The purpose of this learning experience is to integrate a conceptual framework of chronic shame with each individual’s very personal templates of childhood shame and helplessness. More specifically, to explore how each participant’s projected images of death and favorite/least favorite animals reveal a personal template of shame and helplessness that is often covered up in the necessity to grown up.
Dr. Shabad will begin by briefly describing how the origins of chronic shame emerge from chronic experiences of rejected vulnerability at the hands of one’s parents. These cumulative experiences of trauma may be viewed as the psychic loss of a physically present parent, in which one’s expectant hope for a wished-for parent is continually frustrated by the actuality of the real parent. The chronic experiences of hope and disappointments are demoralizing sources of shame and often covered over in the necessity of developing the hard defensive armor of becoming an adult.
He will then present exploratory research I have conducted over 40 years in regard to projected images of death. These images consist of one’s personification of death, specific fears of death, and specific wishful fantasies of dying. We also would attempt to discern one’s deep-seated wishes and fears by speaking about one’s favorite animals and least favorite animals. We will then explore how one’s particular fears would reveal idiosyncratic, developmental templates of shame and helplessness formed in the wake of one’s childhood experiences of psychic loss of a physically present parent.
When
Zoom meeting
Virtual Only - Link will be emailed 24 hours in advance of event.
Questions contact
CEUs
Cost
Educational Objective(s)
- 1) At the end of the presentation, participants will be be able to describe how traumatic themes emerge from chronic childhood experiences of trauma and shame.
- 2) At the end of the presentation, participants will be able to describe how their fears and wishes with regard are dictated by their own individualized histories of trauma and shame.
- 3) At the end of the presentation, participants will be able to describe how adult character is meant to cover up and counter childhood experiences of trauma and shame.
Presenter Information
Peter Shabad, PhD is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University Medical School. He is on the Teaching and Supervising Faculty of the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis (CCP) and the Teaching and Supervising Faculty of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis.
He is also Supervising and Training Analyst at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis He is an Associate Editor on the Editorial Board of Psychoanalytic Dialogues. Dr. Shabad is co-editor of The Problem of Loss and Mourning: Psychoanalytic Perspectives (IUP, 1989) and is the author of Despair and the Return of Hope: Echoes of Mourning in Psychotherapy (Aronson, 2001). Dr. Shabad is currently working on a new book entitled Seizing The Vital Moment: Passion, Shame, and Mourning to be published by Routledge.