From Shame to Human Agency and Responsibility: A Review of Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear By Daniel Shaw: Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear, edited by Shaw, Daniel (2021),  Routledge: New York,  156 pages.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to review Daniel Shaw’s book Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear. In this book, Shaw follows up on the themes that he explored in his first volume, Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation. Here, Shaw extends his thinking on the sources of traumatic narcissism, and focuses more specifically on relational processes in clinical work with individuals who grew up with traumatically narcissistic parents.

One of the things I admire most about this book is Shaw’s devotion to openness and transparency. Shaw greatly values transparency in his clinical work, and his writing style is straightforward, personal, and totally accessible. He writes with admirable openness about the trajectory of his own life as well. When he describes his clinical work, he spells out clearly why he works with patients in the ways that he does. He obviously prizes openness, and conveys integrity by saying what he means and meaning what he says.

Given that one of Shaw’s primary tasks in this book is to unmask the enigmatic secrecy through which authoritarian hierarchies of traumatic narcissism derive their power, his emphatic valuing of transparency is no idle virtue. Transparency is absolutely necessary to demystify what Becker (1973) calls the “the spell cast by persons—the nexus of unfreedom.” It is noteworthy that Becker’s pithy phrase was used as a title for a chapter in his book, The Denial of Death. The chapter addresses the intense power of transference

which one person has toward another person. In this same regard, it is worth noting that Macalpine (1950) referred to transference as a “slow-motion hypnosis.”

Looked at in this way, Shaw’s exploration of the relational processes through which one person casts a powerful spell over another person touches o