This study was designed to examine the relationship between dysfunctional families in childhood and shame experienced by adults and compare feelings of guilt and shame. The results indicated that the shame young adults feel is correlated with their perceived family environment as a child. Greater feelings of shame on the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA) were correlated with lower Family Environment Scale scores on Cohesion, Expressiveness, Intellectual-Cultural Orientation, Moral-Religious Emphasis and Organization and higher Conflict scores. Other variables were also examined. The results support the hypothesis that people coming from dysfunctional families experience more shame as adults and that guilt and shame are differentially related to dysfunctional families. 0 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
In recent years, interest in dysfunctional families and shame has increased. The popular literature has been the source of most of the attention on adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families. Lately, empirical research has been performed in the area, but it still lags far behind anecdotal, clinical information. Interest in the affect of shame has also burgeoned in recent years, mostly in the form of theoretical discussions, stemming originally from psychoanalysis. Again there is little empirical research in the area of shame. A convergence of these two topics has occurred in the popular literature on alcoholic and dysfunctional families where the discussion centers around the feelings of shame resulting from membership in dysfunctional families.
Popular books are flooded with references to feelings of shame and guilt resulting from alcoholic families. (Black, 1981;. In the spirit of getting on the bandwagon, shame also pops up in discussions of co-dependency (Beattie, 1987) and dysfunctional families (Forward & Buck, 1989). These assumptions have found their way into the treatment literature, where it is assumed that shame is a consequence of alcoholic families and treatment is geared toward lessening the shame (Naiditch, 1987; Potter-Efron, 1987;. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support these assertions and the apparent validity of the claims may be the result of a "Barnum Effect." Indeed, examined purported personality characteristics of adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) and found that both ACOAs and non-ACOAs found the ACOA profiles highly descriptive of themselves. This supports the contention that many of the alleged ACOA characteristics are simply descriptions so broad that most people see them as self-descriptive.
Research attempting to support the claims concerning the impact of alcoholism on children have had mixed results. conducted a review of studies examining parental alcoholism and child psychopathology. They found that parental alcoholism was associated with greater symptoms of childhood psychopathology but also found that a substantial portion of the children of alcoholics were not subject to increased psychopathology. The results are also mixed when we look at adult children of alcoholics. Some studies (Churchill, Broida, & Nicholson, 1990; Werner & Broida, 1991; Wright & Heppner, 1991) report no difference between ACOAs and non-ACOAs on measures of self-esteem, locus of control, problem-solving appraisal, social support, shame, suicidal ideation, and substance use. Clair and Genest (1987) also found no difference between ACOAs and non-ACOAs on self-esteem, though they did find that ACOAs were more prone to depression. In addition,