First Monday of the month, October through May, 7:30 PM
Washington, DC

The overarching frame of reference for this year of study is to deepen our understanding of what has been called the severe neuroses and typically involves the treatment of borderline and dissociative phenomena. We will explore the extent to which an unconscious need to regulate intense affectivity and maintain a sense of self during periods of experiencing severe impingement, attacks on being, play an active role in these clinical categories. There will be seven sessions, one for each chapter in our reference work (Wurmser, L. (2000), The power of the inner judge:Psychodynamic treatment of the severe neuroses, Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson.).

Members who attend this study group will be able to:

  1. Describe how an interpersonal view of shame creates advantages for a psychotherapy that exceed the utility of an intrapersonal view
  2. Describe how right-brain to right-brain interaction fits de Young’s model of shame.
  3. Discuss how deYoung’s theory of shame supports the idea of shame being about a sense of disintegration of self in relation to a dysregulating other.
  4. Describe how a “regulating other” actually behaves in a healthy environment.
  5. Describe the behavior of a dysregulating other and their impact on neurobiological function
  6. Describe the subjective experience of self-disintegration
  7. Discuss the genesis of felt internal harshness from the presence of the “needy self.”
  8. Describe how Bacal’s notion of shame as an affect of discrepancy fits presented casework.
  9. Discuss the advantages of Schore’s idea of attributing the ego ideal to the right brain and conscience to the left brain influences how to work with shame.
  10. Describe how perfectionism and procrastination are related to chronic shame.
  11. Describe how insecure infant attachment patterns contain shame scripts.
  12. Explain how implicit relational knowing holds unformulated narratives of emotional trauma.
  13. Describe how a “shame-free” clinical stance can be approximated.
  14. Explain how chronic shame may best be seen as something to manage rather than cure.
  15. Describe how dissociation influences the subjective experience of shame.
  16. Describe the role of the “not-me” self-state in the interaction between dissociation and shame.