Shame and Guilt by Ernest Kurtz
Shame & Guilt explores the differences between these two painful but inevitable experiences. Both guilt and shame involve feeling bad-feeling bad about one's actions (or omissions) in the case of guilt; feeling bad about one's self in shame. The deep meaning of the word bad is unable to fit unable to fit into some external context in the case of guilt, unable to fit into one's own being in the case of shame.Human experience offers two different ways of discovering that one does not fit, of feeling bad. Each has to do with the boundaries of the human condition. But there are two kinds of boundaries, and it is important to recognize their difference, the difference between rules and goals. For though the human condition is bounded, recognizing that reality can be either a choking, tightening experience or it can lead to the discovery of a new freedom.
True, shame's negative side points up failure and falling short, but shame also entails something positive: insight into the reality of the human condition. The experience of shame lays bare the essential paradox that inheres in being human: to be human is to be caught in a contradictory tension between the pull to the unlimited, the more-than-human, and the drag of the merely limited, the less-than-human.
Shame's healing is to be found in the discovery of how that paradox can be lived creatively in ways that find other human beings to be not the problem in shame, but its solution.
Ernie Kurtz is a Ph.D. recipient. Harvard University awarded him a Ph.D. in American Culture History in 1978. His PhD dissertation, Not-God: A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, was published as a book. He's also written The Spirituality of Imperfection and the booklet Shame and Guilt: Features of the Dependence Cycle since then. He has also lectured nationally and internationally on matters linked to the academic study of spirituality and has published a number of papers, both scholarly and popular, on topics relating to his interests.
Several of his articles were collected in the book The Collected Ernie Kurtz, released in 1999. At the University of Georgia and Loyola University of Chicago, Dr. Kurtz taught American history and the history of religion in America. He was a lecturer at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Management from 1987 to 1997 and on the faculty of the Rutgers University Summer School of Alcohol Studies from 1978 to 1997. Ernie retired to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and began taking classes at the University of Michigan's School of Information after a brief term as Director of Research and Education at Guest House, then an alcoholism treatment clinic for Catholic clergy.
He continued to give talks until late 1997, when a botched medical procedure forced him to have spinal surgery, which only partially returned his ability to stand and walk. Ernie spent his remaining time to the nuances and possibilities of electronic study in this sector, remarking since it is amusing that I now walk like a drunk. Ernie died in January of 2015.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780595454921 |
| ISBN 10 | 0595454925 |
| Title | Shame and Guilt |
| Author | Ernest Kurtz |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | iUniverse.com |
| Year published | 2007-07-24 |
| Number of pages | 80 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |