Taking profound issue with the contemporary tendency towards public display and exposure of things once kept private, Carl Schneider draws support from such thinkers as Nietzsche, Freud and Sartre in this defence of the human personality's need for privacy. Indeed, he argues, the sense of shame is an important resource in our journey towards maturity. Far from being an impediment to self-realization, healthy shame emerges from Schneider's analysis as one of the distinguishing marks of our very humanity. Schneider's case for the preservation of privacy in our lives integrates ideas from anthropology, biology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and theology, and covers a range of topics including covering and exposure; love and sex; shame and death; and Freud's treatment of shame.