Den (o)sunda skammen - en emotion med Janusansikte

This study aimed to analyze how psychologists reflects on the patient's shame experience in the therapy situation and how they identify the patient's shame in the clinical work. The following research questions guided this study: how the respondents reflect on the patient shame experience in therapy; how they identify the patient's shame in therapy; how the respondents reflect on shame as a chronic emotion; which is the importance of the patient's shame in the clinical work. The empirical material is based on semi-structured interviews carried out with eight psychologists in a general psychiatric outpatient clinic. The empirical material was analyzed with thematic analysis. The results showed that shame is a painful emotion which strongly affects both patient and therapist. Shame experience is described as multi-faceted emotion and difficult to identify for both patient and therapist. Shame is considered to have both positive and negative features, and can thus be healthy as well as unhealthy. The key conclusion is that shame is characterized by a duality dimension: shame can be both functional and dysfunctional, shame can be useful in therapy (motivational) or unusable (obstructing), shame can be communicative and in the same time inhibitory