LAMB, Sharon 1955-

PERSONAL: Born September 11, 1955, in Chicago, IL; daughter of Tracy (a theatre owner) and Martha (a homemaker) Lamb; married Paul Orgel (a pianist); children: Willy, Julian. Education: Lawrence University, B.A., 1977; Harvard University, Ed.M., 1980, Ed. D., 1988.

ADDRESSES: Home—56 Dorset Hill Lane, Shelburne, VT 05482. Office—The Creamery, Box 367, Shelburne Rd., Shelburne, VT 05482; Dept. of Psychology, St. Michael's College, Colchester, VT 05439. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Clinical psychologist. Melrose-Mindoro High School, WI, English teacher, 1977-78; Greater Lawrence Mental Health Center, Lawrence, MA, intern, 1980; Greenhouse, Inc., intern, 1980-81; Cambridgeport Problem Center, psychotherapist, 1981; Massachusetts General Hospital, clinical fellow, evaluator, 1982-88; Mt. Ida Junior College, Newton, MA, lecturer, 1984-85; Judge Baker Children's Center, MA, psychologist, 1988-89; Boston Institute for Psychotherapy, Boston, MA, instructor, 1989; Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, assistant professor of psychology, 1989-96; Child Study Institute, psychologist, 1989-96; Network of Victim Assistance, consulting psychologist, 1993—; St. Michael's College, Colchester, VT, associate professor, 1996—; Creamery Associates (private practice), 1998—.

MEMBER: American Psychological Association (fellow of Division 35), American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Association for Moral Education (board member, 1998-2001), American Orthopsychiatry Association, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Science Foundation fellowship, 1982; grants from MacArthur Foundation, 1985, Bryn Mawr College, 1990-92, and St. Michael's College, 1998-2000; Pew Award, 1991.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Jerome Kagan) The Emergence of Morality in Young Children, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1987.

The Trouble with Blame: Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1996.

(Editor and contributor) New Versions of Victims: Feminists Struggle with the Concept, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

The Secret Lives of Girls: The Real Feelings of Young Girls about Sex, Violence, Peer Pressure, and Morality, Free Press (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor, with Jeffrie G. Murphy) Before Forgiving: Cautionary Views of Forgiveness in Psychotherapy, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Member of editorial board of American Journal of Orthopsychiatry; contributor of articles to newspapers, including Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times. Contributor of articles and reviews to journals, including Society, Feminism and Psychology, Psycholinguistics, Child Development Abstracts, Contemporary Psychology, Journal of Moral Education, Early Education and Development, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, American Psychologist, Psychology of Women Quarterly, and Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Contributor to books, including Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development, Volume 2: Research, edited by W. Kurtines and J. Gewirtz, Erlbaum (Hillsdale, NJ), 1991; Introduction to Moral Development, edited by J. Gewirtz and W. Kurtines, Allyn and Bacon (New York, NY), 1995, and Moral Education and Moral Development: Recent Theoretical and Empirical Approaches, edited by W. Van Haaften, 1999.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book on girl culture with Lyn Mikel Brown; work on the development of remorse in juveniles.

SIDELIGHTS: Sharon Lamb is a psychologist who specializes in issues related to women, children, adolescents, families, and abuse. She is the author or editor of a number of books, including The Emergence of Morality in Young Children, which she coedited with Jerome Kagan. Sciences writer Larry Nucci commented that the volume "examines the entire range of scientific theories on moral development."

The Trouble with Blame: Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility is divided into six chapters, titled "Who Is to Blame," "Victims," "Perpetrators," "Onlookers," "The Making of Perpetrators and Victims," and "Forgiveness and Punishment." Lamb argues that "the large majority of perpetrators had enough free will not to do what they did, and, more controversially … more than a few victims also had enough free choice to make their self-blame, at times, reasonable."

Robert I. Simon wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association that Lamb "displays considerable courage in taking on those who promote the position that a victim of abuse is always blameless. This line of thinking may lead an abused individual to accept a lifelong role of passivity and victimhood. … Victims often blame themselves and often excessively. Perpetrators are well-known for not accepting responsibility for their actions by blaming others or society."

As Mary P. Koss wrote in Signs, Lamb argues that "the crux of the problem is that people generally do not think of violence toward women or children as cruelty and instead focus too exclusively on violated rights and blameworthiness. Viewing the acts of perpetrators as cruelty would encourage them to face their own lack of empathy and heartless self-centeredness." Social Work's Cynthia Loveland-Cook wrote that "some readers may experience feelings of outrage at some of Lamb's conclusions about blame and responsibility. However, she provides readers with an opportunity to determine for themselves the foundation underlying her arguments and to draw their own conclusions."

Ethics contributor Lawrence Blum noted that in The Trouble with Blame, Lamb "brings together an extraordinary amount of empirical and theoretical material on these matters. At the same time, Lamb's own argument is extremely interesting in its own right, and is set in an overall context informed by philosophical writers on these topics. … Finally, The Trouble with Blame is exceptionally well-written and free of jargon." Blum concluded by saying that "Lamb stakes out a very subtle and nuanced feminist position on the concrete issues of sexual victimization, as well as on the more philosophical terrain of free will and determinism. Philosophers and anyone interested in either of these two sorts of concerns, would do well to avail themselves of the riches of The trouble with Blame."

In New Versions of Victims: Feminists Struggle with the Concept, which Lamb edited in 1999, contributors deal with the more complex issues of victimization. An Adolescence reviewer said the volume "offers a critical analysis of popular debates."

In writing The Secret Lives of Girls: The Real Feelings of Young Girls about Sex, Violence, Peer Pressure, and Morality, called an "excellent sociological study" by Library Journal's Linda Beck, Lamb interviewed more than 125 women and girls in twentyfive states, nearly one fourth of whom are black or Latina. What she found was that preteen girls who have traditionally been thought of as complacent and sweet, experience aggressive and sexual feelings, anger, and competitiveness which they often act out in secret. White girls, for example, abuse their Barbie dolls and take part in sexual games. Girls of all types who swear, engage in mischief, and use domination of siblings to vent their aggressiveness are satisfying their need for power. Lamb argues that these feelings and acts should be openly channeled into other behaviors, thereby alleviating guilt, improving self-image, and helping girls reach their full potential. Two chapters for parents are titled "Raising Sexual Girls" and "Raising Aggressive Girls."

"Parents seeking to understand how to talk to their daughters about sexuality, power, or ways to deal with anger will learn much here," said a Publishers Weekly reviewer of the book. Booklist's Gillian Engberg felt that "it's the personal, provocative experiences of The Secret Lives of Girls that will draw readers and spark debate."

Lamb and Jeffrie G. Murphy are editors of Before Forgiving: Cautionary Views of Forgiveness in Psychotherapy, a volume that asks why forgiveness is so often stressed as part of therapy and whether there are circumstances when forgiveness may not be helpful to the patient.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Bar Association Journal, April, 1996, Paul Reidinger, review of The Trouble with Blame, p. 98.

Adolescence, fall, 2001, review of New Versions of Victims: Feminists Struggle with the Concept, p. 624.

Booklist, February 15, 2002, Gillian Engberg, review of The Secret Lives of Girls: The Real Feelings of Young Girls about Sex, Violence, Peer Pressure, and Morality, p. 973.

Ethics, April, 1989, Owen Flanagan, review of The Emergence of Morality in Young Children, pp. 644-647; January, 1997, Lawrence Blum, review of The Trouble with Blame: Victims, Perpetrators, and Responsibility, p. 376.

Federal Probation, September, 1996, David D. Noce, review of The Trouble with Blame, p. 85.

Feminist Legal Studies, August, 2001, Katherine Doolin, review of The Trouble with Blame, pp. 195-197.

Journal of the American Medical Association, July 17, 1996, Robert I. Simon, review of The Trouble with Blame, p. 252.

Library Journal, March 1, 2002, Linda Beck, review of The Secret Lives of Girls, p. 126.

New York Law Journal, October 22, 1996, Joan Ullman, review of The Trouble with Blame, p. 2.

O, March, 2002, Cathleen Medwick, "The Trouble with Being Good," p. 132.

Publishers Weekly, January 28, 2002, review of The Secret Lives of Girls, p. 279.

Sciences, July-August, 1989, Larry Nucci, review of The Emergence of Morality in Young Children, pp. 46-53.

Signs, winter, 1999, Mary P. Koss, review of The Trouble with Blame, p. 532.

Social Work, May, 1998, Cynthia Loveland-Cook, review of The Trouble with Blame, p. 286.