The four modalities of temporality and the problem of shame

This chapter explores the crumpled piece of fabric and focuses on threads that go into its construction and see how and when shame enters into its weave and how the problem of shame may be integrated into conscious life through an experience of the self. Temporality as chronicity is the conscious state of awareness of the regular movement of objects like the sun and the hands of a clock in the world around us. Achronicity and chronicity lie on a spectrum with many gradations between the extremes, and they may flow smoothly or roughly into and out of one another. Synchronicity in itself is shame-free, but if it is taken up into the chronicity of the ego's normal experience of life and considered in a different light, perhaps ethical, it may take on an aspect of shame. An important side-effect of the gradual integration was that a sense of shame actually developed and grew stronger as present temporality replaced dyschronicity.