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Trauma, Identity, and Development - Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP (Webinar live online)
2025 Grand Rounds Series
The most destructive force waylaying development in children comes from failures in mourning that leave parents unreliably available to attend to the needs of the child, the type of small-t trauma that impedes growth. Parental failures invite overwhelming experiences of helplessness that become precursors for later feelings of shame, humiliation and alienation. As Symington (1993) notes: “Narcissism is nearly always the product of trauma” (p. 73).
In his early work, Freud was not thinking about trauma but rather theorizing about how we move from a preliminary self-focus towards appreciating our inherent need for others that underlies both resilience and the capacity to care. That capacity, as Winnicott highlights, requires our ability to stand as a separate self in relation to others who can also keep their own grounding.
Recent psychoanalytic explorations shift from ideas of primary narcissism to focus on Freud’s later ideas regarding life and death drives, distinguishing between libidinal and destructive aspects. Whereas the libidinal focus is on humiliation at dependence, the destructive focus is on envy. Destructive envy can be highly organized and difficult to discern, presenting particular clinical challenges because any change is seen as weakness, and resisted. Maintaining the self-idealization requires vigilance and deception.
Narcissism has become a catch-all phrase, referring to an almost sociopathic lack of care. The psychoanalytic literature, however, helps us distinguish between individuals who lead with their grandiosity and those who lead with their vulnerability. Whether the presentation is libidinal or aggressive, narcissistically-organized individuals pose particular problems in the treatment because of their difficulty in tolerating or even imagining an actual relationship with the analyst as a separate person because of the threat to their own subjectivity. Clinical illustrations will highlight some of the complexities of working with individuals whose development has been waylaid by the trauma of insufficient parental attunement.
Target Audience
______ Introductory X_____ Intermediate ______ Advanced
Learning Objectives
- Participants will be able to describe one reason why narcissistic individuals may be more difficult to work with than those diagnosed as borderline.
- Participants will be able to describe clinical benefit of linking narcissism with early parental failures.
- Participants will be able to describe one way in which Sirois’ notion of “interpretations that touch” may be clinically useful in working with narcissistic individuals.
Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP, is a psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Austen Riggs Center, co-chair of the Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society (APCS) and scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council. Affiliations include the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, Universidad de Monterrey, Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, and Harvard Medical School. Research interests include creativity, metacognition, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, and the impact of devaluation on women and other marginalized groups. A contributing editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society and a member of several editorial boards, Marilyn is actively engaged in mentoring future generations of psychoanalytic scholars, clinicians, and researchers. Marilyn is also a mother and grandmother, and an artist and a poet, aspects of self that inform her practice, writing, and mentoring. She has presented her work nationally and internationally, publishing more than 150 articles and book chapters and six books: Patterns: Building Blocks of Experience; Constructing Realities: Transformations Through Myth and Metaphor; Learning from Experience: a Guidebook for Clinicians; Working with Trauma: Lessons from Bion and Lacan; Psychoanalysis and Literature: The Stories We Live; and, most recently, Echoes of Trauma: Meaning and Identity in Psychoanalysis. She has also published five edited volumes: Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis; Fragments of Trauma and the Social Production of Suffering (with Michael O’Loughlin); Women and Psychosis and Women and the Psychosocial Construction of Madness (with Marie Brown); and The Importance of Play in Early Childhood Education: Psychoanalytic, Attachment, and Developmental Perspectives (with Jill Bellinson).
Austen Riggs Center Inc. adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Medical Education. All those at Austen Riggs Center involved in the planning of this activity, including the presenter(s) listed above, report they have no relevant financial relationships with an ineligible company*.
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are those of the presenter(s) and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Austen Riggs Center.
* An ineligible company is any entity whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients.
Available Credit
- 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
ACCME - As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for a maximum of 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
- 1.00 APA
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc. designates this learning activity for 1.00 continuing education credit(s) (CE) for psychology. Continuing Education (CE) credits for psychologists are provided through the co-sponsorship of the American Psychological Association (APA) Office of Continuing Education in Psychology (CEP). The APA CEP Office maintains responsibility for the content of the programs.
Austen Riggs Center, Inc. is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0115.
- 1.00 ASWB-ACE
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, The Austen Riggs Center, Inc is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organization, not individual courses, are approved under this program. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. Austen Riggs Center maintains responsibility for this. Social workers completing this Online live will receive 1.00 continuing education credit(s).
Austen Riggs Center, Inc is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0843.
- 1.00 Contact Hours/ ParticipationA certificate of attendance for all Learners.