Humiliation - Its Nature and Consequences

R E G U L A R A R T I C L E

Humiliation: Its Nature andConsequences

Walter J. Torres, PhD, and Raymond M. Bergner, PhD

In this article, we present a new analysis of what is involved when individuals undergo significant public humiliation.We describe the structure of humiliationthat is, the factors that, taken collectively, render certain life events andcircumstances humiliating; the most common destructive consequences of being subjected to them; and severalpersonality factors that, when present, can serve to amplify the damaging effects of humiliating experiences. Theanalysis is intended to enable forensic clinicians, lawyers, judges, and other relevant parties to understand betterwhat happens when individuals are humiliated and to identify more precisely the damage that such persons sustain.It is also intended to have heuristic value for the discussion, confrontation, and alleviation of humiliation incorrectional, jurisprudential, clinical, and general societal contexts.

J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 38:195204, 2010

I learned that to humiliate another person is to make himsuffer an unnecessarily cruel fate.Nelson Mandela1

Humiliation is an important element in many situa-tions that come to the attention of forensic clinicians.Its presence and effects are referred to, explicitly orimplicitly, in a range of civil actions, includingwrongful termination, malpractice, libel, civil rights,and workers compensation cases.2 In criminal cases,including some highly publicized ones involvingmass murder followed by suicide, humiliation is of-ten imputed to be a primary motive for the act ofvengeance. Further, it can be a significant element insituations, such as military, law enforcement, correc-tional, and medical ones, in which institutions andindividuals are invested with the authority to coerceothers. Finally, humiliation and its consequenceshave arisen as topics in a debate regarding the legiti-macy and value of employing its deliberate public useas a punishment for offenders (Perlin M, personalcommunication, September 2007).3

Despite its prevalence in forensic contexts, humil-iation has been subjected to relatively little concep-

tual or empirical scrutiny. Psychoanalytic discus-sions, while helpful, have been focused primarily onthe role of humiliation in character development andon character structures that render persons more vul-nerable to it, but not on understanding the phenom-enon itself.4 The formulation of humiliation pre-sented herein is designed to augment ourunderstanding of the factors at work and at stakewhen it occurs, to enhance our comprehension of itspotentially devastating effects on persons, and to as-sist those whose jobs include assessing damage, de-signing or evaluating programs, formulating appro-priate punishments, and more. The observationspresented derived from clinical practice, both foren-sic and therapeutic, whereas the general concept ofhumiliation was formulated within the framework ofdescriptive psychology.5,6 However, the case exam-ples represent classic scenerios of humiliation and notactual clinical cases.

Our discussion has a three-part structure. In part1, we present an analysis of humiliation and of theingredients that render certain life events humiliatingto individuals. In part 2, we detail the specific effectson individuals of being subjected to humiliating cir-cumstances and thus of the ways in which humilia-tion can be so devastating and damaging to them. Inpart 3, we discuss psychopathological conditions that

Dr. Torres is in Private Practice of Clinical Psychology, Denver, CO.Dr. Bergner is Professor, Clinical Counseling Program, Department ofPsychology, Illinois State University, Normal, IL. Address correspon-dence to: Walter J. Torres, PhD, 3300 E. First Avenue, Suite 590,Denver, CO 80206. E-mail: [email protected].

Disclosures of financial or other conflicts of interest: None.

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may render individuals more subject to humiliationand its adverse consequences.

What Is Humiliation?

Let us begin our analysis of the nature of humili-ation by considering three cases (based on real casesand altered for dramatic and conceptual value and toprevent identification) in which individuals experi-enced severely humiliating life events.

Case 1

Joe, a blue collar worker, was seriously injured atwork. As a result, he lost the ability to function in hisusual job, a physically demanding and strenuous one.His employer had workers compensation insurance,but still had to pay some out-of-pocket expenses tocover Joes treatment and compensation. Subsequentto treatment, Joe was sent back to work with medi-cally mandated requirements for accommodations,as well as restrictions on what kinds of tasks he couldperform. Further, to look out for his rights in thissituation and to maximize his compensation award,Joe had hired an attorney. His employer was livid.He resented having to take Joe back into the work-force at all and decided to accommodate his limita-tions by instructing Joes supervisor to place him in ahighly trafficked public area, through which all theother laborers had to pass to get to their work sites,and to assign Joe to work at a table carrying out amenial task. Everyone, including Joe, knew that thetask he was performing was completely meaninglessand was intended to humiliate him in the eyes of hiscoworkers. As a consequence of this treatment, Joedeveloped intense but powerless rage, sleeplessness,and feelings of worthlessness and profound helpless-ness to change or escape his humiliating circum-stances. He felt painfully degraded as a worker and asa man.

Case 2

Jane, a single woman in her thirties, was a middlemanager in a large corporation. Henry, a senior ex-ecutive, seemed to recognize her talent and took herunder his wing as a mentor. He invited her to com-pany events where leaders and rising stars of the cor-poration were core participants and secured roles forher that positioned her for advancement and leader-ship. She was delighted by this turn of events andgrateful to her mentor. As events progressed, theydeveloped a personal relationship that became amo-

rous and sexual. She knew that he was married, buther feelings for him prevailed over her judgment.However, several weeks into their personal relation-ship, he suddenly told her that their relationshipcould not continue because he felt obligated to re-main with his wife. Shortly thereafter, he stoppedtaking her to special events and became quite distantand cold toward her. She began to harbor doubtsboth about the honesty of his affection for her and hisinitial mentoring and about the validity of her owntalents and potential for advancement. She spoke ofthis to no one. She felt betrayed and hurt, troubled byconfusion and self-doubt, and ashamed of her will-ingness to participate in the affair. A short time later,while using the toilet at the workplace, she saw scrib-bled on the stall wall, Henry nails another one.This triggered a flood of humiliation and shame atwhat she believed must be a widespread condemna-tion of her involvement in an affair with a marriedexecutive and of her having been navely duped bythis man into believing both that he cared for her andthat she had special abilities that would lead toadvancement.

Going to work became an awful ordeal for Jane.She became preoccupied with the gnawing sense thatothers were deriding, ridiculing, and judging her,loathed herself for having been so stupid, and cameto suspect that in truth she was really a loser. Shedeveloped anxiety symptoms that included gastroin-testinal malaise and frequent vomiting. Jane knewshe could lodge a claim of sexual harassment, butfeared that she might lose such a claim because shehad willingly participated in the affair. She alsofeared that it would expose her as someone who wasnave, stupid, and self-deluded for thinking thatHenry cared for her and for acting as if she had beena rising star.

Case 3

Tom, a school teacher, had for many years been amuch-admired, kindly figure in his community. Inaddition to being well liked and respected, he en-joyed a secure job position, a nice home, an appar-ently secure marriage, and more than adequate finan-cial resources. However, late in his career, it wasrevealed that for many years he had been molestingchildren in his care. Subsequent to his initial denialsand much public support, more and more of hisformer students came forward and testified that theyhad been molested by him over more than a decade.

Consequences of Humiliation

196 The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law

The evidence became both overwhelming and widelyknown, rendering it obvious to virtually everyone inthe community that he was guilty. In the wake ofpublic certitude about his guilt, he was suspendedfrom his job pending the decision in his court case.His wife left him. He became a social pariah whocould no longer present himself in public and facedan almost certain lengthy jail term.

Ingredient 1: The Status Claim

In all of our examples, we see that the individualsin question claimed, or attempted to claim, a certainstatus. By this we mean that they presented them-selves to others as the legitimate occupants of, orbidders for, certain social positions vis-a-vis theseother persons. They claimed, explicitly or implicitly,in word or in deed, I am. . .a legitimate worker not-withstanding my injury. . .a loved and talented part-ner of a senior executive. . .an upright, kindly schoolteacher who cares about the young children in hischarge.

Ingredient 2: The Public Failure of theStatus Claim

In all cases, the status claim failed. The individualsinvolved either failed to secure the status they aspiredto or lost the status that they had formerly enjoyed orbelieved they enjoyed. Further, the failure was a pub-lic one, meaning that it was witnessed by at least oneother person and possibly, as in one of our examples,by many people. The disabled worker was placed in apublic situation that subjected him to ridicule andderision, effectively proclaiming, How ridiculousthat this man calls himself a worker. The middlemanager was sexually exploited, duped into believingthat she merited star status, and humiliated by herdiscovery that an unknown set of fellow employeesknew that she had been fooled before she did. Theteacher was publicly exposed as a hypocritical mo-lester of young children and as anything but a truesubscriber to his professed values.

When a status claim fails in a completely privateway, such that no one but the claimant realizes thefailure, the result may be painful self-realization,but not humiliation. An excellent fictional ac-count of such a state of affairs may be found inCamus The Fall,7 in which the protagonist isforced by a critical life event to recognize that he isfar from being the morally upright altruist he hadalways taken himself to be. In the wake of thisrealization, he suffers deep disillusionment. How-

ever, since the critical event was unknown to any-one else, he is not humiliated.

The reasons behind failed status claims can bequite various. The individual, for example, may havebeen making false claims, may not have had the socialskills to make good the claims, or may have encoun-tered gratuitous derision toward the claims. Further,other persons who become apprised of the relevantfacts may in some cases conclude that the humilia-tion is both justified and deserved and in other casesthat it is neither. Such differences in situations, whilethey may be important in other respects, make nodifference with respect to what causes a given socialscenario to be humiliating.

Ingredient 3: The Status of the Degraderto Degrade

Not everyone has the status to degrade anotherperson, to reject or invalidate a status claim andthereby de-grade the individual in society. For ex-ample, in the public forum of a jury trial, an expertwitness may characterize a plaintiffs claim as fraud-ulent, thus potentially humiliating the latter. How-ever, it is then established by the plaintiffs attorneythat, not only is this witness a notorious hired gunwith a long history of testifying in accordance withthe paying partys wishes, but also his credentials asan expert are fake. Once he is convincingly ex-posed as such in court, he loses his status as some-one who can effectively denounce and thus humil-iate the plaintiff. By way of further example, arespected professor of biology once articulated thetheory of natural selection in a lecture, reviewedkey research in its support, and indicated that sheaccepted the theory as scientifically well estab-lished. A student in the front row, however, raisedhis hand and responded that it was ridiculous tobelieve that humans could have evolved in such afashion, that evolution was just a theory, and thatanyone who believed such a thing (by implication,the professor included) must be both stupid andimpious. This student, however, found himselfsurrounded by fellow students who made it knownthat they did not share his implicit religious be-liefs, that they thought the professors presenta-tion was compelling, and that they regarded thestudent as completely lacking the status to de-nounce the professor. Thus, the students attemptat humiliation failed. In these cases, neither theexpert witness nor the critical student had the

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standing in their respective situations to be re-garded as legitimate and valid assigners or degrad-ers of status.

Returning to our case examples, had the businessowner confronted Joes supervisor and disciplinedhim for his vindictive and humiliating treatmentof Joe, or had Jane developed insight early onabout Henrys intentions and modus operandi, thestatus (and thus ability) of these persons to degradewould have been undermined. Unfortunately,these resolutions did not happen in either case,and the persons were left in positions that enabledthem to continue the degrading treatment of theirvictims.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, having thestatus to degrade another does not imply any specialor exalted social standing. In everyday life, we witnessa wide variety of ordinary citizens lodging degradingand humiliating claims against others. The patientaccuses the doctor of sexual misconduct. The em-ployee accuses the employer of harassment. The ad-olescent accuses the parent of sexual abuse. Suchclaims may be honest and legitimate or dishonest andillegitimate. The key point, however, lies in the factthat our ordinary presumption is that persons havethe necessary status to denounce and degrade others.In a manner akin to our regarding others whom wemeet as sane and rational unless our observationsshow otherwise, we regard others as veridical report-ersin this case, denouncersunless we see thatthere are better reasons not to so regard them. Afemale patient accuses the doctor of sexual miscon-duct. We already know, or subsequently find out,that the patient is regarded by those who know her asimpeccably honest, that she has never made such anallegation in the past, that she is a person of means,and so forth. In the absence of disqualifying evi-dence, we conclude that her allegation is probablytrue. In the case of another such accusation, we al-ready know or subsequently learn that the accuser iswidely viewed as dishonest, has a criminal recordinvolving the perpetration of scams, and has an ex-pensive drug habit. We tend to view her as disquali-fied and ineligible, as lacking the status to degradethe doctor as a sexual predator. The practical result isthat, because of our general presumption of the statusand eligibility to denounce and degrade, many peo-ple will have the misfortune to be successfully, al-though not legitimately, humiliated.

Ingredient 4: Rejection of the Status to Claima Status

Consider the following two refusals of a status bid.A job applicant receives a letter of rejection that readsas follows: Thank you for applying for a position atXYZ Corp. We received hundreds of applications,many from fully qualified applicants such as yourself.It was an extremely difficult decision. However, weregret to inform you. . . . Second example: Awoman, in turning down a date request from a youngman, says to him: I really like you, and if I had metyou a year ago I would have loved to go out with you,but Im very involved with someone else now; in fact,Im engaged to be married.

In both of these cases, a bid for a status, that ofemployee and that of potential boyfriend, is rejected.However, the message conveyed in the rejection isthat the bidder was a legitimate candidate and wasfully eligible and entitled to make the bid in question.Consider, in contrast, a situation in which the letterof rejection reads, Given your ridiculously inade-quate qualifications, we cant believe you even ap-plied for this job. What were you thinking? Or sup-pose the woman had said to her suitor, You think Iwould be remotely interested in going out with thelikes of you? Youve got to be kidding! These refusalsbecome declarations that, not only is the status claimor bid rejected, but the very status of the claimant tomake such a status bid or claim is rejected. In theserejections, the individual is branded a pretender,someone who had no business making the statusclaim to begin with. With this added element, thesemessages become humiliations.

In the context of our case examples, the publicmessage, delivered by only one person or many peo-ple, becomes: How ridiculous that you would eventhink of presenting yourself as. . .a real worker. . .atalented and attractive candidate for a top executiveslove and favor. . .an educator of young children whotruly cares about them and their best interests!

The critical nature of this element is hard to over-state. When humiliation annuls the status of individ-uals to claim status, they are in essence denied eligi-bility to recover the status that they have lost. Theyhave effectively lost the voice to make claims withinthe relevant community and especially to makecounterclaims on their own behalf to remove theirhumiliation. (This is evident, not only conceptuallybut phenomenologically. The person who is sud-denly humiliated in a group is typically left feeling



stunned and speechless, unable to counterclaim.)Furthermore, the loss of standing to claim statuswithin a community is the equivalent of being ren-dered a nobody within that community. Consistentwith this formulation, some describe the effect ofsevere humiliation as an annihilation of the self,8 andmany humiliated individuals find it necessary tomove to another community to recover their status,or more broadly, to reconstruct their lives.

This fourth and final element serves to clarify thedistinction between humiliation and embarrass-ment. In embarrassment, a person discovers suchthings as that his zipper is open, that there has beenspinach between his teeth during a just completedconversation, or that a gossipy comment has beenoverheard by its target. Such persons are caught outof face, in minor violations of social decorum or con-duct. However, in these and other embarrassing sit-uations, their status to make status bids or claims isnot rejected. In humiliation, it is.

Summary

In summary, then, an individual suffers humilia-tion when he makes a bid or claim to a certain socialstatus, has this bid or claim fail publicly, and has itfail at the hands of another person or persons whohave the status necessary to reject the claim. Finally,what is denied is not only the status claim itself, butalso and more fundamentally the individuals verystatus to have made such a claim at all.

Damaging Consequences of Humiliation

Suffering severe humiliation has been shown em-pirically to plunge individuals into major depres-sions, suicidal states, and severe anxiety states, in-cluding ones characteristic of posttraumatic stressdisorder.9 The following analysis focuses on the mostcommon direct consequences of experiencing humil-iation, and clarifies the linkages between being hu-miliated on the one hand and developing such men-tal disorders on the other. It should be emphasizedthat attention to individual differences is important:not all humiliated persons experience all these con-sequences, and different persons experience them todifferent degrees. Thus, although humiliation ispowerfully pathogenic, both the nature and degree ofpersonal harm that any humiliated individual suffersvaries with the specifics of the humiliating circum-stance and personality and must be assessed on anindividual basis.

Loss of Status and the Resultant Inabilityto Behave

An individuals statuses are crucial determinantsof the range of behavior of which the person is capa-ble.6,10 An individuals statuses are the positions thatare occupied in relation to everything in his world.These statuses or positions would include, for exam-ple, social, occupational, and situational roles (e.g.,husband to ones wife, employee of ones company,or speaker at a conference); disadvantageous posi-tions vis-a-vis significant others (e.g., scapegoat inones family of origin or victim of harassment inones workplace); and stigmatized positions in soci-ety (e.g., criminal, sexual deviant, or mentally ill per-son). (These examples are provided in the hope thatthey will serve to avoid the frequent misinterpreta-tion of status as prestigious social standing, as in theexpression status-seeker.)

The crucial point of focusing on a persons status isthat the occupation of certain relational positionsexpands ones range of eligibilities, opportunities,and reasons to act in valued waysthat is, ones be-havior potential.5,10 The occupation of others con-stricts such behavior potential. A simple example ofthis general truth may be seen in military hierarchies,in which an individual might occupy the position ofprivate or of general. The mere occupation of thelatter position by an individual carries with it greatlyexpanded eligibilities and powers and thus a range ofpossible behavior, relative to the former. For exam-ple, a general, unlike a private, can give orders tovirtually everyone else in the chain of command, en-joy a host of officers privileges, and have a far greatervoice in important decisions. What status dynamicsemphasizes is that all relational positions convey var-ious degrees and qualities of behavior potential.5,10

From this perspective, it can be seen that whatbefalls an individual who is successfully subjected toseverely humiliating treatment amounts to a degra-dation, a literal de-grading, entailing a significant lossof status that had been, up until then, successfullyclaimed and acted on and thus a loss of the individ-uals range of behavioral eligibilities in some commu-nity or communities.9,10 It amounts to damagingthese persons very ability to behave as members oftheir communities, both because they have a new anddegraded status (e.g., malingering worker or sexualpredator) and because they have lost status to claimstatus and with this have a greatly impaired ability torecover their lost status. The first and most basic

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question in assessing the harm befalling an individ-ual, then, is that of how much and what kind ofdegradation, or status loss has been sustained. In gen-eral, the greater the degree of such loss, the greater thedegree to which the individual is rendered unable tobehave in his world. Is it comparable with our schoolteacher, Tom, who lost his whole world? Or is itmore comparable with our injured worker Joe andour middle manager Jane, who, although severelyhumiliated in front of coworkers, may nonethelessretain considerable standing with and support fromfamily and friends?

Considerations in determining the severity of anygiven humiliation include the following:

How global, and thus broadly socially disquali-fying, is this individuals status loss? Has the in-dividual been degraded to a status such as pedo-phile that would render him a pariah in everycommunity or to one such as outcast in organi-zation X, which is far more narrow and specific?

How fundamental is the status that the individ-ual has lost? Has the person lost the status todetermine who touches him sexually or lost thestatus to determine where and when he may drivea car?

How core is the community in which the humil-iation occurs? Did it occur in a community thatis highly central to the individuals way of life(e.g., for a practicing physician, the medical com-munity) or in a community that is more periph-eral (e.g., that same physicians tennis club)?

How public is the humiliation? Is it known toonly one other individual or perhaps to an entirecommunity or even a nation?

How publicly supported is the individuals deg-radation? Is there universal concurrence, littleconcurrence, or some concurrence that the indi-vidual merits the degraded status?

Has the humiliation occurred in the context of aloss such as an arrest, divorce, workplace injury,or dismissal from a job? In such cases, the indi-viduals status has already been marginalized andcompromised, and there is less alternative stand-ing to weather the humiliation.

To what extent was malice involved in the hu-miliation? In the authors experience, and consis-tent with the aggravated effect of trauma that is

inflicted through malice, humiliations carriedout with malicious intent to degrade another canbe particularly devastating.

Finally, and very critically, to what degree has theindividual lost the status to make status claims?To what degree has the person been effectivelysilenced and nullified and lost all credible voiceand opportunity for recovering from thedegradation?

Hopelessness, Helplessness, and Suicide

Individuals who have been subjected to the mostsevere and public of humiliations frequently experi-ence feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Lack-ing the ability to make effective appeals on their ownbehalf, they have no discernible way back, no avenueto recover and have a better future. Furthermore,their status as a nobody in their former communitycan be excruciatingly painful and may sometimes be-come intolerable. For example, in the case of Tom,the school teacher, after he was regarded by virtuallyeveryone in his community as an individual whoseclaims of model citizenship concealed his being achild molester, liar, and moral sham, he lost com-pletely his ability to make any claims on his ownbehalf that could bring about recovery of his loststatus. He had lost not only his whole world, but withthis loss of voice, any hope of recovering his place inthat world. In such situations, the grave danger arisesthat the individual may commit suicide.

Powerless Rage and Possible Murder

Understandably, the anger provoked by being se-verely publicly humiliated, particularly when the hu-miliation is experienced as unjust and undeserved,can be extreme. Such a response was the case for Joe,our injured worker, who was forced to spend everyday engaging in meaningless work in front of hiscoworkers. Naturally, such humiliations evoke pow-erless rage, the urge to protest, and a strong desire toseek redress. However, humiliated individuals, whohave now lost the status of persons who can effec-tively make status claims on their own behalf withintheir communities, no longer have any voice withinthese communities to make their case and have itconsidered. Thus, although their anger is often in-tense, they are powerless to act within their commu-nities to recover their former status. In this situation,some individuals assume a new, powerful, and po-tentially quite dangerous status, that of an outsider



who has become an enemy of the community. Suchpersons come to believe that they have no other re-course but to take revenge on the community itselfthrough some form of violence. However, in perpe-trating acts of violence, they effectively end the pos-sibility of attaining future standing in this or in anycommunity (except perhaps prison), and they are leftnowhere. Their lives in this sense are over and dis-pensable, and they may reasonably regard suicide asnecessary, tolerable, and perhaps even convenientcollateral damage. Such a scenario is often reportedin the news in which a humiliated employee or stu-dent goes on a rampage, kills many innocent cowork-ers or fellow students, and then commits suicide.8

Disabling Preemptive Motivation

Many humiliated individuals find themselves pre-emptively motivated by their circumstances, by theneed to recover from them and by the need to gainrevenge on their humiliators. The motives surround-ing the humiliation become so powerful and all-consuming that they largely preempt all other moti-vations in the persons life. Other concerns fade intothe background. The individual cannot focus onthese matters, cannot concentrate, and is constantlydistracted by the humiliating situation and its impli-cations. Jane, the middle manager, found herself socompletely consumed by her situation that she couldnot concentrate at work, in social situations, or evenwhile trying to watch a television show. Many eve-nings she could not sleep because of her obsessivepreoccupation with her circumstances. In our expe-rience, most severely humiliated persons, like Jane,find their ability to function to be greatly impaired inthe other important spheres of their lives, such astheir families, friendships, and jobs.

Loss of Status as an Appraiser of Reality

When individuals are humiliated in such a waythat their fundamental capacity to read reality is suc-cessfully discounted and invalidated, the effects canbe particularly devastating. We are referring to indi-viduals whose reading of important realities is pe-remptorily and successfully dismissed and dis-counted as not to be taken seriously, or pointedlylabeled as crazy, irrational, hopelessly biased, or besetby a psychosomatic problem that renders their claimsand experiences of pain and impairment as all in theirheads. In these circumstances, that which serves asthe basis for making claims in the real world (i.e., the

capacity to read reality correctly) is invalidated, andsuch individuals are left with little or no voice orfoundation to make any claims.

Loss of Status to Claim Basic Human Rights

The status to claim the enjoyment of basic humanrights is, by its nature, a core, fundamental status. Ahumiliation that involves public demonstration of anindividuals inability to claim such rights has a dev-astating effect. For example, individuals in wartimewho are forced by their captors, against all of theircultural and religious beliefs, to strip naked, to be ledaround on all fours on a leash, or to witness the rapeof their own wives and daughters, would be examplesof persons humiliated in this way. These situationsconstitute de facto degradation ceremonies9 inwhich the message to the degraded individual is: Ifthere is something that you most want to resist, it isthis. Yet, look at you. Look how utterly powerlessyou are to claim what is most essential to you. Theceremony establishes publicly the individuals utterhelplessness to make the most elemental claimsagainst violations of that which he holds most essen-tial and cherished. If the individual does not have thestatus to make the most elemental of claims, whatstatus has he left? Indeed, these kinds of degradationsmay be perpetrated to engender a profound sense ofpowerlessness to make claims of any sort. Thus, theyare enacted to disempower fundamentally not onlyindividuals, but whole ethnic and religious groups.Of course, humiliations such as these need not occuronly in the context of war or political subjugation; forexample, victims of rape or of sexual harassment liv-ing in ordinary society may experience precisely thiskind of devastating humiliation. Finally, going backto the humiliating treatment of both Joe and Jane,one could argue that there is a basic human right notto be subjected to gratuitous public humiliationitself.

Sense of Worthlessness

Severely humiliated individuals often experience asense of worthlessness. The reasons for this should beclear when we consider the plight of a person who hassuffered many or all of the consequences delineatedherein. The individual has sustained a massive loss ofstatus in the world, has been left without an effectivevoice to recover, has been rendered a nobody who ishelpless and hopeless, has become unable to functionwell in other critical spheres of life such as family and

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job, has been branded and seen by others as unableeven to read reality correctly, or has been forced tosubmit to treatment that is a gross violation of basichuman rights. It is little wonder that the result wouldmore often than not be profound feelings ofworthlessness.

Psychopathological Conditions ThatRender Persons More Vulnerableto Humiliation

Certain pathological conditions, and in particularthe kinds of personalities who are most prone to in-cur them, engender a greater than usual vulnerabilityto the detrimental effects of humiliation. These con-ditions and personalities can markedly aggravate ormagnify the effects of humiliating experiences, gen-erate the perception of humiliation where there wasnone, or even invite humiliation from others. Thedisorders discussed in the following sections standout in this regard, but the list is not intended to beexhaustive.

Depressive Disorders

Long-noted characteristics of persons who areprone to depression are their low self-esteem andtheir proclivity to blame themselves for negative lifeevents.11 One famous and well-researched account,for example, characterizes these persons as having aninsidious attributional style11 in which, when badthings happen, they tend automatically to attributethem to factors that are internal (i.e., to negativepersonal qualities within them such as unlovability,inadequacy, or stupidity), stable (i.e., unlikely ever tochange), and global (i.e., affecting not just this eventbut many things in their lives). Given their initialsense of unworthiness, as well as this highly self-blaming and self-destructive attributional style, thesepersons are all too ready to succumb to humiliatingindictments, and tremendously impaired in theirability to make strong counterclaims on their ownbehalf. Thus, they are far more vulnerable and sufferfar more seriously the adverse effects of humiliatingevents, and often experience profound senses ofhopelessness and helplessness in the face of them.

Social Phobia and Avoidant Personality Disorder

Individuals with these disorders, who have strongsenses of personal inadequacy and unacceptability,live in dread that they will say or do something (e.g.,make an inappropriate comment, give a poor perfor-

mance, vomit, or faint) that will expose them to scru-tiny and harsh criticism from others.1214 Extremelysensitive to negative evaluation, they constantly scanthe social environment for the possibility that theiractions will be seen and exposed as those of an im-postor, an incompetent, or some other kind ofshameful person. They are unusually ready to inter-pret critical, rejecting stances or even inadvertent,accidental dismissals from others as crushing humil-iations, and to suffer accordingly. Given such generalsensitivities and vulnerabilities, the level of humilia-tion they experience from an actual severe publichumiliation tends to be more extreme than that ofthe average individual.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Persons with narcissistic personality disorder areviewed by most theorists as individuals who, despiteoutward appearances, are beset with an underlyingsense of personal unworthiness and unacceptabil-ity.1517 Unable to truly esteem themselves, they des-perately pursue a compensatory life strategy of con-vincing themselves that they are actually specialpersons who are set apart from and above other peo-ple, and seeking the acclaim of others by makingpublic claims (e.g., of special talent, brilliance, oraccomplishment) of a highly self-aggrandizing na-ture designed to win the admiration and affection ofthese others. When these claims fail, narcissists, un-like persons with more solidly grounded self-esteem,are highly humiliation-sensitive, prone to overreactto minor criticisms or failures of others to value themand to react with bitter anger or vicious counterhu-miliations. At times, narcissistic persons engineertheir own humiliation by making grandiose claimsthat are simply false and that subsequently result inpublic exposure. Although narcissists can be adept atevading these humiliations through self-serving ra-tionalizations that debase their would-be humilia-tors, their defensive maneuvers often fail, leavingthem feeling deeply humiliated and enraged.

A Common Thread

It is notable that a common feature of all of thesepersonalities is an underlying lack of self-esteem. Bydefinition, when we speak of self-esteem, we are talk-ing about the esteem in which persons hold them-selves. In the case of low or poor self-esteem, we aretalking about individuals who, as critics of them-selves, have made the summary appraisal that they



are persons of little worth.18 Thus, when the humil-iating allegations and mistreatments from externaldetractors occur, they are generally at a great disad-vantage. Believing the worst of themselves, they areall too ready to concur in the degrading indictmentsof their humiliators and are very ill-prepared to de-fend themselves from them.

Uses of the Present Formulation

The practical uses of this analysis of humiliationand its consequences lie in forensic, clinical, institu-tional, and scientific domains. In closing, we shallbriefly relate some of the more important of these.

Forensic Uses

The present analysis can assist all concerned inforensic situations clinicians, attorneys, judges,jury members, and clientsto understand betterwhat is involved and what is at issue in cases of hu-miliation and thus to make more informed judg-ments concerning this important matter. For exam-ple, the detailed articulation presented herein of themany consequences that can result from severe hu-miliation may be employed as a kind of checklist byclinicians and attorneys to identify the precise waysin which specific clients have been injured, enablingthem to provide judges and juries with detailed, ra-tionally grounded cause-effect accounts of the natureand extent of clients injuries. Further, the analysis ofthe relationship between certain psychopathologicalconditions and humiliation may serve as an impor-tant qualifier in determinations both of the causalityof humiliation and of its consequences.

Therapeutic Uses

Employing the kind of informed clinical assess-ments of their patients situations and personal con-ditions just described, psychotherapists may use thepresent analysis, as well as the status dynamic frame-work within which it is embedded,19 to design inter-ventions that comprehend and meet the preciseneeds of their clients. We intend to describe suchinterventions in a future publication.

Program Design and Modification

The delineation of the conditions that constitutehumiliation may allow or promote better identifica-tion of its actual or potential occurrence in program-matic and other institutional settings. It may therebybetter position administrators to institute processes

and procedures that serve to recognize, correct, andprevent it. Our observation has been that humilia-tion tends to be under-recognized, trivialized, andinsufficiently confronted in many kinds of settings.

Due Process and Punishment

This application concerns those charged with theduty to construct or evaluate prosecution and pun-ishment of offenders. Punishments by their very na-ture involve some element of loss of status. The in-carcerated individual, the demoted soldier, theperson whose drivers license is revoked, all lose thestatus to engage in activities for which they had beeneligible before their punishment. What appears todistinguish humiliating from nonhumiliating prose-cution and punishment is the formal or informal dueprocess that acknowledges the individual as havingrights as a status claimant. Consistent with the es-sence of this articles formulation, the due processthat is the core of our system of jurisprudence appearsdesigned to protect individuals from humiliationthrough the assiduous protection of their status toclaim a status: no denunciation or punishment canbe leveled without honoring the right of the accused,with the assistance of counsel, to lodge counterclaimsand to have his claims receive due consideration. It isfor this reason that we do not ordinarily regard a trialand conviction, despite its public nature, as humili-ating per se, by virtue of its very structure. (Of course,a prosecution and conviction may constitute a hu-miliation for an individual because of the nature ofthe offense, particular personal characteristics, thecontrast between preindictment status claims and theultimate findings in the case, and more.)

On the other hand, denunciations and punish-ments that are delivered without the accuseds havingrecourse to defending himself are humiliating by thevery fact that the individual has been deprived of theessential status of one who is entitled to make a coun-terclaim. Most obviously, judicial systems in whichthe accused is denied counsel are for this reasonhighly degrading. One could argue that they are defacto instances of the denial, discussed earlier, of basichuman rights. However, other less obvious punish-ments and sentences can be considered in this regard.For example, branding type punishments (e.g.,ones in which convicted individuals are forced towear a sandwich board that declares their offenses, orones in which they must drive with a license platethat labels them drunken drivers) are designed to

Torres and Bergner


expose the individual to the degrading judgment ofpeers outside of the judicial setting, without recourseto a counterclaim. Such punishments violate the tra-ditional protection of the status to claim a status thatis otherwise so firmly adhered to in our system ofjurisprudence.

Research Design

The delineation of the conditions that constitutehumiliation may allow researchers to identify moreclearly and investigate its occurrence and its personaland societal consequences.

Conclusions

In this article, we have presented an analysis ofwhat is involved when individuals undergo severepublic humiliation. We have described the structureof humiliation, i.e., the factors that, taken collec-tively, render certain life events and circumstanceshumiliating ones for persons; the most commondamaging consequences of being subjected to these;several personality factors that, when present, canserve to facilitate humiliation and amplify its damag-ing effects; and some applications of the present anal-ysis in a variety of forensic, clinical, institutional, andscientific contexts.

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Humiliation - Its Nature and Consequences