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” that they present to the world belying the truth of what lies hidden within, namely, their private turmoil, tormented heartbreak, 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 inside a self-protective “false self” armor that obscures their underlying brokenness and the “thwarted potential” of their “true self.”
Whereas relentless hope and relentless outrage speak to intense – albeit maladaptive – engagement with the world of objects, relentless despair speaks to complete lack of any real engagement with the world of objects.
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.
BRIEF 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 private practice in Boston, MA, and Clearwater Beach, FL.
Martha is Co-Founder/Co-Director/Faculty, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, William James College; Former Faculty, Harvard Medical School; Former Faculty, Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Martha is the author of nine highly acclaimed books on the integration of psychodynamic theory into clinical practice, including the award-winning Modes of Therapeutic Action: Knowledge, Experience, and Relationship – 1999 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.
Martha is Originator/Developer of THE STARK METHOD of PSYCHODYNAMIC SYNERGY: A Multifaceted Approach to Deep Embodied Healing.
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. Additionally, she serves on the editorial/advisory boards of various holistic health publications and sits on the Advisory Board of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.
NB: The Center for Christianity and Psychoanalysis does not exist to promote a single viewpoint or advance one ideological stance. Our intent is to create a space where people from varied theological traditions, clinical orientations, and cultural backgrounds can come together to think, reflect, and learn from one another.
We invite a range of speakers whose scholarship, clinical practice, and theological reflection enrich our community. Their presence with us is not an endorsement of every viewpoint they hold. Rather, our aim is to host thoughtful dialogue across differences—trusting that engagement with differing perspectives deepens our search for understanding and truth.
We are committed to fostering dialogue, not dogma, and to exposing our community to multiple perspectives across both psychoanalytic and Christian theological thought as we continue the ongoing work of integration.
