Psychoanalyst Private Practice Nyack, NY, United States
Assumptions therapists make about the value of life are challenged when a patient proclaims the wish or the intention to be dead, or expresses bitter resentment for not having had a choice about being born. Some patients are less overtly suicidal, going on living against underlying currents of apathy, self-denigration, and despair. Very persistent parts of these patients hold traumatic experiences of having felt negated: unrecognized, annihilated, hated, made to feel overwhelmed and powerless; in response, these patients have become afflicted with shame. Shame has received a lot of attention in post-Freudian psychoanalysis, as theorists recognized that guilt, which was what interested Freud, differs from shame in important ways.
The concept of self-alienation, especially as elaborated by Janina Fisher, is inextricably linked to shame but is less familiar to analysts, because it is connected not to Freud and his lineage, but to trauma research and the clinical approaches of traumatologists, many of whom find a theoretical forbear not in Freud but in the re-discovered work of Pierre Janet, the early pioneer in dissociation studies. Shaw will explain the symbiotic relationship between shame and self-alienation
Shaw developed the concept of the traumatizing narcissist's relational system of subjugation as a means to help victims of relational trauma better understand the crushing power of highly narcissistic significant others. Victims of traumatizing narcissists have been intimidated, belittled and humiliated. The shame they internalize binds them to the narcissist; it also clings to them when they leave the abusive relationship. Shaw will review this theory with clinical examples demonstrating the therapeutic effectiveness of helping clients understand these dynamics. Working with adult children of traumatizing narcissists, and with others who experience narcissistic abuse, Shaw's way of working with these clients shifted as he began to study and integrate concepts and techniques from some of the contemporary traumatologists. What he has learned has led Shaw to place problems with self-alienation, a condition largely governed by shame, at the center of the therapeutic endeavor. Shaw will give clinical examples of his work with clients struggling with self-alienation that demonstrate his way of integrating trauma theories and a relational psychoanalytic perspective.
Learning Objectives:
At the conclusion of this session participants will be able to:
define self-alienation and describe how it relates to shame
explain the traumatizing narcissist's relational system of subjugation
compare the therapeutic action in psychoanalysist to the therapeutic action in trauma work
Participants will be able utlilize therapeutic approaches to healing self-alienation
Participants will identify the persecutory and the protective functions of shame