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Healing the Self-Alienation of Traumatized Patients
May 15, 2022 @ 11:00 am - 1:30 pm
Healing the Self-Alienation of Traumatized Patients
Description: 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. A very persistent part of these patients holds traumatic experiences of having felt negated: unrecognized, annihilated, hated, etc., and in response, these patients have become alienated from themselves. Recognition of this self-alienation is 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-affirming resources.
Daniel Shaw, LCSW is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and in Nyack, New York. Originally trained as an actor at Northwestern University and with the renowned teacher Uta Hagen in New York City, Shaw later worked as a missionary for an Indian guru. His eventual recognition of cultic aspects of this organization led him to become an outspoken activist in support of individuals and families traumatically abused in cults. Simultaneous with leaving this group, Shaw began his training in the mental health profession, becoming a faculty member and supervisor at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies in New York. He has published papers in Psychoanalytic Inquiry, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and Psychoanalytic Dialogues. In 2014 his book, Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation, was published for the Relational Perspectives Series by Routledge, and was nominated for the distinguished Gradiva Award. In 2018, the International Cultic Studies Association awarded him the Margaret Thaler Singer Award for advancing the understanding of coercive persuasion and undue influence.
