Learning about the power of shame began as one of the most important chapters in my life and work.
Dr. Gary David, a gifted jazz vocalist, epistemologist, philosopher, affect theorist-therapist and ultimately great friend mentored me into Tomkins. Beyond the theoretical correlations with my learning-work, Gary challenged me to apply Tomkins to learning about the affective functioning motivating my every thought and feeling.
By some kind of coincidental intersecting I don’t understand, while I was learning to recognize the affect as an operating system, that my daughter began to “shame out of reading”.
It was painful and frightening to watch my wisely brightly alive daughter sink into what I would later learn to call mind-shame. Then, still early in the spiral, she, by some kind of miracle I don’t understand, handed me the book “The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights”, by John Steinbeck. As she put it in my hands she asked me if it would be a good one to read to her.
The first words of the preface of were:
“Some people there are who,
being grown, forget the horrible
task of learning to read. It is
perhaps the greatest single effort
that the human undertakes, and
he must do it as a child.”
It hit me like a sign should. Everyone needs to understand that many to most of our kids are to various degrees becoming ashamed of their minds – learning to avoid the shame they feel when learning is challenging – because of the way we contextualize their emotional experience of their struggles. This is across the board but it it most insidiously dangerous when the kind of learning involves a staggering degree of unnatural confusion that must be worked through at a rate faster than they can think.
Chronic shame isn’t just a consequence of early protracted reading difficulty it’s the main impediment to remedial reading improvement.
I shared the idea of creating a documentary that would include a tour through the effects of shame on learning to read with Gary. He suggested I reach out to Donald Nathanson.
2002-07-26 T19:41 | From: David Boulton dboulton@implicity.org | To: nathanson@tomkins.org | Subject: Children of the Code – PBS series – (shame) Nathanson 1
Hello Dr. Nathanson ,
We have a mutual friend in Dr. Gary David who has, I believe, shared some of my work with you in the past.
I am currently engaged in research for an upcoming PBS mini series on the history of the English writing system. The “Children of the Code” is a 3 episode PBS project currently in pre-production. It will begin with the story of the history of writing and end in an examination of the role the English writing system plays in the process of learning to read.
One aspect of the final segment will explore the downward spiraling relationship between shame and cognitive shock in the context of learning to read. I realize you are not a reading specialist – we will establish the shame dimensions of learning to read through other researchers. However, I would very much like to interview you about the general consequences to our
cognitive processes of shame.
The producers of this series believe that the “Children of the Code” series will help foster a new understanding and appreciation for the history of our written language and its effects upon our consciousness.
Please let us know if we may interview you about the remarkable relationship between shame and how our minds learn to read.
Thank you very much,
David Boulton
…learning to learn, as if, how well we learn is more important than what we learn…
2002-07-27 T03:27:32Z | From: Donald Nathanson nathanson@tomkins.org | To: dboulton@implicity.org |Subject: Re: Children of the Code – PBS series – (shame) Nathanson 1
To be a friend of Gary David is to live with significant advantage over the rest of the world. He stands at the top of my list of people with whom I’d love to be trapped for several days. So you and I have a lot in common.
The other day, he sent me something that involved you and I ran the links to get the flavor of your world. My greatest surprise is that we’ve not been in contact before. Both of us want to change one apparently small part of our culture in order to shift it to another track in ways we hope are too subtle for many to notice.
I look forward to consulting with you and presenting my schools program based on teaching little kids about innate affect, the Compass of Shame, and a conferencing system through which children learn to talk with their peers about what upsets them. Currently I’m working with a team to produce a DVD teaching working clergy my basic premise that all explosive violence is a reaction to perceived humiliation, and helping them teach these principles to youth and adult groups.
Incidentally, when we talk about the way chronic shame interferes with any form of study because the affect itself turns off critical thinking, I’d like to mention as well that for generations, most people studied in order to prevent the embarrassment at being exposed as “stupid”. What a great way to start talking.
Don Nathanson
After the above initial contact we engaged in dozens of other emails conversations as well as two days of interviews and two nights of dialogue – one in DC and another much later at his home. Don continued to be a supporter of the project and wrote one of the most beautiful endorsements of the project:
2003-06-29 T14:09:05Z From: Donald L. Nathanson, MD nathanson@tomkins.org To: dboulton@implicity.org – subject: revision
As a scientist and clinician working in the field of human emotion and cognition for 25 years, I have been vitally interested in the problem of getting people to change incorrect but closely held beliefs. Like most scholars, until awakened by the “Children of the Code ” project, I took intake through reading as much for granted as eating and drinking. Very few of us had paid sufficient attention to the specific emotions triggered in children as they begin to read. We took for granted that every child learned to read as a rite of passage that became insignificant once completed, and that the pride triggered by fluency and success can make reading and writing a joy. Yet any impediment to mastery of the confusing and illogical code that connects spoken and written English must trigger shame, the emotion that stops all useful thought. So painful does shame become in the public arena of the schoolroom that our children swiftly divide into two streams and two futures purely on the basis of their response to the shame that accompanies the struggle to decode our written language. “Children of the Code ” merits the serious attention of anyone interested in the future of America.
Donald L. Nathanson, M.D.
My talk for the Tomkins institute will continue exploring my learning with Gary, Nathanson, and Tomkins and how affect in general and the compass of shame in particular motivate how human beings can’t help but learn to become themselves.