A few weeks ago, I got the chance to read an article
about shame-based personalities that immediately made me think about Chuck and
I decided to take the time to write an essay about it. I’ll be using lines from
the article to write this dissertation, which means it’s only right to credit
it. You can find it here.
The blog has many fascinating psychology articles; if you’re interested in the
subject you should definitely follow it.
As the article I’m referring to explains, blaming and
shaming a person are two different things. While blaming someone implies
recognizing a fault in the person’s behavior,
shaming someone isn’t about guilt or responsibility; it doesn’t require the
person to do something that the
accuser interprets as a mistake. Instead, shaming means affirming there’s
something wrong with the person accused;
in other words, the fault doesn’t lie in the person’s actions, but rather in
their personality.
Before I begin exposing my thoughts regarding how and
why Chuck’s personality was built through a dysfunctional shaming process, it
must be said that both the aspects
I’ve mentioned – blame and shame – played a role in his life.
For most of his life, Chuck has lived with a shattering
sense of guilt coming from the conviction he had killed his mother by coming to
life. I tend to think Bart has never really put into words this accusation, but
it is sure that, as a child and later on as a teenager, Chuck read this through
the lines of his father’s detachment. Consciously and not, Chuck learnt to
consider himself responsible for his mother’s death, because the explanation he
gave himself helped him to give a meaning to the emotional and psychological
abuse he was subjected to.
That being said, the guilt he took is a “blameless” one; in fact, it might be
more accurately described as an original
sin, a visceral, ancestral fault that has nothing to do with responsibility
(even if Elisabeth had actually died giving birth, the baby wouldn’t have been
guilty of her destiny).
This irrational, inconsistent and implicit accusation suggests that there’s
something terribly and irremediably flawed
in Chuck, it somehow hints to the fact that his role in the world is to destroy – and metaphorically, to kill
(“He hated me. It makes sense if his
beloved wife died giving birth to me. Sometimes I swear he thinks I killed her”
Chuck, from 2X05)
It is likely that, in truth, Bart blamed Chuck for the
simple fact that he was Elizabeth’s son – the woman who had cheated on him and
eventually left him to raise a child he probably didn’t even want. In Bart’s
mind, having her as a mother was enough to make him a worthless and inadequate
person – and irreversibly. This “definitive
verdict” is indeed expressed through the story he told Chuck: not only
Elizabeth “died”, but she was also “killed” by her own son. It’s a vision
that allowed Bart to hate them both and set Chuck for being an eternal
disappointment to his eyes.
It is definitely a form of shaming. The article mentions a few examples of shaming
statements, which sound very similar to many things Bart told his son all the
way through the series:
• “You were a mistake; I wish I’d never had you.” || “No matter how I’ve tried to turn you into a man,
it still remains the one, big failure of my life” (6X09)
• “You’re useless; you’ll never amount to anything.” || “Nice gesture, but misguided as usual” (2X10), “I
haven’t seen anything in the last year that suggests you have what it takes. If
anything, you’ve been a disappointment” (3X12)
• “You’ve ruined my life; you ruin everything for everyone” || “Bart thought
it would be better if the family bonded without me for a while” (1X14), “Letting people down is your forte” (2X10), “Every
time I think we’re making progress, you show your true colors” (2X12).
According to the article, adults
shamed in childhood have some traits that I recognized in Chuck as well. I’ll
mention each of them and try to see how they showed in his behavior.
1. They are afraid to share their true thoughts and feelings with others.
This first trait is pretty obvious in Chuck’s characterization.
However, truth to be told, his difficulty in sharing his thoughts and feelings
is only the tip of the iceberg.
Chuck is indeed emotionally
crippled. He doesn’t simply have issues when it comes to conveying his
feelings; his problems start with his inability to recognize them and then accept
them. Season 1 is all about it; Chuck can’t give a name to what he feels
for Blair (“I feel sick, like there’s
something in my stomach…fluttering”) and when she hurts him, he can’t
metabolize the pain he feels and ends up hurting her as well in a way that is
absolutely childish – an act of spite.
This is obviously the outcome of an education intended
to make him think of feelings as
weaknesses. Chuck grew up with the idea that detachment meant strength,
while displaying emotions – or even having emotions – was a synonym of vulnerability. And vulnerability was
the ultimate fault, the one thing
Bart could have never accepted.
Episode 3X12
(but, in general, season 3) is pretty enlightening in this sense, because it
gives us an accurate idea of how Chuck has always interpreted his father’s
behavior and words – and, as we’ll find out later on, his view of Bart was
sadly truthful.
The Bart Chuck sees condemns his love for Blair (“You
opened your heart to Blair and that made you weak”), for it makes him immature and unsuitable for being the businessman he is expected to become. The
image of Bart tells Chuck he doesn’t have “what
it takes”. This conviction Chuck can’t let go of is so weighty and so
deeply rooted that it will be one of the reasons that will lead him to betray
Blair in order to save The Empire – “I
did what I had to to win. I couldn’t let my feelings cost me all that I’ve
built” (3X17).
As I said, Chuck’s perception of his father was exact.
In episode 5X24
it becomes clear that he judges his son’s love for Blair and in general his
feelings as a demonstration of his irresponsibility
other than what keeps him from being a “great
man” and from “growing up”.
It’s only logical to assume that Bart’s reiterated
insistence to urge Chuck to repress his emotions and, overall, his disdain for the mere existence
of those feelings and the consequential shaming, led Chuck to try to
suppress them as much as he could.
The constant repression is something I’ll talk about
later in the essay while analyzing other traits. Though, it is important to
underline the fact that Chuck tends to keep his emotions under control through
a rigid process of suppression,
until he can’t contain them anymore. This implies that when he finds himself
unable to shut down his feelings, they tend to blow up in a devastating way – for himself and for
those close to him.
It’s something that, with time, Chuck definitely
learnt to handle better. It was indeed one of the crucial points of his growth;
he still tends to diminish his feelings, but he manages to cope with them in a
healthier way. By the end of the series, for example, he is able to accept
Blair’s support and to contain the shame he feels towards his weaknesses; it
doesn’t happen right away and it takes patience from her and also the special
delicacy she reserves him, but eventually he lets her in fully (check this scene from episode 6X08).
However, Blair remains one of his few exceptions. He
is only able to show his vulnerability to a very restricted group of people who
he is able to trust. Outside his “circle
of trust”, he is still an especially cold and detached person – and I assume
a pretty ruthless business man too.
2. They
are terrified of intimacy and put up walls in relationships. They also
fear commitment as they expect
to be rejected.
“You
couldn’t handle feelings,” Blair tells Chuck in episode 3X12, giving us, as
usual, the most precise insight on him and his difficulties dealing with
emotions. Nevertheless, she comforts him, reminding him that he’s “not like that anymore” and that he’s “becoming a man in a way that his father
never was”.
It is absolutely true. In spite of his fear of
weaknesses, Chuck has feelings;
he cares, loves and is exposed to deep emotions. He is, though, used to block
them, out of shame and fear; fear of
vulnerability, but also fear of the
feelings themselves, of their meaning and their consequences.
The basic consequence of
caring is the construction of a bond with another person, with all the risks
that come with it – dependence, pain, abandon. Accepting to have feelings for
someone means accepting the possibility of rejection and rejection is, to
Chuck, absolutely terrifying. One of the most insightful quotes that explicates
it is from episode 2X01.
Trying to explain Blair why he didn’t spend the summer with her and abandoned
her, he says: “I was scared you’d see…me.”
Here lies the core of
Chuck’s personality: the conviction that no one could love him for who he is,
for he is impossible to love and also impossible to “fix”. He is irremediably broken, a destined to disappoint.
The article I’m referring
to also mentions that people with shame
based personalities struggle with feeling of worthlessness and often feel ugly
and flawed. In Chuck’s case, this is the consequence of a growth and an
existence that has always been marked by rejection. “Unfortunately, all I know if what he didn’t
want,” he says, talking about his father, “which is me”.
Chuck’s deep self-esteem issues have their
origin in the way he’s been shamed and neglected all the way through his
childhood. As a result, he is honestly convinced of his inadequateness and of its
invariability. The lack of value he sees in himself is deeply
characterizing; it guides, sometimes subtly and sometimes blatantly, most of
his actions and decisions. For example, he was incapable of waiting for
Blair on the top of the Empire State Building because he expected her not to
come, since he didn’t think he deserved her arrival. I don’t want to discuss
whether his thoughts were valid or not; it’s simply not the topic of this
essay. What I’m trying to point at is that it was tragically easy for Chuck to
believe that she didn’t love him anymore.
Inevitably, starting from these presuppositions, commitment and especially intimacy become incredibly scary to Chuck.
It’s not the dedication and the faithfulness they require that scares him; Chuck
is, indeed, a profoundly devoted and loyal person (he values family, he has
never cheated, he gives importance to long lasting friendships). Instead, his
fright has its origin in the changeable nature of relationships: they’re hazards, they bring with them the possibility of being abandoned.
Only that, to Chuck, abandon isn’t a mere possibility, it is almost a certainness. Trusting that people he
loves won’t leave him is incredibly hard to him, since abandon has been a constant
in his life. He expects to be abandoned
– and, according to him, rightfully so. People who leave him are justified
by his worthlessness and their decision to give up on him is only logical.
This partially explains
why he is so forgiving; recognizing
people’s faults and responsibilities is almost superfluous to him, since, in
some ways, he fundamentally thinks he deserves to be hurt. In this sense, it is
important to mention how Chuck never really stopped justifying Elizabeth’s
behavior; by the end of season 6, in spite of all the pain she caused him, he
still hadn’t completely given up on contacting her (5X19), he still had her
picture in his room and the combination to his strongbox was still her
birthday’s date.
In some ways, this is
also connected to the lack of love and affection that sadly marked his
growth; he craves to be loved so much and, at the same time, he expects so
little from those who are supposed to love him that he’s willing to take
whatever he can get from them and to excuse even the most horrible betrayals
(see how he allowed Jack to come back into his life). Every bit of care and
respect look almost miraculous to him.
As the article explains, another fundamental trait in shame-based personalities
is a debilitating false guilt. As I
mentioned at the beginning of the essay, guilt
plays a central role in Chuck’s life. Though he isn’t shy and definitely
doesn’t pay attention to people’s judgement, he does tend to feel
responsible even when he’s not. Similarly to what happens with his tendency
to forgive, Chuck also expects to be accused and accepts the way people
blame him, even when he has no faults.
This ingrained sense of guilt, which
clearly has its roots in the childhood and the teenage years spent living with
the thought of having caused his mother’s death, leads to the conviction of being
unable to make the woman he loves happy. Each time he lest Blair go, he
does it because he is genuinely persuaded that he’ll end up ruining their
relationship and making her miserable; he keeps giving up on her to give
her the chance to be with a better man, a less troubled, lighter person.
3. They
may be narcissistic and act as if they have it all together; alternatively,
they may be completely selfless, almost to the point of being a doormat.
Both aspects of this
trait show through Chuck’s behavior, since, as it often happens, his actions
and his perception of himself tend to be extremely polarized and sometimes even
contradictory – he goes to extremes.
He builds and invincible
persona, “Chuck Bass”, who is
powerful, indifferent, perfectly controlled; Chuck Bass is the façade he
presents to the world, it’s his vanity, his mania of grandeur, it’s the
self-satisfaction he feels when he’s called infamous, it’s his egocentrism and
his arrogance. It shows through his eclectic style, through the
self-celebratory way he conducts his business (his hotel is “The Empire” and
it’s permeated with his notorious reputation), through the way he indulges the
sort of legend created around his name. He enjoys his fame, his influence and
he’s power hungry. Though somewhat more superficial, none of these aspects
are pretended; Chuck can actually be self-centered, self-important, he can be
haughty, cold and unscrupulous.
Yet, at the same time, he is incredibly fragile and he
is often incapable of recognizing his
value. Sometimes, actually, his selflessness is so extreme that he becomes
quite literally “self – less”,
meaning that he reaches such a worrying level of self-loathe that he ends up
neglecting himself; his needs, his ambitions, his desires, even his entire
personality (the beginning of season four is the most blatant example of this
dysfunctionality, but part of this behavior is also recognizable through season
five). He is haunted by the thought people would be happier if he was out of
their lives.
4. They
have a pervasive sense of loneliness and always feel like outsiders (even when
others genuinely like and love them).
This trait is noticeable and inevitably
linked with the ones previously mentioned. Reluctant to share his feelings and
scared of building meaningful bonds with people, Chuck is profoundly reserved. Though he enjoys an active social
life (parties, galas, ecc) and he is capable of being sociable (he is, among
other things, also a hotel and clubs owner, so it is necessary), he still
doesn’t let people get too close; he constantly maintains a distance between himself and the world
and he often prefers spending time alone.
It must be underlined that Chuck is an especially selective person. Since
trusting people comes so difficult to him, he tends to maintain a few but very solid relationships.
As I’ve already mentioned, he defines a circle
of trust – one that is terribly difficult to enter and, at the same time,
almost impossible to exit.
Making a quick analysis
of his relationships, it’s clear how discriminating and at the same time
how devoted he is: Blair isn’t simply the only woman he’s ever loved,
she’s also the only one he considered building a life with; Nate has been his
best friend since they were five and Chuck has never showed the need to create
the same kind of bond with anyone else; once he let Lily in, he never stepped
back and was actively part of her family – he’s never stopped treating Serena
and Eric as his siblings.
That being said, even
with his most trusted people, Chuck is still hesitant when it comes to letting his guard down and allowing
himself to be vulnerable in front of them. Even Blair, who is definitely the
person he trusts the most, occasionally can’t reach him; she has to find a way
to connect with him – sometimes she uses sex to get in touch with his blocked
emotions.
As a result, Chuck has an inclination to isolate himself,
since he considers his feelings incomprehensible
and unacceptable; to his eyes,
they’re too dark and too horrible. This idea leads him to the conviction
that he shouldn’t share them and that he should deal with them alone. Aware
of this belief, both Lily and Blair, actually, felt the need to remind him that
they wouldn’t have left even in front of his worst moments (“The worst thing you’ve ever done, the
darkest thought you’ve ever had, I will stand by you through anything” –
Blair, from 2X13, “No matter how ugly and
dark your feelings may be, you shouldn’t have to bear them alone. My love for
you is unconditional” – Lily, from 5X10).
5. They
are often defensive and find it hard to bear the slightest criticism. They feel
as if they are being constantly watched and judged.
This trait mainly comes out through
Chuck’s attitude towards business and work. He is extremely exigent with himself and incapable of considering
failure as a sometimes inevitable part of life. He’s a perfectionist and has Stakhanovism
problem. Being driven by an ambition
that isn’t completely healthy, Chuck expects
the best from himself and has a tendency to push himself too hard to
reach his goals. The first few episodes of season 3 are a good example of this
behavior. In episode 3X02 Chuck tells Serena: “My father turned his first profit by the time he was 22. I hope to do
it by the time I’m 21.”
The fact that Bart is Chuck’s basis for comparison is a crucial element to
analyze how this personality trait presents itself. His need to thrive and his
greed for success partially have their origin in his fear to disappoint his father. Even after Bart’s “death”, Chuck
kept trying to please him through his dedication to business; he was constantly
trying to live up to the expectations Bart had.
Driven by his tendency to
forgive and by his desperate need to justify his father’s faults, Chuck built,
over the years, some sort of idealized
image of Bart: the perfect business man, the person he was supposed to
become but couldn’t – because of his weakness. And when, by the end of season
four, this twisted view of Bart shattered, Chuck found himself having to survive
a deep existential crisis. “Everything I
believed about my father,” he says in episode 4X20, “everything I thought I wanted to be, what I needed to be for him, it
was all based on lies.”
The article also
describes people with a shame based personalities as adults who tend to feel judged and controlled. It
is important to say that, being a libertine, Chuck generally ignores people’s
judgement when it comes to his morality, to his way of living and to his
values. This careless attitude, though, has a few essential exceptions.
The first exceptions are Blair and Lily. Chuck truly values their judgements
and not only when they’re positive. Since he respects them and feels supported
and understood by them, he’s willing to accept even their criticisms. Their
opinions and advice have a positive effect on him and they generally manage to
encourage him and make him feel better about himself – or, at least, to
question his actions. The key of his trust and respect for them lies in the way
he knows that behind their words there are acceptance and care. Their loyalty
and their affection isn’t necessarily linked with his actions – they would
always forgive him and love him for who he is rather than for what he does.
Bart, however, represents
a negative exception. His judgement, whether actual or simply imagined by
Chuck, influences Chuck’s behavior through fear of rejection
In some ways, for a long time, Chuck lived with the perpetual feeling of being tested by this unreachable man he had to
satisfy (“It’s like he’s setting me up to
fail from beyond the grave” Chuck, 2X15). In other words, Chuck turned
his successes into a mean to finally conquer his father’s love and acceptance
and his failures into confirmations that he didn’t deserve his father’s
approval and affection. In both cases, affection – or lack of it – is
linked to an action; Chuck’s personality, indeed, remains intolerable for
Bart.
6. They
tend to block their feeling through compulsive behaviors
I will start by stating, just to be clear, that Chuck isn’t an addict.
As I said, everything in Chuck’s life is subjected to a rigid repression; and
it definitely includes his use of drugs and his drinking. Under normal
circumstances, even though he is a drinker and an occasional drug user, Chuck
keeps his vices controlled.
That being said, it is
true that, during moments of profound crisis, we saw him losing control and showing compulsive behaviors intended to
keep him from feeling a pain he couldn’t handle. It especially happens when
Chuck has to deal with loss – since he can’t elaborate it, he suppresses his
emotions however he can (abusing alcohol and drugs, meaningless sex, ecc).
At the beginning of season five, the repressed pain of losing Blair causes him
to detach from his emotions in such
a deep way that he becomes unable to feel anything – even physically.
It also must be mentioned that, for a long time, Chuck has had almost no respect for his life. Though the only
time he was actually suicidal was after Bart’s “death” (2X14), he still showed
till season five a dangerous carelessness with his health and with the
value of his existence. He was often reckless and irresponsible; to use his own
words from 3X22, he “didn’t care if he
lived or died”.
His attitude towards sex, though, is probably the
clearest example of a compulsive behavior
implemented to suffocate feelings.
There’s no shame in sex and it’s not my intention to
judge anyone’s sex life as right or wrong. Chuck was a precocious boy; he had
his first sexual experience at the age of eleven, he is a very sexual,
passionate person and eroticism certainly has an important role in his life. He
enjoys sex and he’s completely open-minded about any kind of practices in this
area.
However, it’s undeniable that he alsouses sex to kill the pain. Generally, to
Chuck, sex and intimacy don’t coincide.
He doesn’t establish a connection with his sexual partners; he never sees them
again after (in 2X21, he mentions he only has sex with people once) and
sometimes entertains himself with escorts – the less emotionally demanding
way to have sex ends up being paying for it. While sex (even random one) is
usually an engaging experience, to Chuck sometimes it is a mere mechanical act that has the only purpose to numb sufferance and anxiety.
Blair, of course, is an exception. She was the first person with whom he managed to
build a true connection, to the point that sex became fundamental in their
relationship. With her, he reaches a complete emotional involvement; he
concedes himself to her fully, he’s generous, trusting and attentive. It is
interesting to notice, as I’ve already mentioned, that when Chuck is
emotionally blocked, Blair consciously uses sex to reach out to him, for she
knows that a physical connection with her will also lead to an emotive one (for
example, she seduces him to bring him to say “I love you” in 2X25 and in 3X14
she has sex with him before he manages to talk to her about his mother).
7. They
find it hard to establish and enforce healthy boundaries with others.
Considering everything I’ve explained, it
is understandable why building healthy relationships for Chuck is hard –
and why he had to work so hard on himself in order to handle them better. I
think it’s safe to admit, at least from my point of view, that his
relationships will never be completely “healthy” (although this is a pretty
relative concept), for the simple fact that he is, logically, a profoundly and
somewhat irreparably damaged person.
That being said, over
time and thanks to a long and hard journey, Chuck
learnt to cope with his daemons and to make
his relationships work in a less dysfunctional way; he learnt that he
doesn’t own the ones who he loves, that trust is fundamental for a bond to be
unbreakable, that relationships work through compensation and ability to
compromise and, eventually, that allowing the people he chose to spend his life
with to see his weakest, most vulnerable sides doesn’t mean failing; it means
accepting their love and their support and allowing them to make him stronger.
Above all, trusting
people represented the biggest problem to Chuck and his inability to do so was often the main reason behind the crisis of
his relationships.
Having been tested his whole life by his father (it is my opinion, for example
that Bart left him the responsibility of Bass Industries when he faked his
death with the intention to see if he was capable), Chuck used to assume that testing his loved ones’ loyalty
was the only way he had to be sure of their affection. It’s a behavior that
often puts him in a lose/lose situation. What happens in 3X17 is probably the most
exhaustive example.
Betrayed by his mother, Chuck tests Blair’s love and devotion in a way that
sets him up for losing her: if Blair accepts to have sex with Jack, she gives
him a proof of her love, but she betrays his trust; if she doesn’t accept, then
her love isn’t what he expected it to be. Either ways, he’ll be destroyed.
His difficulty to trust
people is also what brings him to be so jealous
and to expect from others the same
exclusivity he gives to relationships. In his friendship with Nate, for
example, he doesn’t tolerate other people’s intrusions; Nate’s need to have a
wider circle of friendships almost feels like a betrayal to Chuck, since his
fear of abandon leads him to think those who love him will find someone better
than him and realize he’s worthless.
His insecurity tends to make him suspicious and his inability to communicate
his feelings and his needs leads him to manipulate people around him to keep
them from leaving him.
In conclusion, I think Chuck shows all the traits of a shame based
personality. Personality is, according to my view, an only marginally
changeable element; consequentially, it is my opinion that the dysfunctionalities coming from the structure
of personality Chuck presents still belong to his life and inevitably play
a role in it. However, a journey of growth and evolution taught him to live
with it in a healthier way, one that allowed such a damaged and emotionally
deficient person to build a happy life for himself and for his family.
katies backup blog 