Whereas shame has had a relatively marginal role in clinical psychology, at least until the 1960s, philosophers, artists and writers have been interested in it for centuries (Plato, 1970; Plato, 1974; Plato, 2002; Spinoza, 1947; Williams, 1994). Among all of them, there is one for whom shame has been so important as to be named “The poet of shame” (Friedlander, 2013): that is Franz Kafka. Kafka provides penetrating accounts of shame; but Kafka provides also an unsparing cross-section of human psychology: as Adorno wrote, Kafka is an “information bureau of the human condition” (Adorno, 1981).
Kafka has always been interested in shame. Walter Benjamin pointed out that shame in fact underlies probably all literary production by Kafka, and maybe his whole existence, and there could be various reasons for this (his difficult relationship with religion, his precarious health) (Benjamin, 1965). Kafka’s earliest novel was called “Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart”: very little is known about this novel, as it was never published and is only known because Kafka mentioned it in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollack (Kafka, 1977). The story, as far as is known, juxtaposes two antithetic characters, the dissolute Impure and the moral Lanky. Lanky is the one who suffers pervasive shame.
Kafka is perhaps mostly famous for his short story The Metamorphosis, written probably earlier and published in 1915. I will discuss The Metamorphosis in the next section briefly, but the main focus will be on The Trial.
Neither The Trial nor The Metamorphosis have anything to do with transgender people (The Metamorphosis may, at first sight, appear more congruent with the theme of this article as it narrates about a man who wakes up in the body of a huge insect). However, particularly The Trial, as we are going to see shortly, provides a poignant account of how the experience of shame can be so insidious as to be easily unnoticed until its devastating consequences are irreparable (the reader, in fact, is unlikely to think about shame until the last few words of the novel).
The Trial
“Like a Dog!” – he said - “It was as if the shame of it should outlive him” (Kafka, 1999, p. 128).
The Trial finishes with the announcement of the survival of shame. In this novel, written between 1914 and 1915, and published in 1925, we find a portrait of shame that is extraordinarily sophisticated, and sheds good light into the psychological dynamics of shame.
Josef K is employed by a bank. One morning, two unknown men arrest him and Josef K realises that he needs to stand a trial for some crimes of which he is not made aware. Josef K at some point, completely disempowered, refuses to defend himself. He cannot tolerate the lack of transparency that characterises the whole trial. The tribunal is described in various places as lurid. The Judge’s books are dirty, dusty – this is what they study and these are the people who will judge him. Josef K refuses thus to defend himself, and this sanctions his own end. He is led in a cave where he is executed, stabbed twice in the heart.
The atmosphere of the novel is anguishing, and Josef K somehow surrenders to an absent guilt - a guilt that is attributed to him, though it is not clear of what he is guilty or whether he is guilty of anything at all. He is condemned and will be executed for a crime that he has probably not committed, but he surrenders nonetheless. The psychological portrait here of a man trapped by the others’ accusations, even in the full knowledge of their absurdity, is poignant and painful. Logic would suggest that knowing that there is nothing to be guilty of, one would defend oneself or attempt to escape. But Kafka seemed to know well that the way humans respond to what happens to them often escapes logic – and yet it is possible to understand Josef K’s behaviour – indeed this possibility of identifying with the protagonist contributes to the disquiet of reading. The maze of threats, false accusations, innuendos, false hopes, opaque promises, which is constructed around Josef K is so tight that, psychologically, he remains trapped in it.
It may be also noted that he is Josef K, not simply Josef. There is a mysterious element to Josef K, an enigma hidden out on the surface, on his very name. We are introduced to him as an ordinary man; yet his name remains hidden, but hidden, I propose, out on the surface, as we are made conscious of the fact that he has a surname that is being deliberately omitted.
Josef K - not less enigmatic than the thread of which he is a prey – thus curiously makes no attempt to defend himself against the two men who lead him to his grave. He takes off his own shirt and lies down to be executed.
While Josef K is stabbed to death, he says: “Like a dog!”. He is killed like a dog: “It was as if the shame of it should outlive him” (Kafka, 1999).
The extraordinarily acute end of the episode reveals Kafka’s sharp psychological insight into human nature. Shame cleverly underlies, without being mentioned until the end, the entire novel (Wasihun, 2015): it is because of shame that Josef K surrenders, not because of guilt. The whole apparatus constructed around him does not at any stage convince him of his guilt: at no point Josef K wonders whether he really committed some kind of crime. Nonetheless (perhaps because of this) he voluntarily surrenders. Josef K has his own obscure side. Thus, ultimately, there is no point in fighting because the accusations can be false and not false at the same time.
As a commentator has pointed out, the shame of Josef K “is a shame that looks for its guilt and that, failing to find it, foments itself” (Latini, 2012a). It is a similar shame, as we are going to see in what follows, which may afflict transgender individuals. A shame that touches one of the most intimate aspects of one’s self, namely gender, one of the most fundamental segments of our identity, and a shame that is the effect of a lack of humanity in the other, and which, precisely for that reason, is inescapable.
As we saw earlier, clinical studies have suggested, from quite a different perspective to that adopted by Kafka, that there is no reparation in shame (whereas there is possible reparation in guilt). Once we are ashamed, the experience may be hard or impossible to reverse. Kafka saw very clearly and piercingly how others can disempower us to the extent of self-destruction - even more so when there is no ‘real’ or objective fault of our own.
The Metamorphosis: the plot
Perhaps Kafka’s most famous novel is The Metamorphosis. This novel is a genuine story of trans-genderism – literally meant as going beyond birth. As in The Trial we are introduced to an ordinary man, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up in the body of a huge insect. The way in which Kafka unfolds the thread provides another unflattering cross-section of human psychology.
When his mother knocks on the door to check why he is not going to work, Gregor hides himself: he feels shame. The more attention he gets (his sister is worried, his employer shows up to check on him) the more shame he feels.
Kafka here (as in other novels) makes an implicit deal with the reader: the reader has to be willing to accept a paradox. Once the paradox is accepted, the story becomes painfully realistic. Gregor’s employer threatens to fire him, as he persists in refusing to open the door and to provide a sensible explanation for his behaviour. The employer’s lack of faith in Gregor is evident: this leads him to make threats that are completely inappropriate to the circumstances, and such disproportion renders him and his menace grotesque. Once Gregor manages to open the door, the acknowledgment he gets is far from favourable. The father throws him back into his room hitting him with a newspaper and banging his feet on the floor to scare him, the employer runs away in disgust, the mother faints.
Gregor tries to live as an insect in his room. He enjoys crawling up and down the furniture; his sister feeds him, and he hides in order not to frighten her. The hiding here – similarly to the case of the transwoman mentioned earlier - is not just withdrawal, but is reparative, and reparative of a guilt which is at once material and inexistent– a paradox also well illustrated in The Trial.
Gregor’s family does not accept him as an insect. Being rejected, unloved, and feeling he is only a burden to his family, Gregor falls in a deep depression and stops eating, and condemns himself to a slow death (the ultimate reparation, and the ultimate withdrawal).
His death is somehow ironically prosocial: after his death, things improve for his family. They soon forget the unfortunate episode, and all goes back to normal.