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Modesty is a [[feeling ]] or a [[behavior ]] that is motivated by shame, in that it essentially bears upon the sexualized [[body]], the [[genital ]] organs, the [[anal ]] zone, or any part of the body that, culturally or individually, is endowed with an [[erotic ]] investment. In a secondary [[sense]], it is a mode of [[being ]] that limits all motor or [[linguistic ]] expression of [[subjectivity]].

In the [[German ]] [[language]], and thus in Sigmund [[Freud]]'s writings, it is not possible to distinguish that which is motivated by modesty from that which is motivated by shame, whereas in [[French]], [[English]], and some [[other ]] [[languages]], two different [[concepts ]] [[exist]], with modesty in a sense constituting the positive aspect of shame, when the feeling of [[guilt ]] is transformed into adherence to a socially sanctioned [[ideal]].

The issue of modesty comes up several [[times ]] in Freud's [[work]], as distinct from the issue of shame. First, it appears as an aspect of the [[transference ]] and the [[counter-transference]], from the earliest [[analyses ]] described in "Studies in [[Hysteria]]" (1895d). Indeed, "confidence" is why [[psychoanalysis ]] "invariably leads to the disclosure of the most intimate and [[secret ]] [[psychical ]] events" (p. 265), and the lifting of [[verbal ]] modesty, sometimes accompanied by the gesture of [[touching ]] the forehead, is the paramount condition for the [[patient]]'s unreserved [[speech ]] that is required by the [[fundamental rule]]. Second, the origin of modesty is associated with the anal [[stage]], which cannot be reduced to its [[instinctual ]] localization but instead, as Françoise Dolto underscored, involves, as a [[whole]], motivity and the [[ethic ]] of the relation to [[self]], [[others]], and the [[external ]] [[world]]. It is in this sense that modesty generates a whole series of [[instinct]]-avoidance behaviors, through [[obsessional]]-type [[rituals]]. [[Third]], it is doubly associated with the [[phallus ]] and genitality: On the one hand, it lends consistency to the [[veil ]] of the phallus inasmuch as it is not reducible to the [[genital organs ]] and is only given up in the [[experience ]] of [[symbolic ]] [[castration]]; on the other, it valorizes, by keeping it from being seen, genitality and [[sexual ]] [[difference]], essentially on the [[feminine ]] side. For both [[sexes]], the [[hysterical ]] [[logic ]] of "hiding/showing" is [[present ]] here.

It is essentially with [[regard ]] to [[children]], and then adolescents, that the [[notion ]] of modesty has been examined by [[psychoanalysts ]] and can be dissociated from shame. In children modesty is not pathological except in its excessive, hysterical, or obsessional forms, which are associated with severe shyness or an [[inhibition ]] that affects several [[registers]]. Otherwise, it corresponds to the [[child]]'s way of managing the [[superego ]] and its ego ideals, limiting polymorphous and ordinary [[perversion]]. Dolto clearly showed how [[parents]]' failure to respect the rules of [[family ]] [[life]], in the [[form ]] of slipping into voyeuristic or exhibitionistic behaviors, is by contrast conducive to perversion.

Apart from the issue of the difference in metapsychological and psychogenetic status between shame and modesty, a question raised by the notion of modesty is that of how the anal instinct, the [[phallic ]] [[signifier]], and genitality are articulated together, whereas orality is governed by a different [[moral ]] [[code]]; this is aptly shown in Luis Buñuel's [[film ]] The [[Phantom ]] of Liberty (1974), where the characters gather in a circle to defecate together and hide in the lavatory ("au petit coin") to eat.

One can wonder whether the force of modesty is not directly linked, individually or culturally, to the importance of [[infantile ]] sexual theories [[about ]] the anus, which might persist and become more pronounced, not only for obsessional personalities, in the access to genitality.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]], and [[Breuer]], Josef. (1895d). Studies on hysteria. SE,2.