Saturday, May 22, 2021
10:00PM – 12:30PM
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. Even when suicidal ideation or planning is not present, a patient with a traumatic developmental history may often be devaluing life less explicitly. He is going on living against underlying currents of apathy, self-denigration and despair. A very persistent part of him holds traumatic experiences, at some level of dissociation, of having felt negated: unrecognized, annihilated, hated, abandoned – maybe all of the above. The part of him that wants to go on living repeatedly collapses into a belief that the hope of sustaining any sense of goodness is all in vain. This kind of self-alienation, with or without overt suicidality, is ubiquitous. Its recognition and treatment are central to the therapeutic project. The therapist’s role in supporting the patient to develop self-reflective and self-regulating capacities is crucial in helping patients make use of their internal healing and self-consoling resources.
Location:
Virtual, via Zoom
(Meeting link will be e-mailed to registered participants on the day of the event)
Daniel Shaw, LCSW is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and in Nyack, New York; and Faculty and Supervisor at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. His papers have appeared in Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and Psychoanalytic Dialogues, and his book, Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation, was published in 2014 by Routledge for the Relational Perspectives Series and nominated for the distinguished Gradiva Award. A second book, Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fearwill be available later this year. In 2018, Dan received the Margaret Thaler Singer Award for his work on advancing the understanding of coercive persuasion and undue influence.
Peter Kaufmann, Ph.D is faculty and supervisor at IPSS and co-coordinator of the IPSS four -year program. He has a particular interest in comparative psychoanalysis and in efforts to integrate the clinical approaches and sensibilities represented by different theoretical perspectives. He also has published several papers including “The Guilt of Tragic Man”, “Working with Men Who Please Too Much”, and “On Transforming the Reparative Quest” that reflect his additional interest in the topics of mourning and pathological accommodation. Along with Jenny Kaufmann, he has written recent papers, Emerging from the Shadows of Parental Narcissism, We have Met the Enemy and It Is Us and A Battle Cry for Our Moment: Revisiting the Two Analyses of Mr. Z., that explore the clinical issues and process involved in working with the effects of traumatic narcissism.
2.5 Continuing Education Credits for Social Workers & LMHC’s