Abstract

“I gave you a part of me that I knew you could break – but you didn’t.”

Patients who have never fully confronted and grieved the pain of their early-on heartbreak will often cling tenaciously to their hope that perhaps someday the “object of their desire” will be forthcoming. But there are others who, in the aftermath of their early-on heartbreak, will find themselves withdrawing completely from the “world of objects”—their hearts shattered. To protect themselves from being once again devastated, these latter patients retreat, withdraw, detach themselves from relationships, from the

world—only then to find themselves overwhelmed by intense feelings of isolation, alienation, and emptiness. The competent, accomplished, cheerful, compliant “false (public) self” they present to the world belies the truths that lie hidden within—namely, their private turmoil, harrowing loneliness, and annihilating terror as well as their stymied creativity and desperate (albeit conflicted) yearning for authentic engagement with life. Instead of “relentless hope” and, when thwarted, “relentless outrage,” the experience of being- in-the-world for these latter patients will be one of “relentless despair”—a “profound hopelessness” that they conceal behind a self-protective “false self” armor that obscures their underlying brokenness and the “thwarted potential” of their “true self.” Clinical vignettes will be offered that speak to how the therapist, ever attuned to the patient’s intense ambivalence about “remaining hidden vs. being found,” can facilitate the emergence of “moments of authentic meeting” that will restore purpose, meaning, and direction to an existence that was otherwise desolate, impenetrable, and empty.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Highlight the primary difference between relentless hope and relentless despair.

2. Elaborate upon the patient’s intense ambivalence about entering the world of objects.

3. Explain the relevance of the concept of dreading surrender to resourceless dependence upon another. 

Biography

Martha Stark, MD, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, is a holistic (adult and child) psychiatrist and integrative psychoanalyst in private practice in Boston, MA, and Clearwater Beach, FL. Sheserves as Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Psychoanalytic Studies at William James College and has previously held faculty positions at Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. Martha is the originator/developer of The Stark Method of Psychodynamic Synergy: A Multifaceted Approach to Deep Embodied Healing. She has authored nine highly acclaimed books on the integration of psychodynamic theory into clinical practice, including Modes of Therapeutic Action: Knowledge, Experience, and Relationship, which received Jason Aronson's prestigious Book of the Year Award in 1999. Several of Martha's books have become required reading in psychoanalytic and psychotherapy training programs in the US and abroad. Board Certified by the American Association of Integrative Medicine, Martha also contributes chapters to integrative medicine textbooks and articles to peer-reviewed toxicology/environmental medicine journals.

References

Isaacs, D. Hope and despair. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 52(10), 917-918.

Song, J., Kang, S., & Ryff, C. D. (2023). Unpacking psychological vulnerabilities in deaths of despair. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(15), 6480.

Stark M. (2019). A heart shattered, the private self, and a life unlived. International Psychotherapy Institute. https://www.freepsychotherapybooks.org/ebook/a-heart-shattered-the-private-self-and-a-life-unlived/

Abstract

In this presentation, Dr. Ipp will explore the complex dialectics of safety and risk for both analyst and patient in the analytic setting. The dynamic and fluid quality of both safety and risk are considered in relation to the ongoing levels of conscious and unconscious communication that inhabit the analytic space. These dimensions of clinical work are expanded and illustrated through the detailed account of a 10-year analysis of a young woman battling for her psychic

and physical life.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

1. Recognize the bi-directionality of safety and risk and the factors contributing to it as the clinical process unfolds.

2. Identify the presence and impact of feelings of un-safety for both analyst/therapist and patient, and the need to exercise mindfulness to adjust the safety-risk dialectic.

3. Recognize the power of the use of self in the analytic/therapeutic discourse infurthering and animating the relationship between analyst/therapist and patient.

Biography

Hazel Ipp, Ph.D., is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto, Canada. She is a founding board member, faculty, and supervisor of the Toronto Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis. She also serves on the faculties of ISIPSÉ (Rome) and the Florida Psychoanalytic Center. Dr. Ipp is Chief Editor Emeritus of Psychoanalytic Dialogues and has served on the editorial boards of multiple psychoanalytic journals. She has also published numerous articles in major international journals of psychoanalysis. She is a founding and current board member as well as  past president of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. She regularly teaches, supervises, and presents nationally and internationally.

References

Bass, A. (2015). The dialogue of unconsciouses, mutual analysis and the uses of the self in contemporary relational psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 25(1), 2-17.

Ipp, H. (2016). Interweaving the symbolic and nonsymbolic in therapeutic action: Discussion of Gianni Nebbiosi’s “The smell of paper.” Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 26(1), 10-16.

Lichtenberg, J. D. (2018) Reflections on safety. Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 38, 569-574

Registration Pending

This is a four hour workshop from 10:00 - 3:30 with a break from 12:00 - 1:30. This is in person only due to the use of videos and  the nature of the interactive workshop

Details to come.