A “Slave of Quantity”

Abstract

This is a reading of Steve McQueen’s (2011) film Shame from a psychoanalytic point of view. At the manifest level Shame is about a man addicted to sex, and the title of the film might seem to refer to the humiliation and self-abasement that is the consequence of living as a slave of sexual excitation. This article suggests, however, that the feeling of shame is not a consequence of sexual addiction but its condition. Referring to the work of Michel de M’Uzan (2013) and of Jean Laplanche (1999), it argues that sexual addiction is linked to the ultimate otherness, which is rooted in the unconscious of the adult and transmitted to the child as untranslatable messages, and the consequence of which is a deficiency in the ego’s ability to articulate what is experienced as overwhelming excitation.

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Notes on contributors

Judy Gammelgaard

Judy Gammelgaard, D.Phil., is a professor at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Psychology. A psychoanalyst, she is a member of the Danish Psychoanalytic Association and the International Psychoanalytical Association.