Self-beration

However, this self-beration had little effect on her eyes as, with a will of their own, they touched on the curve of his lips.

There are a few things that I have always found helpful when I am reflecting upon where I am, without it degenerating into a futile exercise in narcissistic navel-gazing or self-beration.

Writing in a post-Waterloo culture that repudiated the trappings of usurping authority and revolutionary time, Austen depicts Sir Walter as the perfect example of a subject born out of ressentiment, affectively retreading the ground of the past with an impotent self-beration that props up his calcified sense of prestige.