Daniel Shaw
Daniel Shaw, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and in Nyack, New York. 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.
Biography
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. Shaw's next book, entitled Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear, was published by Routledge in 2022.Education
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Northwestern U., B.S. in Speech, 1973; Yeshiva U., MSW, 1996
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Psychoanalysis; Relational Psychoanalysis; Traumatic narcissism; trauma and dissociation; Complex-PTSD; Post-cult trauma and recovery
Personal Interests
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My son and my daughter, music, jazz, Bach, film history, good food, cultivating my own garden and birding.
Websites
Books
Articles
Shame and Self-Alienation: A Trauma-Informed Psychoanalytic Perspective
Published: Sep 18, 2023 by Psychoanalytic Inquiry
Authors: Daniel Shaw LCSW
Self-alienation is an expression of deeply internalized shame. The self-alienated individual feels trapped, imprisoned by shame. Psychotherapy patients with significant relational trauma typically reveal a persistent internal battle against self-doubt, self-condemnation, and often self-loathing. They are referencing shameful fears and beliefs about themselves that are born from problematic attachment and developmental experiences.
Make Someone Happy
Published: Oct 13, 2020 by Psychoanalytic Perspectives
Authors: Shaw, D.
The balance of giving and receiving in social relationships, with each person knowing they can rely on the other when in need, is partly what makes a relationship durable and enduring. This principle applies as well to the therapeutic relationship, even though mutuality in psychoanalysis involves its own uniquely complicated dynamic of giving and taking. This paper explores the ways that learning and growing takes place both for therapist and patient in the course of psychoanalytic work.
On the therapeutic action of analytic love
Published: Oct 23, 2013 by Contemporary Psychoanalysis
Authors: Shaw, D.
Psychoanalysis provides a ritualized setting for a process that encourages the development of the analysand's intimate awareness of himself. In the process, analyst and analysand inevitably and necessarily become intimately involved with each other, intellectually and emotionally. At the heart of this endeavor, I believe, for both analyst and analysand, is a search for love, for the sense of being lovable, for the remobilization of thwarted capacities to give love and to receive love.
Enter Ghosts
Published: Jan 01, 2010 by Psychoanalytic Dialogues
Authors: Shaw, D.
This paper examines the relationship between narcissism and intersubjectivity through the lens of clinical work with adult children of pathologically narcissistic parents. The paper focuses on the interpersonal dynamics of narcissism, which are conceptualized as “the pathological narcissist’s relational system,” describing the need to establish complementarity in relationships through coercive projective processes, and through the adoption of the “complementary moral defense.”