the suicidally
devastating. All are presented to provide concrete reference points for the analysis to
follow.
Case #1. "John," a bright but socially awkward 16 year-old boy, yearned to be
accepted into the dominant, high status social group at his high school. In order to
achieve this, he hung around its members and attempted to join in their banter. These
individuals, however, disdained John and found it laughable that he would consider his
inclusion in their group even remotely possible. They set out to teach him a lesson. One
day in the crowded school cafeteria, they staged a loud, rowdy discussion with each other
about the wild antics of the rock group "Sister Pearl," and did so in a way designed to
attract the attention of others around them. They repeated to each other, "Don't you love
it?" after describing different antics of the rock group. At one point, they turned to John
and asked him if he didn't also love it. He answered, somewhat vaguely and tentatively,
"I love everything about them." After he had said this, they laid out slowly, and loudly
enough for everyone present in the lunch room to hear, that no such group as Sister Pearl
even existed. They had made it all up. They laughed uproariously, enjoying their
successful prank. "Do you still love Sister Pearl?", one of them yelled out, before
erupting again into hoots of laughter that were now joined by others standing nearby.
John, shaken and speechless, walked away.
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Humiliation
Case #2. "Julie," a 44-year-old divorced mother of two, had worked for three
years in a busy restaurant kitchen. She developed severe back pain after repeatedly
lifting 25 pound boxes from a high ledge. When she reported this injury, her supervisor
seemed irritated but referred her to medical treatment under workers compensation. At
the occupational health clinic, she was evaluated and treated by a physician who
consistently treated her in a highly aloof and unreceptive manner. At the last of her
several visits, one in which he made no eye contact and offered no opportunity for her to
voice her current concerns, he informed her that there was no medical reason for her
increasing "pain behavior." He gave her a form to take to her employer indicating that
she was now fit for full duty, and walked out of the examining room. Upon her return to
work, her supervisor made it clear that he expected her to perform at the rapid pace
required of all employees. Julie voiced dismay and confusion that the physician would
declare her fully fit for duty, but her supervisor did not respond. Co-workers began to
openly show impatience and irritation with her, sometimes rolling their eyes in reaction
to her slowed pace and physical strain. Julie felt trapped, depressed, and desperate. After
two weeks, her supervisor called her in and, in front of several other employees, informed
her that he was terminating her due to her "inept and lazy performance." He refused to
listen to any response from her and told her to pack her things immediately and leave.
Case #3. “Judge R," despite a very impoverished and dysfunctional family
background, had obtained a law degree and advanced in his profession to a high position
in his state's judicial system. He had, further, become widely respected as a
conscientious, exemplary figure who worked hard on behalf of many worthy public
causes. Late in his career, however, strong evidence emerged that he had in recent years
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Humiliation
been misappropriating government funds for personal travel and that during these trips he
had used illicit drugs and engaged the services of prostitutes. A zealous and ambitious
prosecutor leveled these charges against Judge R in a highly public and aggressive style,
ensuring among other things the publication of “perp walk” photographs of Judge R.
After a hearing in which the reality of his predicament and its dire consequences became
very clear to him, Judge R, to the shock and dismay of many, hanged himself.
With these examples in mind, let us consider a prototypical portrait of the factors
that, taken collectively, make certain interpersonal experiences humiliating ones for
people. The therapeutic implications of the following formulation are perhaps best
captured by Garfinkel (1956) who, in his classical sociological work on "degradation
ceremonies," asserted that, "They (the factors involved in degradation) tell us not only
how to construct an effective denunciation but also how to render denunciation useless"
(p. 424). Knowing precisely what is involved in public humiliation tells us a great deal
about how we as therapists may counteract its extremely destructive effects.
Element #1: An Individual Makes a Status Claim
In all of our examples, the individuals described are claiming, or are attempting to
claim, a certain status. By this we mean simply that they are either (a) presenting
themselves to others as legitimate occupants of certain social positions in relation to other
persons, or (b) that they are soliciting others to grant them—that they are "making a play
for"—such positions. The individuals above are "saying," in word and/or in deed, that "I
am already, or am eligible to be...a member of the high school 'in crowd'...a partially
disabled worker entitled to treatment and workplace accommodations...an upstanding
member of the judicial system and an individual of high moral character."
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Humiliation
The term "status" as employed here means essentially relational position
(Ossorio, 1997; Bergner, 1999, 2007). An individual's statuses are the positions that he
or she occupies in relation to everything in his or her social world. These statuses or
positions would include, for example, (a) social, occupational and situational roles (e.g.,
husband to one's wife, employee of one's company, or defendant in a law suit); (b)
disadvantageous positions vis-à-vis significant others (e.g., scapegoat in one's family of
origin or victim of harassment in one's workplace); and (c) stigmatized positions in
society (e.g., "sexual deviant" or "ex-con").
The crucial point of focusing on a person's statuses is that the occupation of
certain relational positions expands one's eligibilities, opportunities, and reasons to act in
valued ways, while the occupation of others constricts these (Bergner, 1999, 2007;
Ossorio, 1997). For example, with the acquisition of the status "spouse" ordinarily come
eligibilities, opportunities, and reasons to do such things as share intimacies, relate
sexually, give and receive support in times of need, raise a family together, and in general
have an intimate partner with whom to share one's life. The loss of this status often
results in the loss of all of these. This example, as well as those cited in the previous
paragraph, clarify the fact that a person's statuses do not mark off sterile, merely
hierarchical facts about this person, but matters of the deepest concern, emotional
significance, personal intimacy, and connectedness in life. Status is relatedness, is
relationship.
Element #2: This Status Claim Fails, and Does So Publicly
In each of our three cases above, these status claims or bids fail. The individuals
involved fail to secure the status they aspire to or lose the status they previously enjoyed.
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Humiliation
Further, the failure is a public one, meaning that it is witnessed by at least one other
person, and possibly by many (cf. Garfinkel, 1956; Klein, 1991; Ossorio, 2005). The
degrading events have a character such that the individuals' claims or bids are publicly
rejected or invalidated in some way. The high school student's claim of belongingness is
publicly ridiculed by the group he is attempting to join. The worker's claim of injury,
pain, and disability is rejected, she is portrayed as a malingerer to her employer and co-
workers, and she is fired. Judge R's status as a respected public figure is discredited when
he is indicted in a highly public way for criminal wrongdoing.
In some instances, the public character of a humiliating event may be confined to
a single witness only. Consider the hypothetical case of a woman who suddenly
proclaims to her husband: "I'm suing for divorce. I've been having an affair with another
man for three years and I'm leaving you for him. I've never loved you and you’ve never
satisfied me sexually. You're not half the man he is." Such an instance would ordinarily
represent a devastating humiliation despite the fact that there was only one witness to the
victim's degradation (one who was also in this case the degrader). Situations involving
rape, other forced sexual acts, coerced degrading behaviors on the part of prisoners, and
more, also represent humiliations often witnessed by only a single individual.
Element #3: Rejecter(s) Has the Necessary Status to Reject
Not everyone has the status to successfully reject or invalidate another's status
claims (Garfinkel, 1956; Ossorio, 2005). For example, in one custody case, a purported
expert witness testified that the mother involved in the case was an unfit parent, thus
potentially humiliating her. However, it was then established by the mother's attorney
that, not only was this witness a notorious "hired gun" with a long history of testifying
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Humiliation
however he was paid to testify, but also that his credentials as a psychologist were
questionable. Once he was exposed as such in court, he lost completely his status as
someone who could effectively degrade and humiliate the mother. As in our case
examples, only persons with circumstantially relevant standings—the high school in-
groupers who control admission to their inner circle, the doctor invested with the
authority to make medical judgments regarding an injured worker, the state's prosecuting
attorney—could qualify in this regard.
Element #4: Rejection of the Status to Claim a Status
Consider the following two refusals of a status bid. A job applicant receives a
letter of rejection that reads as follows: "Thank you for applying for a position at Acme
Corp. We have received hundreds of applications for this position, many from highly
qualified applicants such as yourself. It was an extremely difficult decision. However,
we regret to inform you..." Second example: A woman, in turning down a date request
from a young man, says to him: "Thank you for asking. If this were a year ago, I would
have loved to go out with you. However, I'm very involved with someone else now; in
fact, I'm engaged to be married."
In both of these cases, a bid for a social position—that of employee and that of
potential boyfriend—is rejected. However, the message conveyed in the rejection is that
the bidder was fully eligible to make the bid in question. Consider, in contrast, a situation
in which the rejection letter had read, "Given your ridiculously inadequate qualifications,
we can't believe you even applied for this job. What were you thinking?" Or suppose the
woman had said to her suitor: "What makes you think I would be remotely interested in
going out with the likes of you? You've got to be kidding!" These refusal messages
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Humiliation
become ones that declare that, not only is the status claim or bid rejected, but the basic
standing of the claimant to even make such a bid or claim is rejected. In these rejections,
the individual is branded a pretender; that is, someone who had no business making the
initial status bid or claim. With this added element, these messages become humiliating
ones.
Summary
In a prototypical case, then, an individual suffers public humiliation under
conditions where he or she (a) is claiming or attempting to claim a certain social position,
(b) has this claim or attempted claim fail publicly, and (c) has it fail at the hands of
another person or persons who have the status necessary to so reject the claim. Finally,
(d) what is denied is not only the status claim itself, but also and more fundamentally the
individual's very standing as one who is eligible to make such a claim to begin with. The
public message, which may be delivered by as few as one or as many as millions of
people, becomes: "How ridiculous, even contemptible, that you would think of presenting
yourself as...a member of the in-crowd...an injured worker... an upstanding public
servant." Taken in its entirety, the present formulation, while differing in many respects,
is indebted to Garfinkel's (1956) classical sociological formulation of the conditions
necessary for one person to degrade another, a set of conditions that, taken collectively,
he characterized as a "degradation ceremony."
Discussion
Humiliation and Shame
In this article, we have articulated humiliation as a certain kind of interpersonal
event. However, in common usage, “humiliation” is also used to refer to an emotion
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Humiliation
(Nathanson, 1992; Tomkins, 1984), as when an individual states, “I feel so humiliated!”
Given the nature of the dynamics of humiliation as delineated above, this emotion, which
we view as intrinsically related to the experience of humiliation, shares significant
semantic, conceptual and phenomenological ground with another emotion, that of shame.
Some brief clarification of the relationships between the two seems in order.
We understand shame as the emotion that arises when individuals appraise, not
just their behavior, but often their persons (cf. Goffman, 1963, on stigma), as deficient
and wanting in relationship to (their notion of) a certain social standard (cf. the Oxford
English Dictionary: shame is "the painful emotion arising from the consciousness of
something dishonouring, ridiculous, or indecorous in one's own conduct or
circumstances"). Most individuals are strongly motivated to hold such self-appraisals of
shamefulness in deep privacy. After all, to render such an appraisal public is to reveal
oneself as being morally, physically, or otherwise socially deficient. However, it merits
noting that, no matter how privately shame is held, it remains fundamentally subject to an
individual’s notion of a publicly held social standard, or public “voice.”
How is the emotion of shame related to that of humiliation? The present point of
view on this admittedly debatable matter is the following. Private self-denunciation is an
element in both shame and in many cases of humiliation (those where individuals believe
that their persons and/or behavior are indeed deficient). In both, it has to do with
appraisals that one is or has behaved in ways that fail to meet norms for social
acceptability or worth. The difference between the two lies in whether or not the
appraised "dishonouring, ridiculous, or indecorous" conduct or personal social defect has
been revealed to others. Indeed, humiliation is something that often happens (and is felt)
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Humiliation
when something of a private, shameful nature is publicly exposed. In such a
circumstance, a person might say: "My shameful secret has been revealed to others
whose good opinion matters to me. Now I feel not only ashamed, but humiliated." In the
authors' experience, this added element of public exposure or "unmasking" renders
humiliation far more acutely disturbing and destabilizing than shame alone.
Damaging Consequences of Humiliation
In this section, we discuss what we have observed to be the most common
consequences of being subjected to severely humiliating treatment, many of which, as
will be seen, have been documented in empirical research. Not all humiliated individuals
will experience all of these consequences, and different individuals will experience them
to different degrees. Thus, the degree of personal harm that any humiliated individual
has suffered will vary with the specifics of his or her case, and all of the following will
need to be assessed on an individual basis.
Damage to Identity and Ability to Function
The first and most basic question in assessing the harm befalling a humiliated
individual is that of how much status loss he or she has suffered. In general, the greater
the degree of such loss, i.e., the greater the damage to an individual's ability to claim
viable social position, the greater the degree to which their very identities are damaged
(Adshead, 2010, Klein, 1991; Silver, Conte, Miceli, & Poggi, 1986) and the greater the
degree to which they are rendered unable to function in their worlds (Bergner, 1999,
2007; Ossorio, 1998). As noted in our previous publication (Torres & Bergner, 2010),
the key considerations in determining the extent of such status loss in any given case of
humiliation are the following.
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Humiliation
•How global, and thus broadly socially disqualifying, is this individual's status
loss? Is it on the level of a public figure who is publicly outed as a pedophile,
and thus becomes a widely known pariah in his own and in every
community; or is it more on the level of our student John who, though painfully
humiliated in front of many students, emerged as disqualified only from
membership in one circumscribed social group?
•How fundamental is the status that the individual has lost? Is it on the level of
an individual whose humiliation involved a violation of his or her basic
human rights (e.g., in cases of rape, the violation of a person's right to determine
who may have sexual relations with him or her), or on that of an individual who
has lost a more peripheral status (cf. Lindner, 2006)?
•How core is the community in which the humiliation occurs? Did it occur in a
community that is highly central to the individual's way of life (e.g.,
for a physician, his or her medical community), or in a community that
is more peripheral (e.g., that same physician's tennis club)?
•How important was the humiliator to the humiliated? Is it a person or entity
on whom central aspects of the individual's life depend (e.g., a spouse or
employer), or one whose role is much less important?
•How public is the humiliation at issue; is it known to one other individual, or
perhaps to an entire community or even nation?
•How publicly supported is the individual's degradation; is there universal
concurrence that the individual merits his or her now degraded status, little
concurrence, or something in between?
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Humiliation
•To what degree was malice involved in the humiliation? In the authors'
experience, consistent with that of Lindner (2006), humiliations carried out with
malicious intent to degrade another are often particularly devastating (although
the presence of such intent may, as will be seen in the next section, prove an
element that the psychotherapist may use to the client's benefit.)
•Has the humiliation occurred in the context of a separate loss such as an arrest,
divorce, workplace injury, or dismissal from a job? In such cases, the individual's
status has already been marginalized and compromised, he or she has less
standing to challenge or oppose degraders, and the development of major
depression is significantly more likely (Kendler et al., 2003).
•Finally, to what degree has the individual lost the status of someone who is
eligible to make claims on his or her own behalf at all?
The critical nature of this final consideration would be hard to overstate, and it thus
merits additional discussion. When a humiliation annuls the very standing of individuals
as eligible to make status claims on their own behalf, these individuals have been
nullified as participating actors in the relational domain, or community, in which the
humiliation has taken place. They have been effectively silenced and have lost all
credible voice to recover from their degradation. In essence, they have been rendered a
"nobody" within that community, and have had their ability to remove or counteract their
humiliation acutely compromised. (This is evident both conceptually and
phenomenologically. The person who is suddenly humiliated in a group is often, like our
student John, left feeling stunned and speechless—unable to counterclaim.) Consistent
with this formulation, some writers describe the effect of severe humiliation as a
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Humiliation
profound loss of identity (Adshead, 2010; Silver et al., 1986), or an annihilation of the
self (Gilligan, 2003; Klein, 1991), and many humiliated individuals ultimately find it
necessary to move to another community to recover their status, and more broadly, to
reconstruct their lives.
Emotional Suffering
As noted at the outset, suffering severe humiliation often plunges individuals into
extremely debilitating emotional states such as major depressions, suicidal states, extreme
rage, severe anxiety states, and painful feelings of shame and humiliation (Beck, &
Emery, 1985; Brown et al., 1995; Hendin, 1994; Kendler et al., 2003; Klein, 1991). The
degree of emotional suffering in any given case is often proportional to the degree of
status loss, but not always so. Some individuals, often those with histories of severe
humiliation, as well as those who suffer from certain pathological conditions such as
paranoia (Bergner, 1993; Shapiro, 1965), narcissism (Kernberg, 1989), social phobia
(Turk, Heimberg, & Hope, 2001), borderline personality disorder (Millon & Davis,
2000), and perfectionism (Bergner, 1995; Blatt, 1995), develop an exquisite sensitivity to
it. They become mortified or enraged, and suffer greatly from what would seem minor
humiliations or failures entailing relatively insignificant loss of status. At the other end
of the spectrum are individuals who exhibit far greater resilience and/or insensitivity, and
take even significant public humiliations with relatively little suffering or obvious
impairment in their functioning. Given these individual differences, the assessment of
emotional suffering must be done on a case by case basis where conclusions cannot be
firmly drawn from observable factual matters alone.
Hopelessness, Helplessness, and Suicide
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Humiliation
Individuals who have been subjected to the most severe and public of
humiliations will frequently experience hopelessness and helplessness (Lindner, 2006).
Having lost the standing to make effective self-affirming status claims on their own
behalf ("I am not a malingerer...a criminal...a pedophile."), there is no discernible way
back—no avenue to recovery and a better future. Thus, the grave danger arises in many
cases that the individual may, like Judge R, commit suicide (Hendin, 1994; Klein, 1991).
Powerless Rage and Potential to Murder
Understandably, the anger provoked by being publicly humiliated, particularly
when the humiliation is experienced as unjust and undeserved, can be extreme (Browne,
1993; Gilligan, 2003; Klein, 1991). This was the case for our injured worker Julie, who,
though genuinely injured and impaired in her ability to function as she had previously,
was treated as a malingerer by the evaluating physician, her employer, and her fellow
employees. Such humiliation characteristically engenders intense anger and strong needs
for protest and redress. While some humiliated individuals are too depressed to be
enraged, many others are not. However, these individuals, having lost the ability to make
claims within their communities, no longer have any effective voice in these communities
to make their case and have it considered. Thus, their anger is intense but they are
powerless to effectively voice this anger and to recover their former community standing.
In this situation, some individuals become enemies of the community and act on their
anger and urge to be heard from the vantage point of an outsider. They begin to think
that they have no other recourse but to take revenge on the community in the form of
violence. That such an act will leave them without status anywhere—will leave them
nowhere—may render the taking of their own lives as necessary, tolerable, and perhaps
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even convenient "collateral damage." Here, we have the scenario often reported in the
news in which a humiliated employee or student goes on a rampage, kills innocent co-
workers or fellow students, and then commits suicide.
Sense of Worthlessness
Severely humiliated individuals often experience a sense of worthlessness (Klein,
1991; Lindner, 2006; Stamm, 1978). Having lost respect and standing, perhaps totally,
within a community, they are understandably left with the sense that they have no worth
or value within that community. For most persons, much of the basis for their worth is
interpersonal; it is worth to others, to a community. Thus, when they have lost essential
standing in such communities, and with it the ability to act in important ways within
them, their self-esteem plunges and, as noted previously, they come to feel like isolated
"nobodies." Finally in this regard, to be relegated to the status of a nobody is essentially
to be in an impossible position. Accordingly, in the authors' experience, the presence of
psychotic or psychotic-like symptoms is not uncommon (cf. Klein, 1991).
Disabling Preemptive Motivation
Many humiliated individuals find themselves preemptively motivated by their
humiliating circumstances, by the need to recover from them, and/or by the need to gain
revenge over their humiliators. In effect, the motives surrounding the humiliation are so
powerful and all-consuming that nothing else matters to these individuals. They ruminate
obsessively about them, can think of little else, and can give motivational priority to
nothing else. For some, this preoccupation assumes qualities of post-traumatic stress
disorder, where the humiliating events repeatedly enter consciousness intrusively and
vividly (Negrao et al., 2005). For such persons, the ability to function in the other
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Humiliation
important spheres of their lives such as their families, jobs, and friendships is severely
impaired.
Clinical Applications
This section presents a set of interventions for the treatment of severely
humiliated clients. The empirical basis for some of them lies in therapeutic outcome
research; that for others lies in the authors' first hand observations of what has proven
most effective. The primary dynamic or mechanism at work in these interventions is
status enhancement. That is, it is helping clients to reclaim and/or to otherwise acquire
enhanced viable status in their worlds, and thereby to alleviate the damaging
consequences of what they have undergone. Such status enhancement interventions
assume different forms (see Bergner, 2007). In the present instance, these include ones
aimed at helping clients (a) to recover viable status after degradation, (b) to acquire
compensatory statuses, (c) to more fully exploit viable social positions remaining in their
worlds, and (d) to revise debilitating self-conceptions resulting from their humiliating
experiences. It will be seen that this focus on status enhancement coordinates well with,
and in no way conflicts with, the use of well-established cognitive (e.g. Beck &
Weishaar, 2008), behavioral (e.g., Wilson, 2008), humanistic (e.g., Rogers, 1957, Yalom,
1980), and other traditional interventions.
In the discussion to follow, it is important to keep in mind that different clients
will have different circumstances and personal characteristics, and thus different needs.
Some will have engineered their own humiliation due to behavior such as chronic marital
infidelity or criminal activity, while others have engaged in no such behavior. Some will
have suffered highly public humiliation, while others have not. Some will have powerful
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Humiliation
entities at work against them over which they (and we as therapists) have little control,
such as employers, insurance companies, and ostracizing communities; others will have
far fewer such environmental limitations. Some will have suffered profound violations of
their personal dignity and even basic human rights; others will not. Given this variety,
there is no single, "one size fits all" therapeutic program that can meet the needs of every
humiliated client. In reviewing the therapeutic interventions described below, therefore,
the clinician will need to determine which of them apply to the unique circumstances of
his or her specific client. However, given the aforementioned dire consequences which
befall many severely humiliated individuals, the clinician is well advised to routinely
evaluate these individuals for the presence and severity of depression, rage, psychoticism,
and the dangers associated with these states.
Create an Insulating Therapeutic Relationship
Psychotherapy begins with the meeting between therapist and client. If all goes
well, the result of this meeting will be the formation of a two-person community—a little
community or "world" set apart from the larger community and world. Decades of
research and clinical observation attest to the importance of this community being
marked by qualities of warmth, empathy, genuineness, and acceptance on the part of the
therapist (Rogers, 1957; Kohut, 1977; Orlinsky & Howard, 1986; Whiston & Sexton,
1993). From a status dynamic point of view, a further key element is that it provide a
place where the therapist can enhance the client's status (and thus his or her senses of
self-esteem and personal eligibility), and this in such a way that the effects of their
painful and debilitating degradations are diminished or eliminated (Bergner & Staggs,
1987; Bergner, 1995, 2007). In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary that the
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Humiliation
therapist be able to function as a highly effective status assigner; i.e., an effective
validator of the client as the legitimate possessor of empowering social positions and
eligibilities. When this is the case, the therapist can acquire some measure of power,
perhaps considerable, (a) to preempt and/or to disqualify other persons or groups who
have humiliated and degraded the client illegitimately, and (b) to accredit the client in
other ways that can serve to counteract or compensate for the humiliating statuses they
have been assigned elsewhere in their worlds.
If therapists are to have this power, they must have the kind of standing in the
client's eyes that is necessary to function as highly effective status assigners (cf. Frank,
& Frank, 1993). To accomplish this, it is crucial that they pay particular attention to
establishing themselves as credible persons in the eyes of their clients through behaviors
such as interviewing skillfully, conveying an accurate and empathic understanding of the
client, providing explanations that are cogent and compelling, being willing to deliver
hard truths at times, citing relevant research and other literature, presenting themselves in
unobtrusive ways as experienced and successful, dressing and behaving professionally,
and creating a physical environment with elements such as books and diplomas that
suggest competence (Bergner & Staggs, 1987; Bergner, 2007; Frank, & Frank, 1993).
Extended accounts of the status dynamic conception of the therapeutic
relationship have been presented elsewhere (Bergner & Staggs, 1987; Bergner, 2007).
Given limitations of space, we will make only a few further observations here. First, the
present conception of the therapist seeking to function as an effective status assigner
applies to every case of humiliation; it is the one idea in this section that has universal
application to all clients. Second, within this mode of operation, the therapist may
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Humiliation
beneficially use this power to treat the client as someone who has the status to claim
status; that is, as someone whose voice and claims will always be heard and given
genuine consideration, even if such consideration does not always result in agreement.
Thus, a place is created in the humiliated client's world, sometimes the only place, in
which they have this status. Third, it may be noted that as mental health professionals, we
are well positioned to undermine unwarranted status assignments wherein clients are
branded "abnormal" and/or their ability to read reality correctly is otherwise discounted.
Employ "Humiliation" as a Diagnosis
Many clients who suffer severe public humiliation are sent reeling by their
humiliating events or circumstances but are not able to identify or understand what has
happened to them. All they know is that the events or ongoing situations have left them
with a confusing and disabling array of very disturbing emotions, a bewildering maze of
new appraisals of themselves ("worthless," "not a man," "sexually tainted," "nobody,"
"maybe I deserve it," etc.), endless rumination, and more. With these clients, therefore, it
has proven helpful in many cases to explicitly label what has befallen them as
"humiliation," and to lay out in understandable terms the dynamics and the consequences
of such humiliation as it applies to them. Such an intervention often serves to remove
vast amounts of confusion by identifying the precise nature of their difficulties, the sense
it makes that they are experiencing the things that they are, and a focal point to target
their energies to overcome their predicament. Finally, all of this is accomplished by
providing a diagnosis that, being phrased in everyday human terms, will not prove
confusing, disempowering, or stigmatizing to the client.
Reframe Alleged Violation
21
Humiliation
Reframing, a species of the empirically supported therapeutic technique of
cognitive restructuring (Woodward & Jones, 1980), has been found by the authors to be
an effective technique for use with humiliated clients. In some cases, there are grounds
for realistically reframing clients' alleged humiliating violations in far less humiliating
ways. Depending on the specific facts of the case, they may be reformulated as (a) non-
violations of acceptable human standards, (b) actual fulfillments of such standards, or
even (c) things that never occurred at all (Bergner, 1987). One place where these
possibilities is especially evident is in cases involving sexuality, i.e., cases in which the
publicly revealed information about an individual concerns his or her involvement in
such things as infidelity, the compulsive pursuit of sexual experiences, non-normative
sexual preferences, or sexual victimization.
Case example. An example of such reframing occurred in the case of "Emily," a
21 year old college student, whose earlier sexual involvement with her father became
known to the rest of her family and to some relatives, proving extremely humiliating to
her. While there was no leverage within the therapy hour to alter the family's opinion
that she was blameworthy for what happened, the following reframe ultimately proved
very helpful to Emily herself. Beginning at age 8 and lasting for 3 years, she had
cooperated with and at times sought out sexual involvement with her father. Discussion
of this matter led to an inquiry into the significance of what she had done. In this case,
Emily's very concrete characterization of her behavior was that she had "consented to"
and even "approached Dad for sex." And what sort of a person would do that? In her
mind, only somebody with whom there was "something terribly terribly wrong." Upon
further questioning, however, a very different picture emerged—one in which Emily was
22
Humiliation
seeking affection from her father in the only way he made it available (i.e., sexually), this
in the context of a very emotionally unavailable mother, and all of this in the further
context of a young child's nonconception of sexuality and its adult implications. What
sort of a person would do that? Virtually any child who wanted and needed parental love
and found herself in these precise circumstances. This redescription, i.e., that she was
essentially "a little girl needing and looking for love," reframed the nature of what she
was actually seeking and showed its compatibility with societal expectations for children.
It also accounted for the way that she sought affection in terms both of her circumstances
and of her then radical ignorance of adult sexual meanings, not in terms of her personal
character or nature. Despite some initial reluctance, Emily in time accepted this revised
point of view regarding herself and what had happened with her father.
A further example of reframing occurs routinely in many 12-step programs. Such
programs usually embody an ideology in which the problem behavior is viewed as the
causal product of an illness. Members are thus portrayed to themselves and to each other,
not as deliberate perpetrators of bad behavior, but as victims of a disease process. In
Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, there is a slogan that states that "you're not a bad
person getting good, you're an ill person getting well." In relevant cases, therapeutically
enlisting a different group or community—one with a less degrading view of the
individual's life and conduct—can be very useful in helping these individuals recover
from their humiliation.
Disqualify Degraders
The ability to disqualify one's degraders, especially when this can be done in a
public way, can greatly reduce, and at times even eliminate, the otherwise humiliating
23
Humiliation
consequences of certain events. We noted earlier, in our analysis of the conditions
necessary for humiliation, that effective degradation requires that the degrader have the
status necessary to successfully accomplish the degradation (Garfinkel, 1956; Ossorio,
1997). We also cited the example of a custody hearing in which illegitimate and
humiliating attempts to discredit a mother met with failure due to the would-be degrader's
lacking the necessary status to be regarded as credible.
When our clients, in the face of attempted or accomplished degradation, can find
a way, both within themselves and ideally also publicly, to disqualify or discredit their
humiliators as legitimate status assigners, this can prove a powerful antidote to
humiliation. In assessing a given case, then, it is important to watch for evidence that our
clients' humiliators are such questionable status assigners, or at least that they have
illegitimately degraded our clients on this occasion. Evidence permitting, we may then
assist our clients in recognizing that their degraders are, for example, persons with hidden
agendas for making false accusations (e.g., physicians mandated to reject valid medical
claims in order to maximize corporate profits), individuals who are incompetent to render
the judgments at issue (e.g., psychological diagnosticians with questionable credentials
and/or judgmental competencies), or persons who are acting, not dispassionately and
objectively, but out of a prior malicious agenda.
Case example. This case again concerns "Emily," the young woman discussed in
the previous segment. As part of the overall painfully humiliating scenario described
above, Emily's mother accused her explicitly as the one at fault in the sexual
misinvolvement with the father. Upon detailed exploration of the circumstances,
however, the therapist presented the following, factually based (paraphrased and
24
Humiliation
condensed) portrayal of reality to Emily: "Your mother would have to see it that way. As
you've described her, she has let herself become completely dependent on your father in
financial and all sorts of other ways. Her dependence seems so enormous that she cannot
even envision herself surviving without him. If she saw your father as to blame, since
she seems to have some integrity, she would have to leave him. But leaving him is
unthinkable for her, and so she simply can't see it that way—can't see thing as they are."
Here, a portrayal of reality was provided in which the mother's indictment of Emily was
disqualified as a legitimate, well-founded one. The mother could not be regarded as a
valid judge in this regard, but instead had to be seen as a motivated distorter of reality
because she had powerful interests that dictated that she not see things as they actually
were. The attempt here was to accomplish what might be termed a "surgical"
disqualification of the mother—that is, to disqualify her as a valid commentator in this
regard but not in other ways, allowing Emily to discount her mother's accusation while at
the same time salvaging as much of that critical relationship as possible.
A Confessional Intervention
As noted previously, some severely humiliated clients have suffered their
humiliation due to their involvement in questionable behavior. They have, for example,
committed crimes, been chronically unfaithful to their spouses, claimed statuses that were
false or fraudulent, or seriously damaged their families through their addictive behaviors.
The therapeutic strategy of using therapy as a quasi-confessional vehicle is intended for
such clients when they exhibit genuine remorse for what they have done.
In our culture, as in most, there are explicit ceremonies or rituals of atonement
that are institutionalized and that most persons understand (at least implicitly). Religious
25
Humiliation
rituals of confession are perhaps the clearest instance of these. In such rituals, when all
goes well, the transgressor seeks forgiveness from another person or persons, and thereby
achieves some measure of self-forgiveness and restoration to the community whose
values he or she has violated. In a therapeutic context, when humiliated clients do such
things as admit their wrongdoing to the therapist, acknowledge their responsibility for it,
express genuine remorse, and at times relate how they have undertaken some kind of
reparational and/or penitential behavior to atone for what they have done, they are
engaging in behavior that parallels the behavior of persons in atonement ceremonies. If
the therapist is able to listen to these reports and respond in a manner that is genuinely
accepting of the individual (without condoning or excusing his or her behavior), this can
often function much in the manner of the external forgiveness that is offered in ritualized
atonement ceremonies such as religious confession. Thus, the sort of acceptance that was
originally advocated by Rogers (1957), and that has since been adopted by therapists of
many schools (e.g., Beck & Weishaar, 2008; Kohut, 1977; Wilson, 2008) can be very
helpful in achieving the therapeutic goals of self-forgiveness and some minimal level of
community restoration. There is at least one person in the community, a hopefully
respected and credible therapist, who regards the client as "one of us" despite his or her
transgressions.
In addition to using the therapy hour in the foregoing way, the therapist may also
assist clients by suggesting that they involve themselves in other groups and communities
that embody dynamics of a confessional nature. For example, if clients are religiously
oriented, they might be encouraged to participate in a church community in which they
would be enjoined to do such things as form a personal relationship with a loving,
26
Humiliation
forgiving God or to participate in the sacrament of confession. By way of further
example, clients may be urged to join different kinds of therapeutic groups or
communities in which new members customarily relate their transgressions to, and
receive acceptance from, the group. In many 12-step programs, for instance, participants
tell their personal story to a group of other members who themselves have been through
similar experiences, and are subsequently accepted as members of the group. Such
groups also offer vital opportunities to do penance and restitution in forms such as urging
members to work to repair the damage they have done with their behavior, and later to
help new members with their struggles to overcome their addictions.
Exposure Therapies
In their treatment of humiliated individuals, the authors have found the use of
empirically supported exposure therapies (Taylor et al., 2003) such as EMDR (Shapiro,
2001) and Prolonged Exposure Therapy (Foa, Hembree, & Rothbaum, 2007) very helpful
in many cases. Indeed, severely humiliating experiences can often be traumatizing ones,
and individuals who suffer them frequently emerge with symptoms of post-traumatic
stress disorder (Negrao et al., 2005). Aside from the intense anxiety noted above, they
may, for example, vividly relive hearing the words of the humiliator, re-experience the
gaze of onlookers to their humiliation, and struggle to avoid the intrusive recollection of
these experiences. In these circumstances, as well as ones of lesser traumatic impact,
exposure therapies can be a powerful intervention, as illustrated in the following case.
Case example. A physician, "Dr. C," reported that while growing up he had been
recurrently bullied, harassed, and humiliated as a non-athletic, bookish "wimp" by the
"jocks" in the Oklahoma town in which he was raised. Still residing in the same town as
27
Humiliation
an adult, he was a very talented individual with a medical degree, a successful practice,
and some local renown as a fine musician. Despite his accomplishments and prominent
social standing, it was striking to see that he continued to see the bullying jocks as
holding the only valid standard of him as a man. Further, he now worked with a group of
physicians, many of whom were former athletes, who, though more subtly, belittled and
humiliated him with the same themes of nonmasculinity he had experienced growing up.
In response to this, he had on a number of occasions erupted very angrily at them, and
these episodes had created professional difficulties for him. Though not qualifying as a
full blown case of posttraumatic stress disorder, Dr. C. did experience symptoms such as
chronically reliving the humiliating scenes and the pain attendant upon them, spending an
inordinate amount of time obsessing about them to the detriment of his other interests and
responsibilities, and internalizing their degrading implications about his worth as a man.
In this case, the therapist withheld doing EMDR with Dr. C until he could enlist
in him a more critical perspective regarding the unjust, cruel and arbitrary nature of how
he had been and still was being treated. Once he had seemed to grasp this more fully,
EMDR was undertaken. The immediate effects were dramatic. Initially, while Dr. C
focused on the emotional pain he experienced in relationship to the humiliating episodes,
he very quickly, and with no guidance from the therapist, shifted to a view of his
humiliators and their behaviors as exceedingly "small, petty, and ridiculous." Most
importantly, he seemed to take a kind of emotional distance from these behaviors wherein
he was no longer capable of regarding them as valid criticism of him, his values, or his
worth. He also spontaneously recalled certain traditional images of Oklahoma that had
enthralled him as a young man, and found himself becoming increasingly rooted in an
28
Humiliation
Oklahoma that was, not small and petty, but authentic and sustaining to him. The
positive effects of all this on his behavior, mood, and emotional immunity to his
humiliators were striking and persistent.
Assist Client in Changing and/or Responding to Humiliating Situation
It is possible at times to assist clients in eliminating or diminishing the
environmental states of affairs that are the basis for their humiliation. This can take
forms such as confronting the humiliator in a constructive and effective fashion, filing
legal charges against a degrader (e.g., for libel, harassment, or abuse), working to bring
personally vindicating information to public light or to those with the power to change
the situation (e.g., securing further evaluations to support the legitimacy of medical
claims denied by one's employer), or revealing the questionable motives and/or tactics
employed by the humiliating party (e.g., an insurance company doctor's conflict of
interest). Thus, facts and circumstances permitting, it is worth problem-solving with
clients regarding how they might bring about such environmental alterations, and with
them some measure of public redress and recovery from their humiliation. In doing so,
whether we succeed or fail, we as therapists are implicitly treating our clients as
occupying a certain status, that of wronged parties who are undeserving of their
degradation. Finally here, changing a humiliating situation will unfortunately at times
mean that we explore with clients the question of whether they need to move to entirely
new communities where they can reconstruct their lives.
A Final Case Illustrating Multiple Features
"Captain W" was a 42 year old, married, African American career soldier. He had
recently been referred by his superiors for psychological counseling after exhibiting
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Humiliation
highly uncharacteristic irritability and erratic work performance. During initial meetings
with the psychotherapist, the genesis of his recently developed problems remained
obscure. However, the therapist detected that the patient had referred obliquely a couple
of times, with notable change in the intensity of his affect, to the visit of a prominent
politician to his base. The therapist probed carefully regarding the significance of this
visit for the client. What unfolded was the following. Captain W had risen to a position
of respect and admiration within the military, and was very proud of his achievements
and of the recognition these had elicited. In what proved the critical incident leading to
his altered mood and behavior, a white, nationally prominent politician had visited his
base and engaged, before television cameras, with a group of officers, among whom he
was included. The politician offered eye contact and lively engagement to the other
officers, all of whom were white, but never to Captain W. Further, the politician
positioned himself in relationship to the circle of officers in such a way that at all times
he had his back to Captain W. Aside from the immediate disrespectful implications of
this encounter, key segments of it were shown nationally on television, allowing an entire
nation to witness what had happened.
The sense of invisibility, lack of status, and discounting that Capt. W experienced,
recorded by the cameras for all to see, constituted a profoundly humiliating experience
for him. From his point of view, despite his career-long assiduous efforts and
achievements, when it came to simple recognition of him as equal to his Caucasian peers
by one of the highest authorities in the land, he remained “still a nobody.” He felt too
ashamed of how he had been treated during this event to bring it up, and may never have
done so had not the therapist detected its signs.
30
Humiliation
The therapist, a male individual with an authoritative but highly relational style,
looked very directly into Capt. W’s eyes while the latter related this account. The
therapist judged that his looking directly at Capt. W as he discussed this event was very
important. He understood himself to be implicitly conveying by his direct look an
appreciation of the indignity which Capt. W had experienced (and the potential
relatedness of this experience to the infliction of such indignities over centuries). It
conveyed that the therapist was not going to shirk from this matter, that its significance
was not going to be missed or averted--it would get “the light of day.” Further, the
therapist’s direct gaze gave a subtextual notice that the “losing of face” in the context of
this humiliation was a matter that was “faceable.” At the completion of Captain W's
revelation, the therapist tentatively but explicitly inquired, "Is it correct to say that this
man and this situation humiliated you?" The use of this concept seemed to crystallize in
Capt. W's mind the nature of what had happened. The therapy sessions suddenly became
an arena in which he voiced deep indignation and intense anger at the politician, laid out
and denounced the historical perpetration of such indignities on him and his family of
origin, and lamented the feelings of shame, self-doubt, and illegitimacy that such events
could still engender in him. The recognition of the humiliation and the opportunity to
discuss it with the therapist was cathartic, unburdening, clarifying and validating.
Later in therapy, the therapist asked Capt. W, in a somewhat confrontational style
that could come only from one who had established himself as an ally: “Who are you?
What counts most in who you are?” In response to this question, Capt. W reviewed that
about himself of which he was most proud, what he owned as “his” whether or not
someone else (such as the politician) saw it or appreciated it. That these qualities counted
31
Humiliation
for him irrespective of someone else’s recognition of them was probed, reflected, and
thus further established as real. The fact that many others in Capt. W’s world did
appreciate these qualities about him was also introduced and underscored as a reality.
Importantly, during these discussions, the therapist took the opportunity to roll his eyes
with mildly disrespectful irony at the egregious behavior of the insensitive, self-centered
and self-aggrandizing politician.
Conclusion
Some Barriers to Change
Undergoing severe humiliation is often a very difficult experience from which to
recover. As noted, the forces arrayed against certain individuals in terms of powerful
agencies, ostracizing families and communities, public ridicule, and more, can be
overwhelming. Further, as alluded to at many points throughout this article, persons
subjected to humiliating treatment will often accept and internalize the degrading
implications of what has befallen them—will conclude, for example, that indeed they
must be sexually tainted, morally failed, mentally ill, unmanly, or otherwise degraded
persons. Thus, as in the case of Emily above, much work may often be required to
reconstruct their self-concepts and their identities. This obviously could be and has been
the subject of entire books and articles. However, in concluding, a few brief ideas might
be mentioned. These regard (a) the difficulty in general of altering degrading self-
assigned statuses (often articulated as labels), and (b) the fact that some humiliated
persons become invested in and committed to retaining what Goffman (1963) once
termed a "spoiled identity."
With regard to the first of these difficulties, there is often a dynamic at work in
32
Humiliation
these cases that "status takes precedence over fact" (Ossorio, 1998, p. 18). When persons
have accepted and internalized stigmatizing statuses, it is these statuses, rather than
seemingly evidential facts, that will often determine how events are interpreted. Thus,
for example, one client, a man who viewed himself as "utterly selfish and loveless," sent
what appeared to be a rather thoughtful condolence card to a friend who had suffered a
loss. When this was brought up by the therapist as evidence against his view of himself,
the man retorted that he did it "only because I would have felt guilty and looked bad if I
had not." Seeming evidence of a thoughtful regard for others here was simply assimilated
to this man's self-assigned status as "someone who always looks out for number one."
The therapeutic implication is that we as therapists often cannot depend on the mere
recounting of disconfirming empirical facts to alter internalized degrading labels, but
must find other ways to undermine them. A full discussion of ways of doing this is
beyond the scope of the present article (but see Bergner, 1993, 2007; Bergner & Holmes,
2000). One core strategy in this approach, however, is that of educating clients about this
"status takes precedence over fact" dynamic, thus raising their consciousness of how they
are effectively discounting evidence, and from there employing interventions designed to
help them to genuinely consider such evidence.
With regard to the second difficulty, some clients will cling to degrading self-
characterizations and be reluctant to give them up. In such a circumstance, the first
therapeutic task becomes one of investigating the precise nature of their investment in
retaining such a degrading label. For example, some humiliated individuals resort to
adopting compensatory statuses that, while providing some relief, also maintain their
degraded status. Among these are victims of humiliating treatment who become hooked
33
Humiliation
on the strategic gains and the satisfactions of being morally wronged accusers. For
example, some clients who learn of their spouse's infidelity (and sometimes the further
humiliating fact that it is known to others) will adopt the role of virtuous, grievously
wronged parties who are endlessly entitled to accost their spouses about their betrayal.
The satisfactions of being the invulnerable, righteously aggrieved accusers of their
penitent spouses stands in the way of moving on from the degraded status of being the
"cuckold" or "the woman who could not hold onto her man." In such circumstances, we
as therapists must attend to the matter of helping our clients to forego such satisfactions
in the interest of moving on from the degrading events and the scars they have left.
Summary
In this paper, we have presented a new analysis of what is involved when our
clients undergo severe public humiliation. We have described (a) the structure of such
humiliation; i.e., the factors that, taken collectively, render certain interpersonal events
and circumstances humiliating ones for people; (b) the most common damaging
consequences of being subjected to these; (c) a number of clinical interventions that have
proven effective in our own work with humiliated clients; and (d) an analysis of some
common barriers encountered in working with these clients.
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