The article seeks to present a contextualization about the notion of shame from a psychoanalytic reading, approaching from the theories realized by Freud to the debate about the presence of the affection of the shame next to the symptoms of suffering in the contemporaneity. For this, this study discusses ideas of Freud and contemporary authors, seeking to articulate the notion of shame along with their social function in traditional and
contemporary societies, and to establish sharpness to the notion of shame - discussing their approximations and distances in relation to the affection of the fault. From the debate held among the authors, it has been shown that the perspectives that theorize about shame discuss it under the transition from the conflict between what is allowed or forbidden - in modern societies - to the dilemma between what is possible and what is impossible - in contemporary societies. Among this passage, shame is understood primarily as a force that represses the sexual drives or as a form of social disintegration in a context of decline of symbolic authority, as opposed to guilt - which had in traditional societies a value of social integration
