PRETENDING THAT IT CAN BE WHEN IT CAN’T IS HOW PEOPLE BREAK THEIR HEARTS

PRETENDING THAT IT CAN BE WHEN IT CAN’T IS HOW PEOPLE BREAK THEIR HEARTS:
Insatiable Pursuit of the Unattainable and Unrelenting Outrage When Thwarted

Saturday / March 1, 2025
3-hour CE Virtual Event

Presented by Martha Stark, MD /
Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, William James College / Boston, MA

Hosted by Rose City Center Continuing Education / Pasadena, CA

The “I CAN’T, YOU CAN, AND YOU SHOULD” Dynamic …

INSTRUCTIONAL LEVEL OF PRESENTATION – Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced

TITLE: PRETENDING THAT IT CAN BE WHEN IT CAN’T IS HOW PEOPLE BREAK THEIR HEARTS: Insatiable Pursuit of the Unattainable and Unrelenting Outrage When Thwarted

DATE: Saturday, March 1, 2025, 9:00AM - 12:00PM Pacific Time

LOCATION: Zoom (registrants will be sent a Zoom invitation the day before the event)

CREDITS: This event fulfills 3 Continuing Education credits for licensed psychologists, licensed marriage and family therapists (LMFT), and licensed clinical social workers (LCSW).

PRESENTERS: Martha Stark, MD - View Dr. Stark's CV

REGISTRATION: Begins at 8:30AM

ABSTRACT

Relentless hope is a defense to which patients cling in order not to have to feel the pain of their disappointment in the object – the hope a defense ultimately against grieving. The refusal to deal with the pain of their grief about the object (be it the infantile, a contemporary, or the transference object) fuels the relentlessness with which such patients pursue it, both the relentlessness of their hope that they might yet be able to make the object over into what they would want it to be and the relentlessness of their outrage in those moments of dawning recognition that, despite their best efforts and most fervent desire, they might never be able to make that actually happen.

The masochistic defense of relentless hope and the sadistic defense of relentless outrage therefore speak to their refusal to confront – and grieve – the limitations, separateness, and immutability of the object of their desire.

In the treatment, the optimal stress of working through a “disrupted idealizing transference” will offer patients both impetus and opportunity, albeit belatedly, to grieve their early-on heartbreak – a growth-incentivizing experience of disillusionment that can then be generalized from “the small to the all.”

The bad news will be the sadness patients experience as they begin to accept the sobering reality that disappointment is an inevitable – but necessary – aspect of most relationships. The good news, however, will be the wisdom they acquire as they come to appreciate ever more profoundly the subtleties and nuances of relationship and begin to make their peace with the harsh reality of life’s many challenges – sadder, perhaps, but wiser and more accepting, too.

Both brief and extended clinical vignettes will demonstrate the therapeutic impact of transforming relentless hope into realistic hope. And a specific “prototypical” intervention will be offered that will help patients transform their need to possess and control the object – along with their impulse, when thwarted, to retaliate by attempting to “destroy” it – into the mature capacity to relent, accept, forgive the negative, internalize the positive, separate, and move on, enriched by the experience of having loved and lost.

EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: By the end of this CPA-OPD-approved event, participants will be able to:

1. Explain why relentless hope is a defense
2. Summarize what the relentless patient is refusing to confront
3. Contsruct a growth-incentivized disillusionment statement designed to facilitate grieving
4. Discuss the relationship between grieving and adaptive internalization
5. Demonstrate the importance of relenting and evolving ultimately to a place of serene acceptance

Rose City Center is approved by the California Psychological Association to provide continuing professional education for psychologists. Rose City Center maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

CPA OPD Provider Code R0S005

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
View Dr. Stark's CV

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.
Martha is Lecturer on Psychiatry (part-time), Cambridge Health Alliance, Harvard Medical School; Co-Founder/Co-Director/Faculty, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, William James College; Faculty, Psychiatry Redefined; Faculty/Scientific Advisory Board, Academy of Comprehensive Integrative Medicine; Adjunct Faculty, Smith College School for Social Work; Former Faculty, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis; Advisory Board, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.
Martha is the author of nine highly acclaimed books on the integration of psychodynamic theory into clinical practice, including the award-winning 1999 Modes of Therapeutic Action: Knowledge, Experience, and Relationship – recipient of Jason Aronson's prestigious "Book of the Year Award.”
Several of Martha's books have become "required reading" for candidates in psychoanalytic training institutes and students in psychodynamic psychotherapy programs both in the US and abroad.
She is the originator and developer of THE STARK METHOD of PSYCHODYNAMIC SYNERGY: A Multifaceted Approach to Deep Embodied Healing, a conceptual framework for the working through process that features five "modes of therapeutic action."

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.

RECOMMENDED READINGS

Mitchell S. 1998. Relational concepts in psychoanalysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rako S, Mazer H, Semrad E. 1983. The heart of a therapist. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

Searles H. 1979. The development of mature hope in the patient-therapist relationship. In Countertransference and related subjects: Selected papers. Madison, CT: International Universities Press.

Sifton E. 2005. The Serenity Prayer: Faith and politicsl in times of peace and war. New York, NY: W W Norton.

Smedes G. 1984. Forgive and forget: Healing the hurts we don’t deserve. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Stark M. 2017. Relentless hope: The refusal to grieve (International Psychotherapy Institute eBook). https://www.freepsychotherapybooks.org/ebook/relentless-hope-2/

Winnicott D W. 1965. The maturational processes and the facilitating environment. New York, NY: International Universities Press.

Host or Publisher Rose City Center