A clinical case on hate as a defense against unbearable need — presented by Dr. Kehinde Ayeni
Sunday, August 9, 2026. 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM PT (1:30 PM – 3:00 PM ET). 1.5 CME credits. $65.
In this seminar, Dr. Kehinde Ayeni presents detailed clinical material from a psychoanalytic treatment in which her patient expressed intensely hateful and derogatory feelings toward her. She traces how she established necessary limits with the patient while working to understand what the hatred was protecting — using her own countertransference reactions, the patient's developmental history, and outside consultation to help the patient recognize a defensive pattern she had organized her entire life around: hate as protection against loss and disappointment.
The practice gap this session addresses
Clinicians can miss how hateful, derogatory, or attacking material in the transference functions as a defense against intense need — and can struggle to distinguish necessary limit-setting from retaliatory enactment.
What this session covers
How hate toward the analyst can function as a defense against an unbearable need for that analyst
The developmental trajectory by which early traumatic experience produces this defensive style
How to identify this pattern in your own practice and work toward more mature defenses in the transference
About Dr. Kehinde Ayeni
Kehinde Ayeni, M.D. is a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist in private practice in Farmington Hills, MI, and the author of two books: Our Mothers' Sore Expectations (Jay Street Publishers, 2006) and Feasts of Phantoms (Genoa House, 2010). She is Associate Program Director at the Authority Health Psychiatry Residency Training Program in Detroit, MI, Associate Faculty at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, a Consultant Psychiatrist at Macomb County Mental Health Clinic, and an Attending Psychiatrist at Henry Ford Hospital, Rochester Hills, MI.
A clinical case on hate as a defense against unbearable need — presented by Dr. Kehinde Ayeni
Sunday, August 9, 2026. 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM PT (1:30 PM – 3:00 PM ET). 1.5 CME credits. $65.
In this seminar, Dr. Kehinde Ayeni presents detailed clinical material from a psychoanalytic treatment in which her patient expressed intensely hateful and derogatory feelings toward her. She traces how she established necessary limits with the patient while working to understand what the hatred was protecting — using her own countertransference reactions, the patient's developmental history, and outside consultation to help the patient recognize a defensive pattern she had organized her entire life around: hate as protection against loss and disappointment.
The practice gap this session addresses
Clinicians can miss how hateful, derogatory, or attacking material in the transference functions as a defense against intense need — and can struggle to distinguish necessary limit-setting from retaliatory enactment.
What this session covers
How hate toward the analyst can function as a defense against an unbearable need for that analyst
The developmental trajectory by which early traumatic experience produces this defensive style
How to identify this pattern in your own practice and work toward more mature defenses in the transference
About Dr. Kehinde Ayeni
Kehinde Ayeni, M.D. is a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist in private practice in Farmington Hills, MI, and the author of two books: Our Mothers' Sore Expectations (Jay Street Publishers, 2006) and Feasts of Phantoms (Genoa House, 2010). She is Associate Program Director at the Authority Health Psychiatry Residency Training Program in Detroit, MI, Associate Faculty at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, a Consultant Psychiatrist at Macomb County Mental Health Clinic, and an Attending Psychiatrist at Henry Ford Hospital, Rochester Hills, MI.
