How does trauma shape the way we see ourselves—and what happens when the shame that follows becomes turned inward?
In this full-day program, Peter Shabad, PhD, will explore the powerful role of self-shaming in the aftermath of trauma and its impact on emotional life, relationships, and the therapeutic process. Drawing connections between shame, self-doubt, resentment, envy, and the search for certainty, Dr. Shabad will also examine the important distinction between guilt and shame and consider how shame may contribute to the appeal of authoritarianism.
Turning to clinical practice, Dr. Shabad will consider psychological symptoms as a non-verbal means of communicating and memorializing traumatic experience. He will explore the ethics of countertransference and the importance of preserving the patient's agency, freedom of self-determination, and capacity for self-healing.
The program will conclude by considering mourning as a vital process of self-acceptance—one that allows previously dissociated wishes and hopes to be acknowledged and integrated. Through this process, the possibility emerges not simply to recover from trauma, but to reclaim the freedom to become.
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 and he is on the 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’s most recent book Passion, Shame, and The Freedom To Become: Seizing The Vital Moment In Psychoanalysis (2024) was published by Routledge.
When
November 14th, 2026 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM
