YCSC-CSPP Special Grand Rounds Lecture: Grieving the Loss of Relentless Hope and Evolving to a Place of Serene Acceptance

Session Description

This special YCSC Grand Rounds session co-sponsored by Connecticut Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (CSPP) will take place virtually, with an in-person "viewing party" and live Q&A with the speaker via Zoom in the Cohen Auditorium, where lunch will be provided. Fees will apply for participation at this special session, whether in person or virtually. Visit the CSPP website for fees, registration, and continuing education details.

Please note that the Zoom link for this session will be different than the usual registration link for YCSC Grand Rounds, and will be provided by CSPP following registration.

Joining via Zoom, the speaker will address relentless hope as a defense to which a patient clings in order not to feel the pain of disappointment in the object – the hope a defense ultimately against grieving. The use of optimally stressful, growth-incentivizing “disillusionment statements” – strategically designed to juxtapose what the patient “had hoped” with what the patient “is coming to realize” – will be discussed as a way to facilitate working through grief while beginning to confront the intolerably painful reality of the object’s limitations, separateness, and immutability. If all goes well, realistic hope and serene acceptance will arise in the context of the patient’s survival of her heartbreak and disappointment – the patient sadder perhaps, but wiser too.

The learning objectives for this session are for participants to be able to:

• Explain why relentless hope is a defense
• Summarize what the relentless patient is refusing to confront
• Construct a growth-incentivizing disillusionment statement designed to facilitate grieving
• Discuss the relationship between grieving and adaptive internalization
• Demonstrate the importance of relenting and evolving ultimately to a place of serene acceptance

Speaker Bio

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 Boston, MA. She is an HMS Lecturer on Psychiatry (part-time) at Cambridge Health Alliance. She is also the originator/developer of THE STARK METHOD of PSYCHODYNAMIC SYNERGY and the author of nine books on the integration of psychodynamic theory into clinical practice, including Modes of Therapeutic Action – 1999 recipient of Jason Aronson's prestigious "Book of the Year Award.” Several of her books have become "required reading" for candidates in psychoanalytic training institutes and students in psychodynamic psychotherapy programs in the US and abroad.

Hosted by the Yale Child Study Center (YCSC) and Connecticut Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (CSPP), this is the first in a new series, part of YCSC Grand Rounds and held as a special lecture outside of the usual day and time, and with a separate registration process and Zoom link.