Owing and Being Owed: Shame and Responsibility Toward The Other

 

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE ONLINE ONLY (via ZOOM)

In the aftermath of relational disruptions to giving of oneself and being received, shame inverts the passionate movement of responsibility toward and for others into an enclosed self-focused preoccupation. Through the filter of omnipotence and omniscience, shame transforms the helplessness of one’s suffering into punishment and fault. Self-shaming becomes paradoxically intertwined with self-pity, which then eventually leads to resentment and the entitlement of feeling owed, which is contrasted with the remorseful guilt that leads to a sense of owing others. Since a patient’s curiosity about the person of the therapist reflects an attempt to emerge from shame and take responsibility for what she comes to discover and know, it is of crucial importance that the therapist responds respectfully and actively engages that curiosity on a democratic rather than hierarchical basis.
 

When

Saturday, March 11, 2023 - 9:00am to 11:00am

CEUs

2

Cost

$40 general; $20 SDPC members and candidates; $20 students

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.