Winner of the 2004 Gradiva Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis. The book argues that shame can develop during the first six months of life through an unreflected look in the mother's eyes, and that this shame is then internalised by the infant and reverberates through its later life. This is an incredibly rich book, with much to mention in so little space. It touched this reviewer very much and I am in support of her theory. I feel readers would agree that Ayers does justice to the beginning of a more thorough examination of shame. - Mary Powell, Journal of Religion and Health, Winter 2004