Punitive Pain and Humiliation

Human dignity, humiliation, and torture.

Modern human rights instruments ground human rights in the concept of human dignity, without providing an underlying theory of human dignity. This paper examines the central importance of human dignity, understood as not humiliating people, in traditional Jewish ethics. It employs this conception of human dignity to examine and criticize U.S. use of humiliation tactics and torture in the interr...

Humiliation: its nature and consequences.

In this article, we present a new analysis of what is involved when individuals undergo significant public humiliation. We describe the structure of humiliation-that is, the factors that, taken collectively, render certain life events and circumstances humiliating; the most common destructive consequences of being subjected to them; and several personality factors that, when present, can serve ...

Humiliation, Human Rights, and Global Corporate Responsibility

This article starts out from the suggestion that global social policy would benefit from more corporate awareness of the necessity of their responsible involvement. The typical response to such a proposition is that the corporate sector is not interested in charity, but in earning money. This paper suggests that the corporate sector has, in fact, an interest in incorporating more social respons...

The Humiliation Dynamic

Shame and humiliation in the medical encounter.

Patients are at high risk for experiencing shame and humiliation in any medical encounter. This is because they commonly perceive diseases as defects, inadequacies, or shortcomings; while the visit to the hospital and the doctor's office requires physical and psychological exposure. Patients respond to the suffering of shame and humiliation by avoiding the physician, withholding information, co...