Peter Shabad

Resentment, indignation, entitlement the transformation of unconscious wish into need

An underlying premise of this paper is that human beings actively and purposefully impose meanings on their experiences of psychic injury and that these meanings then have important implications for character development. Specifically, the paper examines how individuals, in defensive reaction to psychic injury, may repress their “impossible‐to‐fulfill”; wishes, only to find those wishes eventually reborn as needs. In this way, a persons oppressive cruelty to his own wishes gives rise to resentment, indignation, and entitlement, which, in turn, fuel the experience of need. While wish implicitly communicates a request to receive from another, need, with its vicissitudes of demand and urgency, may do violence to the free social discourse of giving and receiving. The interpersonal field of give‐and‐take may be so constrained by the circular compulsivity of mandated giving and entitled needfulness that it is emptied of any spontaneous desire. The differential impact of communicating needs and wishes on the wi...

The Suffering of Passion: Metamorphoses and the Embrace of the Stranger

In this paper I use the concept of the “suffering of passion” to explore how human beings endure personal metamorphoses. I suggest that the affirmation of passion, which is both self-interested and self-surrendering, is necessary in order to embark on the journey from self-sameness to otherness. Inasmuch as this transitional path simultaneously entails the “embrace of the stranger” of ones own growth and of the subjectivity of another person, the suffering of passion is both a developmental and ethical achievement. The mutual interchange of giving and receiving, mediated by gratitude and generosity, inspires the passion necessary to construct a relational bridge of conscience from self-sameness to otherness. When the mutuality of giving and receiving breaks down, shame may lead to the negation and disowning of ones passion. The resulting inversion of passion into passivity may then culminate in a narcissistic loyalty to “ones own kind.” A case vignette of a young man is presented to illustrate the difficulty of suffering the passion of ones own growth.

The Dignity of Creating: The Patient's Contribution to the “Reachable Enough” Analyst

Through the defining power of words, the phrase “difficult-to-reach” patient reflects the extent to which the analyst inverts the patients will to change and makes the analyst the subjective agent of treatment progress. If making a constructive contribution to another persons life engenders a sense of creative agency, the traditional dichotomies of analyst/helper who gives and an empty patient who receives may not be useful. I trace the evolution of a 23-year-long psychotherapy from a parent–child dynamic through to more uncertain relational terrain in order to illustrate how the analysts own evolution may have clashed with the patients ambivalence toward change and endings. I raise questions of how the dignity of making a creative contribution to the “reachable enough” analysts life may enable the patient to work through gratitude, attain a sense of belonging, and terminate with good conscience.

Beyond Determinism and Self-Blame

Abstract In this paper, the author asks the fundamental question, “Must developmental understanding mean that we do away with the notion of personal agency?” As human animals who are aware of our mortality, we have the freedom and responsibility “to choose ourselves in action” before we die. The author explores the underlying dynamics of the freedom to choose as an alternative to the strange bedfellows of developmental determinism and self-blame. Psychic determinism and its clinical correlate of empathy for the patients sense of being victimized by past experiences may collude with the patients need to disown actions targeted by self-ridicule. The dynamic of “feeling sorry for oneself is used to illustrate the difference between the disavowal resulting from the incurred shame of harsh self-blame and the integration that results from understanding the unconscious sources of ones self-pity. Understanding helps transform the potentiality of unconscious intentionality into the actuality of a freedom to choose oneself. The author concludes that it is important for analysts to supplement analytic empathy with a respect for the patients freedom of self-determination.

To Expose or to Cover Up

Abstract This paper explores various implications of our shared human vulnerability as mortal beings. The degree to which we are open to or are closed off to our vulnerabilities has a profound effect on whether we address the ultimate frailty of human suffering with compassion or ruthlessness. The author considers how the “existential shame” of our helplessness before death is paralleled by the sense of shameful exposure we feel when being rebuffed by significant figures in our life. As a result of many experiences of rejected vulnerability, human beings tend to defensively cover up their vulnerabilities by using the state of being self-conscious as a means of bracing for disappointment. The state of being self-conscious is informed by a “morality of survival,” in which strength is good and weakness is bad. The morality of survival is a retroactive morality in which good and bad depend on the success or failure of outcome. The author then explores how the attempt to cover up ones shame as an individual may lead to conformity and the construction of social hierarchies between “us” and “them.” The author emphasizes the clinical importance of helping patients confront the shames they most fear. Finally, in contrast to the fear-based morality of survival, the author proposes an ethic of mutuality based on the interdependent acknowledgment of human frailties and the wish to be of compassionate use to another.

Will You Miss Me When I Am Gone? Death and Our Significance to Others: A Discussion of Frommer’s “Death Is Nothing at All”

In this discussion of Martin Stephen Frommer’s admirable project to fill in the gap in Freud’s thinking with regard to death anxiety I critique Frommer’s emphasis on what minds need from other minds to confront death as overly cerebral. When viewed from within the embodied, emotional immediacy of our subjectivity, there is validity in dreading the transition from something to nothing. To help us overcome our fear of becoming nothing, we must feel that our offerings have been internalized as significant contributions in the hearts and memories of others so that we are remembered when we are gone. In the treatment with Karen, Frommer’s generous personal accessibility allowed Karen to feel reborn as a significant presence in his life and thereby helped modify her extreme fear of death.

Everyone Must Get a Turn: From Omnipotence to Respect for Otherness: Reply to Commentary

In my response to Altmans commentary concerning the ubiquitous messiness of conflict, I suggest that since human meaning-making and fulfillment are rooted in experiences of suffering, loss, and limitation, change itself may be suffused with inherent conflict. I further explicate how the dialectic between continuity and change in growth often degenerates into the mutually exclusive categories of self-sameness and “otherness”. The omnipotent tendency of imperialistic self-extension may then also conflict with the subjectivity of others to “take their own turn.” Finally, I elaborate on the importance of the patient working through the trade-offs inherent in what Altman refers to as the “suffering of confusion.”

To Live Before Dying: Commentary on Paper by Anthony Bass

In this commentary, I discuss Anthony Basss humane, courageous article about the unconscious connection between analyst and analysand. His focus on the meeting of unconscious minds lends a refreshingly democratic tilt to the treatment relationship. His primary emphasis on the unconscious, however, seems to de-emphasize the vital role of consciousness and its capacity to engage the revelations of the unconscious. Similarly, Basss theoretical focus on a fundamental underlying unity, though of great significance, seems to minimize the importance of separateness and the fact that the analyst and analysand have discrepant experiences. Basss treatment of Ralph, a patient with terminal cancer, highlights the differences in the experiences of both participants as well as the underlying human frailties they have in common. In this light, I suggest that Ralphs relationship with Bass enabled him to “live before dying,” to separate and gain a sense of integrity before returning to the whole.