This volume combines empirical research-based and theoretical perspectives on shame in cultural contexts and from socio-culturally different perspectives, providing new insights and a more comprehensive cultural base for contemporary research and practice in the context of shame. It examines shame from a positive psychology perspective, from the angle of defining the concept as a psychological and cultural construct, and with regard to practical perspectives on shame across cultures.  The volume provides sound foundations for researchers and practitioners to develop new models, therapies and counseling practices to redefine and re-frame shame in a way that leads to strength, resilience and empowerment of the individual.

Elisabeth Vanderheiden, pedagogue, theologian, mediator, managing director of the Catholic Adult Education Rhineland-Palatinate and the federal chairman of the Catholic Adult Education Germany. She has published articles in the context of vocational qualifications, in particular qualification of teachers and trainers, as well as current topics of general, vocational and civic education and intercultural opening processes.

Claude-Hélène Mayer is an adjunct professor at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and a Senior Research Associate at the Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. She has published several monographs, text collections, journal articles and special issues on mental health and well-being, conflict management and mediation in transcultural contexts, health-related and well-being and women in leadership.

Chapter 1. An Introduction to the Value of Shame: Exploring a Health Resource Across Cultures (Vanderheiden).- Part I. Theoretical Perspectives on Shame and Culture.- Chapter 2. Shame! A System Psychodynamic Perspective (May).- Chapter 3. Shame as a Functional and Adaptive Emotion: A Bio-psycho-social Perspective (Van Alphen).- Chapter 4. The Positive Function of Shame: Moral and Spiritual Perspectives (Ryan).- Part II. Culture-specific Perspectives on Shame.- Chapter 5. lajjA in Indian Psychology: Spiritual, Social, and Literary Perspectives on Shame (Bhawuk).- Chapter 6. Shame in South African Work Places (Mayer).- Chapter 7. Canada/North America: Shame Between Indigenous Nature-connectedness, Colonialism and Cultural Disconnection (Buch).- Chapter 8. Indigenous Australians: Shame and Respect (Louth).- Chapter 9. Shame and Resilience: A New Zealand Based Exploration of Resilient Responses to Shame (Brennan).- Chapter 10. From Shame to Guilt: The Remediation of Bullying Across Cultures in the US (Merkin).- Part III. The Application of Shame and Culture in Therapeutic and Counseling Practices.- Chapter 11. Shame and Psychotherapy: Theory, Method and Practice (Sinha).