Ritvo Lecture
Saturday, September 26, 2026
1:00 PM to 3:00 PM
255 Bradley Street
Event will also be available
via Zoom (link will be sent via email the day before the event)
New Haven, CT 06510
“If I Say No…”: Parental Affect Tolerance and Limit Setting in the Context of Complex Trauma
Speaker: Holly Dwyer Hall, PsyD
Discussant: Linda Mayes, MD
Moderator: Matthew Shaw, PhD
Professional Registration
$25.00
WNEPS members, candidates and all students/trainees
$0.00
Registration Coming Soon
This clinical paper will focus on psychoanalytic work with parents of children who have experienced complex early relational trauma and/or significant early medical intervention treating life-threatening conditions. Drawing on Donald Winnicott’s concept of the developmental movement from object relating to object usage, the lecture will explore how disturbances in early relationships can disrupt the child’s developing capacity to distinguish internal from external reality.
Particular attention will be given to the role of parents in supporting this developmental process and to how parental mentalizing may be compromised by the child’s trauma experiences, interrupting healthy processes of parental preoccupation. Contemporary mentalizing perspectives will be integrated to consider how primitive states of mind shape both the child’s and the parent’s experience of reality.
Through clinical examples, the paper will illustrate how clinicians work with parents to support their ability to tolerate conflict, survive the child’s expressions of aggression without retaliation, and maintain a stable presence during moments of heightened emotional intensity. The therapist’s stance will be considered central to this work, combining empathic understanding with active, curious engagement that fosters parental reflection and epistemic trust. The paper will demonstrate how foundational psychoanalytic theory can be translated into contemporary technique in therapeutic work with parents.
Learning Objectives
- Participants will be better able to recognize the sequalae from complex, early, relational trauma.
- Participants will be able to describe Donald Winnicott’s concept of developmental movement from object relating to object usage..
- Participants will be able to identify when parental mentalizing has been compromised in the context of complex trauma and how it can be restored.
Speaker: Holly Dwyer Hall, PsyD
Holly Dwyer Hall is a child, adolescent and adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist, Dynamic Interpersonal Therapist, Arts Psychotherapist and qualified Mentalization Based Treatment practitioner, supervisor and trainer with children, adolescents and families and MBT Practitioner with adults.
Her clinical work spans 26 years in both child and adult services in the UK’s National Health Service, social care, education and the private sector and includes; setting up an emotional wellbeing service for children under 5 years of age and working in a specialist service offering assessment and treatment for adults with a diagnosis of EUPD.
She currently provides assessment and treatment for children, young people and families who have experienced complex early trauma and is trained in using the Story Stem Assessment Profile to examine young children’s mental representations of attachment and relationships.
Holly lectures on the Doctorate in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy with UCL, Anna Freud and the British Psychotherapy Foundation (BPF) and on the MSc Early Child Development and Clinical Applications at UCL and Anna Freud. She is the current Lead for Psychodynamic Psychotherapies and MBT with children, young people and families at Anna Freud.
She has published papers and chapters on mentalization based treatments, rupture and resolution processes in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the practice of infant observation.
Discussant: Linda Mayes, MD
Dr. Linda Mayes is a pediatrician and child and adult psychoanalyst. She is the Arnold Gesell Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Psychology and Chair of the Yale Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine. She is also a member of the faculty at the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and Deputy Chair of the Board of Trustees at the Anna Freud.
Moderator: Matthew Shaw, PhD
Matthew Shaw, PhD, is a psychoanalyst for children, adolescents, and adults, supervises at the Yale School of Medicine, and is a training and supervising analyst at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis in New Haven, CT. He chairs the child and adolescent training program and has published most recently in JAPA and a book on Hans Loewald. Dr. Shaw gave the Saltz Grand Rounds at Children’s National Hospital, the clinical plenary at the Association for Child Psychoanalysis, and the Beata Rank Lecture at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He is on the editorial boards for the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association and the Psychoanalytic Quarterly.
CME/CE Accreditation
ACCME Accreditation Statement
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of American Psychoanalytic Association and Western New England Psychoanalytic Society. The American Psychoanalytic Association is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
AMA Credit Designation Statement
The American Psychoanalytic Association designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Disclosure Statement
The APsA CE Committee has reviewed the materials for accredited continuing education and has determined that this activity is not related to the product line of ineligible companies and therefore, the activity meets the exception outlined in Standard 3: ACCME's identification, mitigation and disclosure of relevant financial relationship. This activity does not have any known commercial support.
This program is being reviewed for Continuing Education Credit Hours by the National Association of Social Workers, CT. Once approved, it will meet the continuing education criteria for Social Work Licensure renewal, Marriage & Family Therapist Licensure renewal, Professional Counselor Licensure renewal and Licensed Psychologist Licensure renewal.
