Event Presented by Denver Psychoanalytic Society
Title: Working with Grief, Depression, and Masochism
Presenter: Nancy McWilliams, PhD, ABPP
Date: Saturday, September 20, 2025
Time: 8:30 AM – 4:30 PM (MT)
Location: Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, CO
Cost: $190 – Non DPS Members; CU Anschutz Faculty - $175; DPS Members - $165; Students - $90
5.5 CE Credits
Registration Link: https://www.denverpsychoanalytic.org/event-5780558
Description: Therapists struggle to help patients for whom situational stresses interact with personality patterns in complicated combinations of grief, mourning, and depressive and masochistic dynamics. Because neither “Depressive Personality Disorder” nor “Self-Defeating Personality Disorder” is found in the DSM or ICD, official taxonomies offer little clinical help in distinguishing between various painful self-states and framing therapy accordingly. Dr. McWilliams will differentiate conceptually between depression and mourning, between anaclitic and introjective depression, between relational self-sabotage and “moral masochism” (Reik, 1941), and between depressive and self-defeating personality patterns. She will give clinical examples, including a case in some depth, that illustrate treatment implications of the different presentations of sadness, despair, and malignant self-regard.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe three differences between normal grief and clinical depression.
- Explain the differences between predominantly depressive and predominantly self-defeating (masochistic) personality patterns.
- List two clinical implications when the patient is more masochistic than simply depressive in personality organization.
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