Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma Concepts and Psychotherapy

Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma is a guide to recognizing the many ways shame and pride lie at the heart of psychotherapy with survivors of relational trauma. In these pages, readers learn how to differentiate shame and pride as emotional processes and traumatic mind/body states. They will also discover how understanding the psychodynamic and phenomenological relationships between shame, pride, and dissociation benefit psychotherapy with relational trauma. Next, readers are introduced to fifteen attitudes, principles, and concepts that guide this work from a transtheoretical perspective. Therapists will learn about ways to conceptualize and successfully navigate complex, patient-therapist shame dynamics, and apply neuroscientific findings to this challenging work. Finally, readers will discover how the concept and phenomena of pro-being pride, that is delighting in one's own and others' unique aliveness, helps patients transcend maladaptive shame and pride and experience greater unity within, with others, and with the world beyond.

1. Shame, Pride, and Relational Trauma: What Are They and Why Do They Matter in Psychotherapy? 2. Shame and Pride: Subtypes and Processes 3. Shame, Pride, Mind/Body Leave Taking, and Structural Dissociation: Psychodynamics, Phenomenology, and Psychotherapy 4. Setting the Stage: Transtheoretical Attitudes, Principles, and Concepts When Working with Shame and Pride in Psychotherapy with Relational Trauma 5.Psychotherapy with Patient, Therapist, and Dyadic Shame States: Traumatic Reactions, Therapeutic Responses, and Transformation 6. From Shame to Pride: Psychotherapy, Neuroscience, and Applications—Three Perspectives 7.Shame State to a Core Way of Being: Beyond Pro-being Pride to Radiant Joy, Grief, Integration, and Oneness

Ken Benau, PhD, has aprivate practice in psychotherapy, consultation, and training in the San Francisco Bay Area.