The Journal of Primary Prevention, VoL 12, No. 3, 1992
Managing Humiliation Donald C. Klein 1
This paper reviews findings concerning ways that people have found to minimize or avoid humiliation. It concludes with a discussion of addressing the task of creating humiliation-free institutions. KEY WORDS: Humiliation; minimize or avoid humiliation; humiliation-free institutions.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments Oil away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. - Mark Twain, Wlzat Paul Bourget Thinks of Us.
In my explorations of the Humiliation Dynamic I've been especially interested in identifying promising adaptive patterns that people use for coping with the Humiliation Dynamic. Personal reflections about my own experiences with humiliation, individual in-depth interviews, and group discussions with interested, articulate, and sophisticated informants have been of considerable help in this search. Although I've found only a limited amount of pertinent material in the mental health literature, forays into other disciplines -such as sociology, linguistics, and spiritual studieshave yielded rich insights, as have my reading of autobiographies and works of fiction. By these means I've been able to identify certain approaches that promise to help us in managing others' attempts to humiliate us and to diminish, if not eliminate, our need to humiliate others. They include: psychological immunization, refusing the role of victim by redefining one's identity, participating in self-help and mutual support groups, using healing laughter, achieving a state of transcendent humility, C. Klein is affiliated with the Graduate School of the Union Institute, Cincinnati, OH. Address correspondence and reprint requests to: 4730 Sheppard Lane, Ellicott City, MD 21042.
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and responding with one's capacity for appreciation to the potential humiliations that come one's way. Mter discussing these approaches, I raise questions about what life might be like in a humiliation-free society and world. Finally, I close both this paper and the special issue of The Journal by encouraging readers to take steps to acknowledge, confront, and do something about manifestations of the humiliation dynamic in their own lives.
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMUNIZATION
Anticipatory instillation of pride in self and one's collective identity is frequently used by African-Americans and members of other recognizable racial and ethnic groups. Knowing that their children will be subject to inescapable contempt and discrimination at the hands of prejudiced people and racist institutions, parents exhort their children to be faithful to the best in themselves, to have pride in the historic accomplishments of their group, and to keep from being demeaned and reduced in their own eyes by allowing themselves to feel neither humiliated nor ashamed. Another widely used immunizing approach found in many cultures, including our own, is for adults and older siblings to tease children and laugh lovingly at their foibles. As Jean Griffin notes in her article in this issue, "playing the dozens," a game of verbal dueling engaged in by African-American youth, mainly adolescent males, is another example of attempted immunization against humiliation (Farb, 1975). The game involves the exchange of mortal insults, each one more telling and clever than the one which preceded it. You lose the game either if you can't come up with an insult or let another player's insults get under your skin. Farb describes playing the dozens as verbal training which prepares one for living in a racist society: "Virtually powerless in a white world, blacks discovered that one of the few ways they could fight back was verbally. Verbal baltic 11gainst whites became more important than physical battle, where blacks have been outnumbered and outgunned. The game of the dozens has provided black youths with early opportunities to become proficient in verbal strategies and at the same time to elevate their standing in the group." (Farb, 1974, p. 125).
Farb reports that similar kinds or" verbal dueling are found around the world and appear in each instance to represent attempts to immunize players against some form of humiliation. Often, it seems, the function of the verbal duel is to enable players to learn how to avoid the humiliation of being mocked as a powerless,
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inadequate male. In Turkey, for example, the verbal duel "deals with homosexuality and virility, and the duel is to force an opponent into a feminine, submissive role" (p. 124). Redefining One's Identity Members of victimized groups in our society - among them women, African-Americans, and homosexuals - independently have described going through a very similar period of consciousness-raising in which a previously introjected self-image of inferiority is almost literally "vomited out" to be replaced in successive stages by a period of creating a separate, self-sustaining culture of one's own kind, and finally, being prepared to enter into an interdependent relationship of equal power with one's former oppressors. In the case of women, Leonard (1983) describes the redefinition as "a way of redemption" that involves a fight against the woman's "selfidentification with the victim and worthless one ..." (p. 51). She says: "This requires accepting that one is both innocent and guilty, and that within oneself exists both the power to destroy and to save. The task is to transform the cynical attitude, despair, and rejection into an attitude of hope and to consciously affirm oneself and life" (p. 51).
Leonard quotes from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet to illustrate her vision of the redemption that is possible: "This humanity of woman, borne its full time in suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she will have stripped off the conventions of mere feminity in the mutations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching today will be surprised and struck by it . . . some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being" (Rilke, 1963).
For most individuals there is a difficult and painful transition to be made from being a disempowered, humiliated victim to one who is a fully empowered, equal participant in one's associations with people unlike oneself. In a study of how this transition occurred for the small minority of gay males who reveal their homosexuality to straight colleagues in large business firms, Miller (1987) states that "the individual wins a new freedom only after the agonizing process of transformation" that "involves the painful knowledge of how one has disempowered oneselr' (p. 44). Claiming one's identity as gay occurs only after a period during which the individual feels totally powerless.
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"By the time the Gay male has entered the workforce, he has a long history of being rejected or punished for being Gay. His anxiety results from being unable to cope with the consequences of not going along, e.g., perhaps fired or "exposed" as being a "faggot." It is therefore understandable that he may masochistically stay closeted. That pain, sadly, is most often more acceptable than the pain of rejection and abandonment" (p. 35).
The gay managers Miller interviewed reported that the transition stage began with a period of "bargaining" during which they found themselves in the humiliating position of asking for acceptance as who and what they were in return for their performance on the job. Having discovered that bargaining left them in a position of low power, some of them became more openly hostile: " .•.ideas arc attacked before they arc completely expressed; comments and suggestions arc made with a great deal of vehemence; behavior is exhibited by hostile, facial nonvcrbals illustrative of inner feelings of hatred; and attacks arc aimed at the personal level in very subtle ways" (p. 40).
Miller found that, unfortunately, some of the men remained stuck in a maladaptive stage of "Depression and Victimization" characterized by powerlessness, hurt, and the recognition that the acceptance and recognition they desired had eluded them. Instead, "their deepest fears of abandonment, rejection and punishment have been realized" (p. 42). Those who were able to move beyond depression and victimization found that they could face their real and imagined vulnerability. To do so, he writes: " . • . requires getting clear about one's drives for self-accomplishment, personal growth, recognition and self-worth; admitting these drives to one's self, giving them specific form in terms of goals and strategies, and going public, i.e., leuing the boss and some others know that one is Gay and enlisting their support. The dealing behavior requires a calm, centered, assertive self-determination". "In this stage, Gay persons start to develop skills in order to solve or, at least, deflect the problems they encounter. They learn to be perceptive concerning in whom it is safe to confide and in whom it is not. They pick up on cues regarding the extent of others' knowledge of their situation and their reactions to it. TI1cy build alliances with members of the majority who arc sympathetic to their position" (p. 46).
Only a very few of Miller's sample reached the final stage that he labels "Actualization and Manifestation," in which the individual experiences himself as functioning in synergy with others in his environment, recognizes that his disadvantaged position has fostered a deeper selfunderstanding, is better able to understand the unwritten rules and norms of the corporate workplace, and is sensitized to others' viewpoints. "A state of resonance, i.e., vibrating in harmony with one's homosexuality and the environment is achieved" (p. 51). The feelings described during the final stage of transition, Miller reports:
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" ...were of being empowered -in control of one's life rather than dependent, passive, weak, "bossed" - free of blocks, inhibitions, fears; self-determining; and with a keen sense of direct connection with one's environment" (p. 51).
I have presented Miller's findings in some detail because I believe that the transitional phenomena he describes are by no means restricted to gay men in large corporations. Rather, they may well be typical of the transition involved when any heretofore oppressed and humiliated group undertakes the difficult work involved in redefining its identity. SELF-HELP GROUPS
It's not necessary in this article to review the body of literature having to do with the enormous healing and problem-solving power of self-help support groups. I'd only like to suggest that the need to manage the humiliation dynamic is perhaps the single most important energy source in such groups. In report after report, participants describe the relief they experienced when they discovered that they weren't alone in their humiliation. What was before a private hell of shame and a potential public hell of humiliation now becomes a shared journey to be made with understanding support and guidance by fellow travellers who know from their own humiliation what the experience is like. HEALING LAUGHTER
Humor is without doubt the most widespread and powerful antidote to the toxin of humiliation known to humankind. If administered with love and understanding, a single dose, at one and the same time, dissolves selfimportance, makes light of suffering, connects the victim with the vulnerability of being human, and pokes fun at those who set themselves up as superior. Growing up as a Jew, I was surrounded and supported by such humor, often in ways that I could not appreciate at the time. As an example, here is a favorite story of mine. For me it combines the roles of humiliator, victim, and witness in a way that bathes the humiliation dynamic in the healing power of ironic understanding. During the Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement services, a Rabbi is overcome by ecstacy. He beats his breast before the congregation and cries out, "Oh Lord, I have sinned, I am nothing, I am less than nothing!" and throws himself prostrate on the altar. The Rabbi's holy frenzy is contagious. The Cantor, whose job it is to chant the prayers, is deeply moved. He, too,
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beats his breast, and in his beautifully resonant voice sings out, "Oh Lord, I have sinned, I am nothing, I am less than nothing!" He, too, throws himself prostrate on the altar next to the Rabbi. The Beadle, a small, elderly, insignificant man, who for years has cleaned the synagogue, distributed prayer books, and done various other menial jobs for the congregation, is himself caught up in this moment of exaltation. In a thin, reedy, quavering voice, he, too, cries out in ecstacy, "Oh Lord, I have sinned, I am nothing, I am less than nothing!" and he throws himself prostrate on the alter next to the Rabbi and the Cantor. Whereupon the Cantor turns to the Rabbi, gestures towards the Beadle, and says, "Look who's setting himself up to be a nothing!" Within the Zen tradition, too, there's the image of "buoyant laughter" (Hyers, 1987, p. 50) that co-exists with the more serious meditative one with which we in this country are more familiar. That image is typified by a carefree vagabond known as Pu-tai, a clown-like figure who dances merrily through life playing with village children. A holy fool, Pu-Tai is the embodiment of the cosmic chuckle. In the cosmic tradition of Zen, according to Hyers: " •..one discovers that ego, desire and auachmcnt have a way of getting themselves broken and devoured in the realization of some great Cosmic Joke, and in the greatness of a Cosmic Laughter ..•" (p. 57).
Laughter has played an important part in various European traditions as well. Merry pranksters, circus clowns, music hall comics, mines, Punch and Judy shows, and among European Jews the role of schlemiel, who never could do anything right, all were part of that tradition of the hapless comic that was imported to the United States where it flourishes today. In the Middle Ages court jesters were insignificant, ridiculous, comic figures who poked fun at the pretensions of king and court and said in jest what needed to be said without running the risk of being put to death for having offended their victims. How could a king or nobleman feel humiliated by the criticisms of a lowly fool, especially when those comments were offered with wit and grace, often in verse and song? Laughter that heals (Luke, 1987) is different from that which expresses rejection or contempt. The Cantor's response is healing if it connects us with our tendencies towards religiosity, how prone we are to take pride in seeming modest and self-effacing, and, above all, how easy it is to set ourselves up as superior to lesser human beings. Helen Luke, a Jungian analyst and delightful observer of the human scene, writes: "We all laugh at the foibles of those around us, but those with a sense of humor do not laugh at a person; there is simply a feeling of delight in the ridiculous wherever it is manifest and such laughter docs not condemn the other or oneself
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THE ANTIDOTE OF HUMILI1Y Often associated with the healing use of laughter is the saving grace of humility. The truly humble person cannot be humiliated. This simple truth was brought home to me by a colleague2 who commented that he could think of a situation where the 90-pound weakling on the beach had sand kicked in his face by the 200-pound bully and yet was not humiliated. "Of course," I replied, "the 90-pound weakling was a black belt Karate expert who subdued the bully with a few well-placed chops and kicks." "Could be," my friend said, "But that's not what I had in mind. What if the 90-pound weakling were a Buddist monk?!" Notice that the words "humility" and "humiliation" come from the same earthy roots as "burnous." To be humble means to exist close to the earth. When one is humble, one cannot be humiliated because one has no distance to fall. One is already there, grounded in the soil of life. Humble persons are dirtied with the inevitable stains of earthy existence. They carry whatever burdens of responsibility come their way without need for selfjustification, on the one hand, or fear of failure, on the other. Luke (1987) calls it suffering in the full sense of the word and likens it to the undercarriage which bears the weight of a vehicle. To be truly humble, Luke writes, it's important to uncover our fear of humiliation: "From this fear of degradation in our own eyes or in the eyes of others, real or imagined, comes a dead weight of moods and depression. For the truly humble person no humiliation exists. It is impossible to humiliate him or for him to feel humiliation, for "grades" and prestige, questions of his own merit or demerit, have no more meaning for him. But the way to humility lies through the pain of accepted humiliation. In the movement of picking it up and carrying it without any movement towards self-justification, we cease to be humiliated and begin to suffer" (p. 104 ).
Luke's words come from the Catholic tradition in which her life is immersed. Within that tradition, humiliation has been conceived by certain teachers as a gift to be treasured. ~t. Vincent de Paul, for example, taught that humility is "to Jove contempt, to desire disparagement, to rejoice in it, when it comes for the Jove of Jesus Christ" (Berry, 1988, p. 167). According to St. Vincent, humility involves three conditions: 11rhanks to Dr. Robert Marshak for his insight.
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1) " . we sincerely consider ourselves deserving of people's blame." 2) " ... we rejoice that others see our imperfections." 3) " ... we conceal, if possible, under the cloak of lowliness, whatever God may be pleased to work through us or in us" (Berry, 1988, pp. 168-169). Humility means dying to self in the sense that one is no longer driven by pride and self-importance. The idea has its counterparts in Eastern meditative and spiritual traditions, such as Yoga and Zen. To live in a meditative state is to know that the self is only a way of experiencing and defining one's life. It has no reality apart from being a creation of one's mind. Those who have come to this critical understanding experience another reality, one that is, at one and the same time, simple and filled with infinite, joyful possibility.
THE POWER OF APPRECIATION I know from my own experience that it's possible to enter that other reality simply by acknowledging oneself as the individual creator of one's own experience, including one's sense of self and the feeling of self-importance that's at stake in so much of what one does and says. I've discovered that anyone can do so simply by bringing what I call the ''power of appreciation" to bear on whatever happens (Klein, 1988). It is through positive feelings of appreciation that one discovers the difference between reality and illusion, between pride and humility, and between pain and true suffering. Early in my study of the humiliation dynamic I came upon the book City of Joy (Lapierre, 1985), which describes a Calcutta slum inhabited by poor, suffering people, who, living in the midst of indescribable filth, sewage, insects and rats, were condemned to inescapable illness, hunger, suffering, and premature death. These were people who knew what it was to be beggars, to send their children off to beg, and to prostitute themselves and their daughters in order to stay alive. Every day they suffered humiliations the likes of which few Westerners can even imagine and only those who have been to India have ever experienced, if only vicariously. And yet, according to the Polish priest who cast his lot with them, these people knew what it was to celebrate life, to support one another, and to share their joys as well as their sorrows. They had truly transcended their circumstances. I imagine that through their suffering they had achieved a state
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where the psychic furies of humiliation, shame, and guilt were no longer relevant. But what of those of us who live in far more favored circumstances? Can we, too, learn to embrace with appreciation whatever comes our way, including the taunts and scornful laughter of those who would grind our faces in the dirt of humiliation? I've known a few remarkable people in my life who were able to do so. I think of them as "inverse paranoids." That is, they project onto events positive expectations of hope and promise rather than negative ones of suspicion and mistrust. Moreover, through both example and teaching they've been able repeatedly to create similar expectations in the minds of others. One of these people was Erich Lindemann, who as a pioneer in the community mental health movement founded the experimental mental health center in Wellesley, Massachusetts and articulated crisis theory and other seminal concepts in the field of preventive psychiatry (Lindemann, 1979). Lindemann's ability to transform potential humiliation into something positive is exemplified for me by the miraculous attitude change about using clinical services he created among many community leaders in Wellesley. I agree with Lewis (1976) that most, if not all, patients in psychotherapy feel humiliated by having to get help from a trained therapist, rather than being able to handle problems on their own (Lewis, 1976.) Thanks to Lindemann, however, this was not so in Wellesley. In 1953, only five years after the mental health explorations were begun, I became Executive Director of the program in Wellesley and soon discovered that Lindemann and his colleagues had created a remarkable climate in which leading citizens of the community comfortably described in public how and why they'd made use of the crisis therapy offered by the mental health program. Far from feeling humiliated, they were proud to be clients because they agreed with Lindemann that by doing so they were contributing to the community's mental health. In other words, Lindemann had managed in only five short years to remove the taint of humiliation from those who proudly described at public meetings how and why they sought therapy for individual and family crises.
WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed- naked and pure-minded; and no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They have entered it modest.
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They had to acquire immodesty and the soiled mind; there was no other way to get it. - Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
The Wellesley project expressed Lindemann's vision that over time the alliance of mental health experts, social scientists, and community leaders would create environments that were conducive to mental health. Informed citizens and appropriate caretaking institutions would promote healthy growth and development, while reducing the incidence of psychological casualties. In some respects, the results have been promising. They include widespread use of support systems and self-help groups, dissemination of crisis intervention as a means of secondary prevention, and continuing use of mental health consultation in support of schools, hospitals, and other caretaking institutions. Examining contemporary society through the lens of the humiliation dynamic, however, it's clear that fundamental challenges remain. These challenges are explored in the articles which constitute this special issue. Despite gains that have been made, these articles indicate that a great many groups are vulnerable to being treated as victims by those who control society's resources and set its norms. Among them are women and African-Americans; children and old people; gays and lesbians; those without jobs, homeless people, and welfare recipients; prisoners, nursing home residents, and other institutional inmates; lower class people and those in marginal occupations; police officers, overweight individuals; Jews, Spanish-speaking people, Asians, other "foreigners" in our midst, and people who speak funny; those with physical disablements, mentally retarded individuals, and low achievers in school. The list goes on and on. One is reminded of the classic story of the Quaker who said, "The whole world, Miranda, is crazy but thee and me. And sometimes I wonder about thee!" The place to start, of course, is with "me," "thee," and our attitudes towards one another and "them," i.e., those who are different from either of us. My observations of casual conversations of friends, colleagues, and others at cocktail parties and other settings suggest that we're all prone to heap ridicule upon or be contemptuous of certain individuals and groups who are unlike ourselves, if not to their faces then to one another. What a satisfying exercise! especially when those we skewer are graceless presidents and malevolent middle Eastern religious and political leaders. And yet it's a costly pasttime because of its divisive nature; by keeping us as active participants in the humiliation dynamic it perpetuates stereotypes, encloses us in stultifying self-justification, and helps to maintain the very status quo we deplore. In the process we forget that those we ridicule are, as Harry Stack Sullivan used to remind his psychiatric residents when
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they were first introduced to psychotic patients, "far more human than otherwise." Why do we take such pleasure in participating in this version of the humiliation dynamic? At this point in the inquiry, I can speak only for myself. I believe my readiness to ridicule others represents an attempt to secure my own position with those of like mind, thereby lowering the risk that I might be humiliated by them. In other words, it may be yet another manifestation of my own fear of humiliation How to create a society in which the humiliation dynamic is less rampant and its ill-effects minimized? The first step, I believe, is for each of us to acknowledge that he or she is. already humiliated. Somehow, somewhere, under some conditions each of us was, is, and will be the one who is contemptible, disgusting, and reprehensible in someone's else's eyes. As Goffman pointed out in his classic work on social stigma (Goffman, 1963), no one is immune from being stigmatized for failing to conform to someone else's idea of acceptability. Another step, I believe, is to engage in individual consciousness-raising- that is, to name the dynamic and speak with others about our experiences of it. Perhaps someday when it is no longer be necessary for us to hide our humiliations from family, friends, and neighbors we will no longer need to seek understanding, compassion, and acceptance from special selfhelp and support groups of fellow sufferers. Another important step is to come to grips with how the Humiliation Dynamic operates within the major social institutions with which we're personally involved. One way to begin to influence those institutions would be to make changes in our own behavior that would reduce the fear of humiliation on the part of our associates, bosses, subordinates, and clients. Finally, there's the challenge, which for some of us in the field of prevention could be a satisfying life's work, of doing all we can to bring about fundamental transformations within major caretaking institutions, most of which are riddled with humiliating attitudes, procedures, and policies. I have in mind, among others, those age-graded educational systems in which children and teachers have little choice of whether or not they work with one another and where the vast majority of students- those who aren't smart enough or adequately prepared -must live with the humiliating possibility of being treated as also-rans or failures. These systems are put together in such a way as to ensure the humiliation of repeated failure on the part of so-called disadvantaged children. Hardly surprising under the circumstances is the tragic fact, which few communities are prepared to address, that in virtually all major metropolitan
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areas as many as forty-percent of all inner-city children fail to get a high school diploma. What kind of transformation will be needed, one wonders, to eliminate from our school systems such consequences of the Humiliation Dynamic? I have in mind as well the so-called criminal justice system, which is designed to process large numbers of wrongdoers with just the right amount of dehumanizing humiliation. It's a system in which even those responsible for enforcing the law- police officers - themselves feel like members of a humiliated minority group, despised by criminals and the general public alike. They live within a para-military system and a culture that is quick to humiliate them if they act like "sissies" or in other ways fail to live up to the macho attitudes and standards of their trade. Sometimes all too ready to pass on their humiliation to suspected wrongdoers, they suffer from higher than normal rates of divorce, substance abuse, and suicide. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, jails grow more and more crowded and continue to treat inmates in dehumanizing and humiliating ways. What would a criminal justice system be like, one wonders, if it were redesigned in such a way as to substantially reduce the humiliations inflicted on those who staff the system as well as those caught in its clutches? I have in mind also the world of work where, according to my discussions with groups of managers with whom I've worked as a training consultant for many years, both subtle and sometimes astoundingly blatant manifestations of the humiliation dynamic are rampant. Humiliation and the fear of humiliation suffuse most work settings with which I've been involved. Although usually unacknowledged and suffered in silence, they create chronic and sometimes disabling stress for individuals, impair working relationships between individuals, lead to difficulties in achieving needed cooperation between work units, and reduce productivity in terms of both quantity and quality. Organizational consultants, like myself, are paid high fees to help client systems overcome personal and systemic debilitating consequences of the Humiliation Dynamic. We're called in to build effective work teams; help managers deal more effectively with the growing diversity of the work force; and improve horizontal and vertical communications. As we do so, we're confronted by win-lose organizational norms that lead people to blame one another and to use organizationally dysfunctional defensive maneuvers in their determination to avoid becoming humiliated losers in the continuous jockeying for acceptance, security, and power. We find organizations struggling to improve ineffective performance appraisal systems in which superiors evaluate subordinates, systems that cannot work well, however cleverly they are contrived by experts on evaluation and measurement, simply because, by virtue of their top-down nature,
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they have the Humiliation Dynamic built in. What would it be like, one wonders, to work in a setting in which bosses and subordinates assess one another's performance with the aim of improving how they work together to get the job done? What other transformations would be needed to reduce or even eliminate the fear of humiliation that pervades so many work settings? Finally, I have in mind the world scene in which the consequences of the humiliation dynamic are enormous and, in the age of nuclear and chemical weapons, so alarming. Considering what's happened in my life time. Adolf Hitler tapped into the sense of collective humiliation experienced by the Germans following World War I and went on to precipitate a holocaust that consumed tens of millions of victims. Later France and the United States in VietNam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan were humiliated by being unable to contain the forces of national liberation. Meanwhile, Irish Catholic nationalists, fueled by righteous indignation over past and present humiliations at the hands of British Protestants, continue to claim victims and to be victimized in turn. Terrorist violence has become a way of life in the Middle East as Lebanese factions, Palestinians, and others who feel they have been the humiliated victims of oppression struggle both against one another and with those who they feel are their oppressors. As this is being written, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's President and an impassioned spokesperson for millions of povertystricken Arabs who feel they are the humiliated victims of European and American colonialists, has taken on a coalition of the wealthiest and militarily most powerful nations of the world in a standoff that may end in disaster for all concerned. What would happen, one wonders, if the potentially disastrous effects of collective humiliation were generally recognized in international circles? If it were no longer acceptable for world leaders to hurl such terms as "the evil empire" at one another, to call one another insane or modern Hitlers, or to engage in other insulting diatribes? Is it possible that someday there will be a fifth freedom added to the four that were promulgated by the victors after World War II- that is, freedom from public ridicule and collective humiliation? What would the relations between nations be like if the humiliation dynamic were outlawed as a clear and present danger to world peace and human survival? A world -or even a single individual's lifetime -without the deleterious effects of the Humiliation Dynamic? Although it may seem impossible, it's a vision well worth pursuing. My study and the special issue of this Journal are intended to help us move in the direction of such a world. In that spirit, I invite you, the reader, to examine how this dynamic operates in your own personal and professional worlds, to do everything in your
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power to break the conspiracy of silence about the humiliations you and others experience, to contribute to doing something about the humiliating conditions in your community and the organizations in which you function, and to engage in efforts to crate humiliation-free environments for yourself and others. Like the man said, "We can use all the help we can get!"
REFERENCES Berry, D. (1989) A Comparative Study of the Spiritual Theologies of St. Vmcent de Paul and Father Thomas Augustine Judge, C. M. Doctoral Project Demonstrating Excellence, The Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio. Farb, P. (1975) Word Ploy: What Happens When People Talk. New York: Bantam Books. Go££man, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Hyers, C. (1987) The smile of truth, Parabola, 12, No. 4. Klein, D. (1988) The power o£ appreciation, American Journal of Community Psychology, 16, No. 3, pp. 305-324. Lapierre, D. (1985) The City of Joy. New York: Warner Books. Inc. Leonard, L. (1982) The Wonded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Lewis, H. (1976) Psychic War in Men and Women. New York: New York University Press. Lindemann, E. (1979) Beyond Grief: Studies in Crisis /lllervention. New York: Jason Aronson. Luke, H. (1987) The laughter at the heart of things, Parabola, 12, No. 4. Miller, G. (1987) From Disempowerment to Empowennelll: The Gay Male's Odyssey in the Corporate World. Doctoral Project Demonstrating Excellence, The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities (now known as The Union Institute), Cincinnati, Ohio.
Managing Humiliation Donald C. Klein 1
This paper reviews findings concerning ways that people have found to minimize or avoid humiliation. It concludes with a discussion of addressing the task of creating humiliation-free institutions. KEY WORDS: Humiliation; minimize or avoid humiliation; humiliation-free institutions.
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments Oil away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. - Mark Twain, Wlzat Paul Bourget Thinks of Us.
In my explorations of the Humiliation Dynamic I've been especially interested in identifying promising adaptive patterns that people use for coping with the Humiliation Dynamic. Personal reflections about my own experiences with humiliation, individual in-depth interviews, and group discussions with interested, articulate, and sophisticated informants have been of considerable help in this search. Although I've found only a limited amount of pertinent material in the mental health literature, forays into other disciplines -such as sociology, linguistics, and spiritual studieshave yielded rich insights, as have my reading of autobiographies and works of fiction. By these means I've been able to identify certain approaches that promise to help us in managing others' attempts to humiliate us and to diminish, if not eliminate, our need to humiliate others. They include: psychological immunization, refusing the role of victim by redefining one's identity, participating in self-help and mutual support groups, using healing laughter, achieving a state of transcendent humility, C. Klein is affiliated with the Graduate School of the Union Institute, Cincinnati, OH. Address correspondence and reprint requests to: 4730 Sheppard Lane, Ellicott City, MD 21042.
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and responding with one's capacity for appreciation to the potential humiliations that come one's way. Mter discussing these approaches, I raise questions about what life might be like in a humiliation-free society and world. Finally, I close both this paper and the special issue of The Journal by encouraging readers to take steps to acknowledge, confront, and do something about manifestations of the humiliation dynamic in their own lives.
PSYCHOLOGICAL IMMUNIZATION
Anticipatory instillation of pride in self and one's collective identity is frequently used by African-Americans and members of other recognizable racial and ethnic groups. Knowing that their children will be subject to inescapable contempt and discrimination at the hands of prejudiced people and racist institutions, parents exhort their children to be faithful to the best in themselves, to have pride in the historic accomplishments of their group, and to keep from being demeaned and reduced in their own eyes by allowing themselves to feel neither humiliated nor ashamed. Another widely used immunizing approach found in many cultures, including our own, is for adults and older siblings to tease children and laugh lovingly at their foibles. As Jean Griffin notes in her article in this issue, "playing the dozens," a game of verbal dueling engaged in by African-American youth, mainly adolescent males, is another example of attempted immunization against humiliation (Farb, 1975). The game involves the exchange of mortal insults, each one more telling and clever than the one which preceded it. You lose the game either if you can't come up with an insult or let another player's insults get under your skin. Farb describes playing the dozens as verbal training which prepares one for living in a racist society: "Virtually powerless in a white world, blacks discovered that one of the few ways they could fight back was verbally. Verbal baltic 11gainst whites became more important than physical battle, where blacks have been outnumbered and outgunned. The game of the dozens has provided black youths with early opportunities to become proficient in verbal strategies and at the same time to elevate their standing in the group." (Farb, 1974, p. 125).
Farb reports that similar kinds or" verbal dueling are found around the world and appear in each instance to represent attempts to immunize players against some form of humiliation. Often, it seems, the function of the verbal duel is to enable players to learn how to avoid the humiliation of being mocked as a powerless,
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inadequate male. In Turkey, for example, the verbal duel "deals with homosexuality and virility, and the duel is to force an opponent into a feminine, submissive role" (p. 124). Redefining One's Identity Members of victimized groups in our society - among them women, African-Americans, and homosexuals - independently have described going through a very similar period of consciousness-raising in which a previously introjected self-image of inferiority is almost literally "vomited out" to be replaced in successive stages by a period of creating a separate, self-sustaining culture of one's own kind, and finally, being prepared to enter into an interdependent relationship of equal power with one's former oppressors. In the case of women, Leonard (1983) describes the redefinition as "a way of redemption" that involves a fight against the woman's "selfidentification with the victim and worthless one ..." (p. 51). She says: "This requires accepting that one is both innocent and guilty, and that within oneself exists both the power to destroy and to save. The task is to transform the cynical attitude, despair, and rejection into an attitude of hope and to consciously affirm oneself and life" (p. 51).
Leonard quotes from Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet to illustrate her vision of the redemption that is possible: "This humanity of woman, borne its full time in suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she will have stripped off the conventions of mere feminity in the mutations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching today will be surprised and struck by it . . . some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being" (Rilke, 1963).
For most individuals there is a difficult and painful transition to be made from being a disempowered, humiliated victim to one who is a fully empowered, equal participant in one's associations with people unlike oneself. In a study of how this transition occurred for the small minority of gay males who reveal their homosexuality to straight colleagues in large business firms, Miller (1987) states that "the individual wins a new freedom only after the agonizing process of transformation" that "involves the painful knowledge of how one has disempowered oneselr' (p. 44). Claiming one's identity as gay occurs only after a period during which the individual feels totally powerless.
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"By the time the Gay male has entered the workforce, he has a long history of being rejected or punished for being Gay. His anxiety results from being unable to cope with the consequences of not going along, e.g., perhaps fired or "exposed" as being a "faggot." It is therefore understandable that he may masochistically stay closeted. That pain, sadly, is most often more acceptable than the pain of rejection and abandonment" (p. 35).
The gay managers Miller interviewed reported that the transition stage began with a period of "bargaining" during which they found themselves in the humiliating position of asking for acceptance as who and what they were in return for their performance on the job. Having discovered that bargaining left them in a position of low power, some of them became more openly hostile: " .•.ideas arc attacked before they arc completely expressed; comments and suggestions arc made with a great deal of vehemence; behavior is exhibited by hostile, facial nonvcrbals illustrative of inner feelings of hatred; and attacks arc aimed at the personal level in very subtle ways" (p. 40).
Miller found that, unfortunately, some of the men remained stuck in a maladaptive stage of "Depression and Victimization" characterized by powerlessness, hurt, and the recognition that the acceptance and recognition they desired had eluded them. Instead, "their deepest fears of abandonment, rejection and punishment have been realized" (p. 42). Those who were able to move beyond depression and victimization found that they could face their real and imagined vulnerability. To do so, he writes: " . • . requires getting clear about one's drives for self-accomplishment, personal growth, recognition and self-worth; admitting these drives to one's self, giving them specific form in terms of goals and strategies, and going public, i.e., leuing the boss and some others know that one is Gay and enlisting their support. The dealing behavior requires a calm, centered, assertive self-determination". "In this stage, Gay persons start to develop skills in order to solve or, at least, deflect the problems they encounter. They learn to be perceptive concerning in whom it is safe to confide and in whom it is not. They pick up on cues regarding the extent of others' knowledge of their situation and their reactions to it. TI1cy build alliances with members of the majority who arc sympathetic to their position" (p. 46).
Only a very few of Miller's sample reached the final stage that he labels "Actualization and Manifestation," in which the individual experiences himself as functioning in synergy with others in his environment, recognizes that his disadvantaged position has fostered a deeper selfunderstanding, is better able to understand the unwritten rules and norms of the corporate workplace, and is sensitized to others' viewpoints. "A state of resonance, i.e., vibrating in harmony with one's homosexuality and the environment is achieved" (p. 51). The feelings described during the final stage of transition, Miller reports:
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" ...were of being empowered -in control of one's life rather than dependent, passive, weak, "bossed" - free of blocks, inhibitions, fears; self-determining; and with a keen sense of direct connection with one's environment" (p. 51).
I have presented Miller's findings in some detail because I believe that the transitional phenomena he describes are by no means restricted to gay men in large corporations. Rather, they may well be typical of the transition involved when any heretofore oppressed and humiliated group undertakes the difficult work involved in redefining its identity. SELF-HELP GROUPS
It's not necessary in this article to review the body of literature having to do with the enormous healing and problem-solving power of self-help support groups. I'd only like to suggest that the need to manage the humiliation dynamic is perhaps the single most important energy source in such groups. In report after report, participants describe the relief they experienced when they discovered that they weren't alone in their humiliation. What was before a private hell of shame and a potential public hell of humiliation now becomes a shared journey to be made with understanding support and guidance by fellow travellers who know from their own humiliation what the experience is like. HEALING LAUGHTER
Humor is without doubt the most widespread and powerful antidote to the toxin of humiliation known to humankind. If administered with love and understanding, a single dose, at one and the same time, dissolves selfimportance, makes light of suffering, connects the victim with the vulnerability of being human, and pokes fun at those who set themselves up as superior. Growing up as a Jew, I was surrounded and supported by such humor, often in ways that I could not appreciate at the time. As an example, here is a favorite story of mine. For me it combines the roles of humiliator, victim, and witness in a way that bathes the humiliation dynamic in the healing power of ironic understanding. During the Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement services, a Rabbi is overcome by ecstacy. He beats his breast before the congregation and cries out, "Oh Lord, I have sinned, I am nothing, I am less than nothing!" and throws himself prostrate on the altar. The Rabbi's holy frenzy is contagious. The Cantor, whose job it is to chant the prayers, is deeply moved. He, too,
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beats his breast, and in his beautifully resonant voice sings out, "Oh Lord, I have sinned, I am nothing, I am less than nothing!" He, too, throws himself prostrate on the altar next to the Rabbi. The Beadle, a small, elderly, insignificant man, who for years has cleaned the synagogue, distributed prayer books, and done various other menial jobs for the congregation, is himself caught up in this moment of exaltation. In a thin, reedy, quavering voice, he, too, cries out in ecstacy, "Oh Lord, I have sinned, I am nothing, I am less than nothing!" and he throws himself prostrate on the alter next to the Rabbi and the Cantor. Whereupon the Cantor turns to the Rabbi, gestures towards the Beadle, and says, "Look who's setting himself up to be a nothing!" Within the Zen tradition, too, there's the image of "buoyant laughter" (Hyers, 1987, p. 50) that co-exists with the more serious meditative one with which we in this country are more familiar. That image is typified by a carefree vagabond known as Pu-tai, a clown-like figure who dances merrily through life playing with village children. A holy fool, Pu-Tai is the embodiment of the cosmic chuckle. In the cosmic tradition of Zen, according to Hyers: " •..one discovers that ego, desire and auachmcnt have a way of getting themselves broken and devoured in the realization of some great Cosmic Joke, and in the greatness of a Cosmic Laughter ..•" (p. 57).
Laughter has played an important part in various European traditions as well. Merry pranksters, circus clowns, music hall comics, mines, Punch and Judy shows, and among European Jews the role of schlemiel, who never could do anything right, all were part of that tradition of the hapless comic that was imported to the United States where it flourishes today. In the Middle Ages court jesters were insignificant, ridiculous, comic figures who poked fun at the pretensions of king and court and said in jest what needed to be said without running the risk of being put to death for having offended their victims. How could a king or nobleman feel humiliated by the criticisms of a lowly fool, especially when those comments were offered with wit and grace, often in verse and song? Laughter that heals (Luke, 1987) is different from that which expresses rejection or contempt. The Cantor's response is healing if it connects us with our tendencies towards religiosity, how prone we are to take pride in seeming modest and self-effacing, and, above all, how easy it is to set ourselves up as superior to lesser human beings. Helen Luke, a Jungian analyst and delightful observer of the human scene, writes: "We all laugh at the foibles of those around us, but those with a sense of humor do not laugh at a person; there is simply a feeling of delight in the ridiculous wherever it is manifest and such laughter docs not condemn the other or oneself
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THE ANTIDOTE OF HUMILI1Y Often associated with the healing use of laughter is the saving grace of humility. The truly humble person cannot be humiliated. This simple truth was brought home to me by a colleague2 who commented that he could think of a situation where the 90-pound weakling on the beach had sand kicked in his face by the 200-pound bully and yet was not humiliated. "Of course," I replied, "the 90-pound weakling was a black belt Karate expert who subdued the bully with a few well-placed chops and kicks." "Could be," my friend said, "But that's not what I had in mind. What if the 90-pound weakling were a Buddist monk?!" Notice that the words "humility" and "humiliation" come from the same earthy roots as "burnous." To be humble means to exist close to the earth. When one is humble, one cannot be humiliated because one has no distance to fall. One is already there, grounded in the soil of life. Humble persons are dirtied with the inevitable stains of earthy existence. They carry whatever burdens of responsibility come their way without need for selfjustification, on the one hand, or fear of failure, on the other. Luke (1987) calls it suffering in the full sense of the word and likens it to the undercarriage which bears the weight of a vehicle. To be truly humble, Luke writes, it's important to uncover our fear of humiliation: "From this fear of degradation in our own eyes or in the eyes of others, real or imagined, comes a dead weight of moods and depression. For the truly humble person no humiliation exists. It is impossible to humiliate him or for him to feel humiliation, for "grades" and prestige, questions of his own merit or demerit, have no more meaning for him. But the way to humility lies through the pain of accepted humiliation. In the movement of picking it up and carrying it without any movement towards self-justification, we cease to be humiliated and begin to suffer" (p. 104 ).
Luke's words come from the Catholic tradition in which her life is immersed. Within that tradition, humiliation has been conceived by certain teachers as a gift to be treasured. ~t. Vincent de Paul, for example, taught that humility is "to Jove contempt, to desire disparagement, to rejoice in it, when it comes for the Jove of Jesus Christ" (Berry, 1988, p. 167). According to St. Vincent, humility involves three conditions: 11rhanks to Dr. Robert Marshak for his insight.
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1) " . we sincerely consider ourselves deserving of people's blame." 2) " ... we rejoice that others see our imperfections." 3) " ... we conceal, if possible, under the cloak of lowliness, whatever God may be pleased to work through us or in us" (Berry, 1988, pp. 168-169). Humility means dying to self in the sense that one is no longer driven by pride and self-importance. The idea has its counterparts in Eastern meditative and spiritual traditions, such as Yoga and Zen. To live in a meditative state is to know that the self is only a way of experiencing and defining one's life. It has no reality apart from being a creation of one's mind. Those who have come to this critical understanding experience another reality, one that is, at one and the same time, simple and filled with infinite, joyful possibility.
THE POWER OF APPRECIATION I know from my own experience that it's possible to enter that other reality simply by acknowledging oneself as the individual creator of one's own experience, including one's sense of self and the feeling of self-importance that's at stake in so much of what one does and says. I've discovered that anyone can do so simply by bringing what I call the ''power of appreciation" to bear on whatever happens (Klein, 1988). It is through positive feelings of appreciation that one discovers the difference between reality and illusion, between pride and humility, and between pain and true suffering. Early in my study of the humiliation dynamic I came upon the book City of Joy (Lapierre, 1985), which describes a Calcutta slum inhabited by poor, suffering people, who, living in the midst of indescribable filth, sewage, insects and rats, were condemned to inescapable illness, hunger, suffering, and premature death. These were people who knew what it was to be beggars, to send their children off to beg, and to prostitute themselves and their daughters in order to stay alive. Every day they suffered humiliations the likes of which few Westerners can even imagine and only those who have been to India have ever experienced, if only vicariously. And yet, according to the Polish priest who cast his lot with them, these people knew what it was to celebrate life, to support one another, and to share their joys as well as their sorrows. They had truly transcended their circumstances. I imagine that through their suffering they had achieved a state
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where the psychic furies of humiliation, shame, and guilt were no longer relevant. But what of those of us who live in far more favored circumstances? Can we, too, learn to embrace with appreciation whatever comes our way, including the taunts and scornful laughter of those who would grind our faces in the dirt of humiliation? I've known a few remarkable people in my life who were able to do so. I think of them as "inverse paranoids." That is, they project onto events positive expectations of hope and promise rather than negative ones of suspicion and mistrust. Moreover, through both example and teaching they've been able repeatedly to create similar expectations in the minds of others. One of these people was Erich Lindemann, who as a pioneer in the community mental health movement founded the experimental mental health center in Wellesley, Massachusetts and articulated crisis theory and other seminal concepts in the field of preventive psychiatry (Lindemann, 1979). Lindemann's ability to transform potential humiliation into something positive is exemplified for me by the miraculous attitude change about using clinical services he created among many community leaders in Wellesley. I agree with Lewis (1976) that most, if not all, patients in psychotherapy feel humiliated by having to get help from a trained therapist, rather than being able to handle problems on their own (Lewis, 1976.) Thanks to Lindemann, however, this was not so in Wellesley. In 1953, only five years after the mental health explorations were begun, I became Executive Director of the program in Wellesley and soon discovered that Lindemann and his colleagues had created a remarkable climate in which leading citizens of the community comfortably described in public how and why they'd made use of the crisis therapy offered by the mental health program. Far from feeling humiliated, they were proud to be clients because they agreed with Lindemann that by doing so they were contributing to the community's mental health. In other words, Lindemann had managed in only five short years to remove the taint of humiliation from those who proudly described at public meetings how and why they sought therapy for individual and family crises.
WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD Adam and Eve entered the world naked and unashamed- naked and pure-minded; and no descendant of theirs has ever entered it otherwise. All have entered it naked, unashamed, and clean in mind. They have entered it modest.
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They had to acquire immodesty and the soiled mind; there was no other way to get it. - Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth
The Wellesley project expressed Lindemann's vision that over time the alliance of mental health experts, social scientists, and community leaders would create environments that were conducive to mental health. Informed citizens and appropriate caretaking institutions would promote healthy growth and development, while reducing the incidence of psychological casualties. In some respects, the results have been promising. They include widespread use of support systems and self-help groups, dissemination of crisis intervention as a means of secondary prevention, and continuing use of mental health consultation in support of schools, hospitals, and other caretaking institutions. Examining contemporary society through the lens of the humiliation dynamic, however, it's clear that fundamental challenges remain. These challenges are explored in the articles which constitute this special issue. Despite gains that have been made, these articles indicate that a great many groups are vulnerable to being treated as victims by those who control society's resources and set its norms. Among them are women and African-Americans; children and old people; gays and lesbians; those without jobs, homeless people, and welfare recipients; prisoners, nursing home residents, and other institutional inmates; lower class people and those in marginal occupations; police officers, overweight individuals; Jews, Spanish-speaking people, Asians, other "foreigners" in our midst, and people who speak funny; those with physical disablements, mentally retarded individuals, and low achievers in school. The list goes on and on. One is reminded of the classic story of the Quaker who said, "The whole world, Miranda, is crazy but thee and me. And sometimes I wonder about thee!" The place to start, of course, is with "me," "thee," and our attitudes towards one another and "them," i.e., those who are different from either of us. My observations of casual conversations of friends, colleagues, and others at cocktail parties and other settings suggest that we're all prone to heap ridicule upon or be contemptuous of certain individuals and groups who are unlike ourselves, if not to their faces then to one another. What a satisfying exercise! especially when those we skewer are graceless presidents and malevolent middle Eastern religious and political leaders. And yet it's a costly pasttime because of its divisive nature; by keeping us as active participants in the humiliation dynamic it perpetuates stereotypes, encloses us in stultifying self-justification, and helps to maintain the very status quo we deplore. In the process we forget that those we ridicule are, as Harry Stack Sullivan used to remind his psychiatric residents when
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they were first introduced to psychotic patients, "far more human than otherwise." Why do we take such pleasure in participating in this version of the humiliation dynamic? At this point in the inquiry, I can speak only for myself. I believe my readiness to ridicule others represents an attempt to secure my own position with those of like mind, thereby lowering the risk that I might be humiliated by them. In other words, it may be yet another manifestation of my own fear of humiliation How to create a society in which the humiliation dynamic is less rampant and its ill-effects minimized? The first step, I believe, is for each of us to acknowledge that he or she is. already humiliated. Somehow, somewhere, under some conditions each of us was, is, and will be the one who is contemptible, disgusting, and reprehensible in someone's else's eyes. As Goffman pointed out in his classic work on social stigma (Goffman, 1963), no one is immune from being stigmatized for failing to conform to someone else's idea of acceptability. Another step, I believe, is to engage in individual consciousness-raising- that is, to name the dynamic and speak with others about our experiences of it. Perhaps someday when it is no longer be necessary for us to hide our humiliations from family, friends, and neighbors we will no longer need to seek understanding, compassion, and acceptance from special selfhelp and support groups of fellow sufferers. Another important step is to come to grips with how the Humiliation Dynamic operates within the major social institutions with which we're personally involved. One way to begin to influence those institutions would be to make changes in our own behavior that would reduce the fear of humiliation on the part of our associates, bosses, subordinates, and clients. Finally, there's the challenge, which for some of us in the field of prevention could be a satisfying life's work, of doing all we can to bring about fundamental transformations within major caretaking institutions, most of which are riddled with humiliating attitudes, procedures, and policies. I have in mind, among others, those age-graded educational systems in which children and teachers have little choice of whether or not they work with one another and where the vast majority of students- those who aren't smart enough or adequately prepared -must live with the humiliating possibility of being treated as also-rans or failures. These systems are put together in such a way as to ensure the humiliation of repeated failure on the part of so-called disadvantaged children. Hardly surprising under the circumstances is the tragic fact, which few communities are prepared to address, that in virtually all major metropolitan
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areas as many as forty-percent of all inner-city children fail to get a high school diploma. What kind of transformation will be needed, one wonders, to eliminate from our school systems such consequences of the Humiliation Dynamic? I have in mind as well the so-called criminal justice system, which is designed to process large numbers of wrongdoers with just the right amount of dehumanizing humiliation. It's a system in which even those responsible for enforcing the law- police officers - themselves feel like members of a humiliated minority group, despised by criminals and the general public alike. They live within a para-military system and a culture that is quick to humiliate them if they act like "sissies" or in other ways fail to live up to the macho attitudes and standards of their trade. Sometimes all too ready to pass on their humiliation to suspected wrongdoers, they suffer from higher than normal rates of divorce, substance abuse, and suicide. Meanwhile, with few exceptions, jails grow more and more crowded and continue to treat inmates in dehumanizing and humiliating ways. What would a criminal justice system be like, one wonders, if it were redesigned in such a way as to substantially reduce the humiliations inflicted on those who staff the system as well as those caught in its clutches? I have in mind also the world of work where, according to my discussions with groups of managers with whom I've worked as a training consultant for many years, both subtle and sometimes astoundingly blatant manifestations of the humiliation dynamic are rampant. Humiliation and the fear of humiliation suffuse most work settings with which I've been involved. Although usually unacknowledged and suffered in silence, they create chronic and sometimes disabling stress for individuals, impair working relationships between individuals, lead to difficulties in achieving needed cooperation between work units, and reduce productivity in terms of both quantity and quality. Organizational consultants, like myself, are paid high fees to help client systems overcome personal and systemic debilitating consequences of the Humiliation Dynamic. We're called in to build effective work teams; help managers deal more effectively with the growing diversity of the work force; and improve horizontal and vertical communications. As we do so, we're confronted by win-lose organizational norms that lead people to blame one another and to use organizationally dysfunctional defensive maneuvers in their determination to avoid becoming humiliated losers in the continuous jockeying for acceptance, security, and power. We find organizations struggling to improve ineffective performance appraisal systems in which superiors evaluate subordinates, systems that cannot work well, however cleverly they are contrived by experts on evaluation and measurement, simply because, by virtue of their top-down nature,
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they have the Humiliation Dynamic built in. What would it be like, one wonders, to work in a setting in which bosses and subordinates assess one another's performance with the aim of improving how they work together to get the job done? What other transformations would be needed to reduce or even eliminate the fear of humiliation that pervades so many work settings? Finally, I have in mind the world scene in which the consequences of the humiliation dynamic are enormous and, in the age of nuclear and chemical weapons, so alarming. Considering what's happened in my life time. Adolf Hitler tapped into the sense of collective humiliation experienced by the Germans following World War I and went on to precipitate a holocaust that consumed tens of millions of victims. Later France and the United States in VietNam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan were humiliated by being unable to contain the forces of national liberation. Meanwhile, Irish Catholic nationalists, fueled by righteous indignation over past and present humiliations at the hands of British Protestants, continue to claim victims and to be victimized in turn. Terrorist violence has become a way of life in the Middle East as Lebanese factions, Palestinians, and others who feel they have been the humiliated victims of oppression struggle both against one another and with those who they feel are their oppressors. As this is being written, Saddam Hussein, Iraq's President and an impassioned spokesperson for millions of povertystricken Arabs who feel they are the humiliated victims of European and American colonialists, has taken on a coalition of the wealthiest and militarily most powerful nations of the world in a standoff that may end in disaster for all concerned. What would happen, one wonders, if the potentially disastrous effects of collective humiliation were generally recognized in international circles? If it were no longer acceptable for world leaders to hurl such terms as "the evil empire" at one another, to call one another insane or modern Hitlers, or to engage in other insulting diatribes? Is it possible that someday there will be a fifth freedom added to the four that were promulgated by the victors after World War II- that is, freedom from public ridicule and collective humiliation? What would the relations between nations be like if the humiliation dynamic were outlawed as a clear and present danger to world peace and human survival? A world -or even a single individual's lifetime -without the deleterious effects of the Humiliation Dynamic? Although it may seem impossible, it's a vision well worth pursuing. My study and the special issue of this Journal are intended to help us move in the direction of such a world. In that spirit, I invite you, the reader, to examine how this dynamic operates in your own personal and professional worlds, to do everything in your
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power to break the conspiracy of silence about the humiliations you and others experience, to contribute to doing something about the humiliating conditions in your community and the organizations in which you function, and to engage in efforts to crate humiliation-free environments for yourself and others. Like the man said, "We can use all the help we can get!"
REFERENCES Berry, D. (1989) A Comparative Study of the Spiritual Theologies of St. Vmcent de Paul and Father Thomas Augustine Judge, C. M. Doctoral Project Demonstrating Excellence, The Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio. Farb, P. (1975) Word Ploy: What Happens When People Talk. New York: Bantam Books. Go££man, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Hyers, C. (1987) The smile of truth, Parabola, 12, No. 4. Klein, D. (1988) The power o£ appreciation, American Journal of Community Psychology, 16, No. 3, pp. 305-324. Lapierre, D. (1985) The City of Joy. New York: Warner Books. Inc. Leonard, L. (1982) The Wonded Woman: Healing the Father-Daughter Relationship. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Lewis, H. (1976) Psychic War in Men and Women. New York: New York University Press. Lindemann, E. (1979) Beyond Grief: Studies in Crisis /lllervention. New York: Jason Aronson. Luke, H. (1987) The laughter at the heart of things, Parabola, 12, No. 4. Miller, G. (1987) From Disempowerment to Empowennelll: The Gay Male's Odyssey in the Corporate World. Doctoral Project Demonstrating Excellence, The Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities (now known as The Union Institute), Cincinnati, Ohio.
