mervin

Don't quote me but I think shyness is a kind of apprehension of others and more like a trait or personal property and shame is part of self as it appears for others. Both have internal and external features but shame seem to correspond to an external standard while shyness to an internal one.

I'll have to think about the semantics here a while. I know it is generally understood that people are "born" introverts or extraverts. Psychology literature, some of which I've edited for a living, says that extraversion and introversion are two of the most clearly inborn, immutable personality traits. They are not subject to conditioning the way other traits are. That's why some people are thrill seekers and others, like me, are "safety posturing" at all costs. Of course, it is a continuum, not binary.

I guess introverts aren't necessarily shy, though. Introverts, rather, are more comfortable by themselves and quickly come to sense that people "drain" them, drain their energy. That isn't the same thing as fear of people, or even apprehesion; it is just a tendency to "turn inward." Maybe what you mean by "shy" is what I think of as "introversion," or "reserve"; whereas, I do fundamentally link "shyness" to feelings of inadequacy, fear of people's judgment.

I think more introverts than extraverts end up being also "shy." Not sure why this would be, except what you said about there being "internal" and "external" features of all terms.

I guess there might be shame-based extraverts, even exhibitionist, too. Then we wouldn't exactly call such creatures "shy." I guess introversion is necessarily, but not sufficient, to make one "shy." Introversion (inborn personality) + shame (conditioning) = shy. That's how I typically use the language, anyway.

Of course, the internal/external distinction is always suspect, theoretically. In graduate school thay taught us that there was no such thing as a "self"--the day after they showed us there was no God. It is funny how automatically we fall into not just Plato's language of inner "self," as if there plainly is such an animal, but Freud's. I do think Freud more deeply influenced modern thought than anyone else--reaching even our subconscious habits of expression.