Peter Shabad, Ph.D.
Seizing The Vital Moment: Passion, Shame, and the Freedom To Become
In this course we will explore how traumatic and chronically disillusioning experiences have profoundly inhibiting effects on the passion necessary to grow and change throughout life. We will devote special attention to how human beings transform their traumatic experiences outside of their control into shameful failures, in which they “blame the victim” in themselves for being a victim. After describing how the “intimate creation” of one’s unique constellation of symptoms is a means of both communicating and memorializing such traumatic experiences, we will examine how shame leads to character passivity and interrelated dynamics such as self-pity, resentment, entitlement, envy, perverse spite, and regret. Finally, we will discuss how the mourning process of accepting and reintegrating one’s shamed desires paradoxically facilitates the generosity of relinquishing the necessity that those desires be fulfilled.
Upcoming Events
After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People
Michael Geruso, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at Austin
Katy Milkman, Ph.D.
James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
ON ZOOM
Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours
Corinne Low, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Jessica Calarco, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
ON ZOOM
Mastery: Why Deeper Learning is Essential in an Age of Distraction
Tony Wagner, Ed.D.
Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and bestselling author
Ulrik Juul Christensen, MD
Chief Strategist at the Area9 Group
Fernande Raine, Ph.D.
Historian, Social Entrepreneur, and Founder and Co-Lead of History Co:Lab
ON ZOOM