Schedule: 9am-5pm Friday and Saturday. Registration begins at 8:30am on Friday. Refreshment will be provided for the morning and afternoon breaks. Participants will be responsible for their own lunch. Free Parking at the RA Centre.
The Therapeutic Use of Optimal Stress to Provoke Recovery
Long intrigued by the idea that superimposing an acute injury on top of a chronic one is often exactly what the body needs in order to heal, Martha has come to appreciate that, so too with respect to the mind, the therapeutic provision of “optimal stress” – against the backdrop of an empathically attuned and authentically engaged therapy relationship – is sometimes the magic ingredient needed to overcome the inherent resistance to change so frequently manifested by patients with longstanding emotional injuries and scars.
With a focus always on the translation of theory into technique, Martha will be demonstrating the use of custom-designed, optimally stressful psychotherapeutic interventions that address the conflict that exists within the patient between what she (adaptively) knows with her head and what she (defensively) feels with her heart. Ongoing use of these anxiety-provoking but ultimately growth-promoting “conflict statements” will trigger recursive cycles of destabilizing disruption followed by restabilizing repair – the cumulative impact of which will be the patient’s attainment of ever more evolved levels of resilience and adaptive capacity, as “resistance” is transformed into “awareness” (Model 1), “relentless hope” into “acceptance” (Model 2), “re-enactment” into “accountability” (Model 3), and “retreat” into “accessibility” (Model 4).
About Martha Stark, MD.
Martha Stark, MD, a graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute and a Faculty Member of Harvard Medical School, is also a Holistic Adult / Child Psychiatrist; Innovative Psychoanalyst; Integrative Medicine Consultant; Bestselling Author; Co-Director / Faculty, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies; Teaching / Supervising Analyst; National / International Lecturer; Psychopharmacology Consultant to Numerous Mental Health Organizations; and Recipient of Various Awards for her Contributions to the Healthcare Community.
Martha is the author of seven critically acclaimed books on Integrative Psychotherapy (Working with Resistance; A Primer on Working with Resistance; Modes of Therapeutic Action; The Transformative Power of Optimal Stress; Psychotherapeutic Moments; How Does Psychotherapy Work?; and Relentless Hope: The Refusal to Grieve) – award-winning “mandatory reading” at psychoanalytic training institutes and in psychodynamic psychotherapy programs both in the United States and abroad. In addition, Martha serves on the editorial boards of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, Journal of the American Association of Integrative Medicine, Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, and International Journal of Clinical Toxicology.
