In this 3-day program Drs. Mary Main and Erik Hesse explore the ways in which the Adult Attachment Interview is conducted and utilized in conjunction with clinical practice. Main & Hesse describe ways in which – using transcripts of this interview -- an individual’s state of mind respecting attachment can be useful to clinicians whether or not it is transcribed and formally assessed.   They also review the current state of the field, including recent studies involving gene-environment interactions and attachment.

• (250) Regulation Theory and the Paradigm Shift
• (251) 2 Presentations - Panel and Paula Thomson
• (252) Development Derailed: The Trauma of Chaos in Early Childhood
• (253) Turning the Lights Back On: Working with the Low Arousal Coup
• (254) Beyond Impasse in Treating Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Transforming the Body's Silent Stories of Early Trauma
• (255) Implications of Infant Attachment Research for Adult Psychotherapy
• (256) Resilient Couples and How They Stay Together
• (257) Merging and Emerging: A Nonlinear Portrait of Intersubjectivity During Psychotherapy

Recent approaches to couples therapy emphasize the development of differentiation as the fundamental foundation of intimacy. Only when partners learn to define themselves, manage their reactivity and face the anxiety of their differences without collapsing will they find lasting intimacy (presented by Dr. Ellyn Bader). Other empirically-validated approaches, such as Emotionally Focused Therapy (presented by Dr. Susan Johnson), accentuate fostering a secure attachment and creating new bonding interactions through reprocessing emotional experiences with their partners.

The Object Relations model (presented by Drs. Jill and David Sharpe) sees therapy as providing a safe holding environment to contain the anxiety of the couple while their transferences and projective identifications are analyzed. The ultimate goal is for partners to create their own empathic holding environment. Dr. Shelia Sharpe focuses on the effect in  adult relationships on different kinds of attachment. Dr. Harville Hendrix shows how to use the process of intentional dialogue to heal the wounds of past attachment failures in current intimate relationships by helping couples move from emotional symbiosis through differentiation to secure intimate connection.

Listeners will learn to:

·      Define the process of attachment and differentiation in intimate relationships.

·      Understand the difference between other-validated intimacy and self-validated intimacy and self-validated intimacy.

·      Distinguish between couples who need help to build a firmer attachment and those where the emphasis should be more on differentiation.

·      Understand the guiding principles of interdependence as a key to intimacy.

·      Assess distance regulation problems affecting partners who can’t get close yet can’t let go.

·      Know when to appropriately use empathy-based interventions and when more anxiety producing differentiation-based interventions are necessary.

• (798) Pivotal Events in the Construction of a Secure Emotional Bond in Emotionally-Focused Therapy
• (799) Trauma, Sex and Intimacy
• (800) You're No Good! Devaluing as a Pattern of Connection & Separateness in Couples Relationships
• (801) Panel Discussion: Dr. Marion Solomon
• (802) Tell Me No Lies: Truth Telling in Intimate Relationships
• (803) The New Archetype of Partnership
• (804) Panel Discussion: Dr. Judith Anderson

Creating lasting change in couples therapy is a crucial clinical goal. Yet a significant relapse rate in couples therapy remains a serious problem affecting our field today. Trauma intensifies the need for secure attachments, yet often simultaneously, destroys one’s ability to trust such bonds. This conference brings together key contributors to new insights about healing traumatic attachments and preventing relapse in couples therapy.

This conference  explores:

•  The best predictors of success or failure in adult intimate relationships

•  The most effective therapeutic interventions which help resolve trauma plus restore mastery and connections.

•  Key factors in preventing relapse and advancing lasting relationship   change

• Understanding the difference between trauma and attachment injuries in couples relationships

•  Meta-emotion work with couples in preventing attachment injuries

•  Powerful change events in couples therapy that foster secure attachment

• (424) Prevention of Relapse in Couples Therapy
• (425) The Body Keeps the Score: Integration of Body and Mind in the Treatment of Traumatized People
• (426) Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy
• (427) Meta-Emotion:Possible Basis for Preventing Attachment Injuries in Couples
• (428) Transforming Moments in EFT
• (429) Dialogues

• (360) Application of Polyvagal Theory to Clinical Treatment
• (361) Discussion and Integration
• (362) Demonstration of Sensorimotor Treatment
• (363) Demonstration of Accelerated Model of Treatment
• (364) Panel Discussion and Dialogue with Audience

Interest among mental health professionals has become increasingly focused on a very large group of patients who do not easily fit the description for so-called neurotic disorders, and for whom there has been difficulty in developing treatment strategies.

 This symposium offers major addresses by distinguished faculty on clarification of theoretical constructs underlying the borderline syndrome including ideological considerations and clinical formulations. Opportunities exist to hear exhanges among eminent presenters from various perspectives. 

• (776) Formulation of the Borderline Personality
• (777) Borderline Patients & Self Psychology
• (778) Separation & Loss
• (779) Discussion of Dr. Searles' Presentation
• (780) Regression and the Countertransference
• (781) Discussion of Dr. Boyer's Presentation
• (782) The Unreasonable Patient
• (783) Discussion of Dr. Giovacchini's Presentation
• (784) Emerging Views of Primitive Mental States

Ever since Freud uncovered the unconscious, it has been the hallowed domain of psychoanalytic conceptualization in the continuing workplace of psychoanalytic treatment. The internal world of psychical reality still remains as the main focus of psychoanalysis today. Now trends are beginning to develop which seem to counterbalance that point of view.

Consciousness, the once less prominent counterpart to the unconscious, is recently being accorded the same interest that Freud once accorded to the unconscious. Cognitive and neuroscience studies are now alerting us to what may be called the uniqueness and the mystique of consciousness, an entity which we have taken too much for granted in the past.

Doctors Antonio Damasio and Christof Koch will present convincing evidence of its intrinsic nature from the neuroscience perspective. Dr. Daniel Stern, the infant developmentalist, will present a new form of ontological psychotherapy whose foundation is consciousness. Dr. James Grotstein will integrate all the presentations with a psychoanalytic perspective.    

• (642) Development of the Narrative Self
• (643) Narrative Attunement
• (644) Narrative and Research: The Child's Inner World
• (645) Narratives in Children at High Risk for Psychotherapy
• (646) Panel Discussion
• (647) Psychoanalysis Encounters the Personal Narrative
• (648) The Implications of Narrative Research on the Treatment of Adults
• (649) Closing Panel Discussion

This 3-DAY conference explores how neuroscience has transformed the clinical perspective and therapeutic approaches of clinicians at the cutting edge of these developments.  There has been a surge of research and remarkable findings about the nature of the brain and Mind. The research has influenced the mental health field and captured the imagination of many clinicians.    More recently we have entered into a new, more advanced phase of integration with profound implications for treatment.

The presenters not only cover the most up-to-date knowledge about practical, everyday applications of "brain-wise" psychotherapy, but explore the important issues about the relationship between brain and mind, the nature of the self and the interpersonal relationship between patient and therapist.

Educational Objectives:  Listeners will learn about: 

1. Current developments in treatment of trauma including EMDR and Sensorimotor psychotherapy.

2. The incorporation of the body in treatment of trauma patients

3. The effects of trauma on affective, cognitive and behavioral dysregulation

4. Approaches to dynamic regulation of states of consciousness

5. The importance of disorganized attachment in understanding the affects of trauma

Presentations 

Rhythyms of the Mind and Brain Interacting with Other Rhythms - Bessel van der Kolk, MD

Clinical Applications of Neuroscience Research for the Treatment of PTSD - Bessel van der Kolk, MD

EMDR and Adaptive Information Processing (Part 1) - Francine Shapiro, PhD

EMDR and Adaptive Information Processing (Part 2) - Francine Shapiro, PhD

Demystifying the Mechanisms of Trauma: Maladaptive Consequences of Adaptive Bio-Behavioral Reactions to Life Threat - Stephen Porges, PhD

The Central Role of Disintegration in Trauma and of Integration in Healing - Daniel Siegel, MD

Optimal Stress: Stronger at the Broken Places - Martha Stark, MD

Panel Discussion - Messler Davies, Ogden, Schore, Shapiro, Siegel, Stark & van der Kolk

Killing the Patient with Kindness: Explorations on the “Dark Side” of the Therapeutic Relationship - Jody Messler Davies, PhD

Trauma, Attachment and the Body: Expanding the Regulatory Boundaries of the Window of Affect Tolerance - Pat Ogden, PhD

Working in the Right Brain: A Regulation Model of Clinical Expertise for Treatment of Attachment Trauma - Allan Schore, PhD

Final Panel - Messler Davies, Ogden, Schore, Shapiro, Siegel, Stark & van der Kolk

There is clearly a good deal of controversy in the literature over issues of love and desire. Erotic experience can be a gold mine or a minefield. Despite the early preoccupation of psychoanalysis with the sexual drive as a motivator of development, the origin of erotic desire is still elusive. Erotic interest and behaviors are remarkably varied. Current concepts have evolved to emphasize the highly individual pattern of each person’s sexual life. We know now that sexual behavior often reflects or solves unconscious aims unrelated to love.

This conference looks at clinical issues that emerge in therapy: erotic transference and countertransference, sexual fantasy, sexual compulsion, desire and the inhibition of desire, and aspects of love between patients.

Through lectures, panels, and workshops, this program focuses on clinical experience and response to factors affecting connections, violations, and disconnections in sex and love.

 Participants will learn:

What eroticism is.

The difference between what is sexual, and what is love.

The role of aggression in sexual development and experience.

The relationship between conscious sexual fantasy and behavior.

Why and how “objects” are eroticized.

The underpinnings of perversions.

How eroticism fits into attachment.

• (763) The Origin of Adult-Erotic Experiences
• (764) Passion and the Psychosoma
• (765) Erotic Terror
• (766) Counterfeit Eroticism
• (767) Inhibitions of Desire
• (768) A Patient/Therapist Attachment
• (769) Panel Discussion

• (475) Rethinking the Neurobiology of Emotion
• (476) Emerging Themes in Affect Therapy from Attachment Research
• (477) Affect Regulation and the Right Brain: Linking Neuroscience to Psychoanalysis
• (478) Panel Discussion and Audience Interaction

This conference looks at how this knowledge can be applied to enhance the process of change through the therapeutic relationship. 

In a stimulating series of talks and discussions, members of the Boston Change Process Study Group present cutting-edge work on crucial elements that enable change to occur, including implicit relational knowing and implicit attachment-related processes. A dialogue with prominent synthesizers of interpersonal neurobiology; and affective neuroscience, explain how this information can be applied to enhance the process of change through moments of interaction between patient and therapist.

Objectives:

Understand factors that produce change in psychotherapy.

Recognize how the therapeutic relationship allows the patient to translate experience into meaning.

Understand the relation between therapeutic change and changes in brain and mind.

• (430) Introduction to Recognition Process in Infancy and in Psychotherapy
• (431) Development of Conflict and Defense
• (432) Changes in the Mind, the Brain, and the Body in Various Psychotherapeutic Contexts
• (433) The Something More than Interpretation: Co-Creativity & Sloppiness in a Clinical Case
• (434) What is Therapeutic about Therapy: The Role of Recognition and Fittedness in Patient-Therapist Excha
• (435) Panel Discussion I
• (436) Where is the Meaning in Relation to Implicit Relational Processes?
• (437) How Meaning is Created in the Brain
• (438) Catalyzing Change in Relational Processes in Parent-Infant Consultation
• (439) Discussions with T. Berry Brazelton
• (440) Discussion of New Views of Patient-Analyst Mutual Influence and Their Clinical Implications
• (441) Final Panel Discussion II

Experimental studies of infant and child development form the advancing edge of a major challenge to traditional psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. Daniel Stern’s brilliant and innovative research and his reformulation of developmental theory strongly undermine any notion of ‘non-social’ infant development. He shows the central importance of the mother-child interactions in shaping the child’s own emerging sense of self and reformulations of developmental theory with clinical psychopathology and treatment. 

In this conference, Dr. Stern provides an overview of his model, show the contrast and challenge to traditional theory, and discusses (with audience participation) the clinical implications of the new research.

The framework presented provides a template for understanding and treating the psychopathology of disturbed relationships between infant and parent. Various therapeutic approaches are discussed in terms of the locus of their therapeutic actions on the dynamic system of the parent’s and infant’s overt behavior and their respective representation of themselves and other in their interactions.

Dr. Stern discusses some of the major issues in psychoanalytic theories of infant development. These will include new understandings of traditional theories such as:

•  Psychosexual stages of classical psychoanalysis.

•  The Mahlerian stages leading from symbiosis to separation.

•  The role of fantasy versus reality in the infant’s construction of a represental world.

The framework presented provides a template for understanding and treating the psychopathology of disturbed relationships between infant and parent. Various therapeutic approaches are discussed in terms of the locus of their therapeutic actions on the dynamic system of the parent’s and infant’s overt behavior and their respective representation of themselves and other in their interactions.

Dr. Stern discusses some of the major issues in psychoanalytic theories of infant development. These will include new understandings of traditional theories such as:

•  Psychosexual stages of classical psychoanalysis.

•  The Mahlerian stages leading from symbiosis to separation.

•  The role of fantasy versus reality in the infant’s construction of a represental world.

• Continuity versus discontinuity in developmental experience.

•  The fixation-regression model.

•  the acquisition of senses of the self.

Treatment modalities which include psychoanalytic psychotherapy, family therapy, behavioral-pediatrics and behavior therapy. How the parent-infant interactions are recreated and can be observed in manifest and latent forms in adult relationships are be considered.

• (820) Interpersonal World of the Infant: Implications for Clinical Theory and Practice

This day opens out to a community of speakers representing different parts of the country and different facets of clinical practice. Each speaker brings their area of expertise to the wider community of the conference.

With this as our direction for the day the presenters further the process of creating ways of exploring and experiencing the interconnected web of ourselves, living with others, with all life, in-the-world. Such an experience of interbeing is a natural expression of mindful mind, compassion for all beings and the wisdom of  unbiased awareness.

• (301) Mindfulness and Psychotherapy - Sangha Day

Original Price: $90 (You Save: $25)

The work on narcissistic and borderline disorders by Heinz Kohut, Otto Kernberg, James Masterson, Harold Searles, and Donald Rinsley, among others, has resulted in renewed efforts to clarify diagnoses and treatment techniques for non-readily classifiable patients.

These patients, considered by analysts to be untreatable, periodically exhibit a wide range of neurotic and psychotic symptoms in addition to those within the classic narcissistic or borderline syndromes. Their sporadic but pervasive feelings of emptiness. Isolation, loneliness, underachievement, and alternately intense/flat affect often provoke others to anger and subsequent rejection and abandonment; their therapists may tend to experience frustration and despair. 

This conference is designed to heighten the learning experience on the narcissistic and borderline phenomena through: round table discussions among presenters; team-led sessions; and a case presentation, followed by panel observations and interpretations.

PRESENTATIONS:

An Historical Overview of the Diagnosis of the Borderline Disorder - Otto Kernberg

Masochism in Borderline and Narcissistic DisordersFirst Round Table Discussion - Panel 1

Case Presentation - Panel 2

Second Round Table Discussion - Panel 2

Separation and Loss - Harold Searles

Discussion of Dr. Searles Presentation - John Lundgren

• (785) Introduction
• (786) An Historical Overview of Borderline
• (787) First Round Table Discussion
• (788) Case Discussion
• (789) Second Round Table Discussion

This special conference offers a cutting-edge view from leaders in the integration of knowledge about the mind, the brain, and developmental processes. It is designed to provide a convergence of developmental research and clinical application of this knowledge. Presenters are some of the foremost thinkers in the area of development and mental health.

The focus is on the relevance of current attachment research to clinical practice, with the speakers presenting new material. With its synthesis of information from both psychotherapy and non-clinical research, the conference offers a new perspective on the process of human development and interpersonal relationships.

• (601) Attachment Theory: An Emotional Journey
• (602) Getting Less Attached to Attachment: Co-Creative Mutual Regulation, Relational Activation Patterns,
• (603) Transforming Adult Attachment
• (604) The Right Hemisphere is Dominant in Clinical Work: Implications of Recent Neuroscience
• (605) Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Their Implications for Adult Treatment
• (606) Attachment and Intersubjectivity
• (607) Panel Discussion, Part I: Marion Solomon, PhD
• (608) Panel Discussion, Part II: Marion Solomon, PhD

This is the fourth conference to be held on self psychology. Based on ideas in Heinz Kohut’s work on the development, disturbance, and restoration of the self are the focus of the program. Historical and clinical material is presented in depth, with attention to the theoretical growth in Kohut’s ideas during his last years.

• (657) Role of Empathy in Human Development
• (658) The Future of Self Psychology
• (659) Reconstructions & the Validity of the Negative Therapeutic Reaction
• (660) Reflections on Empathy
• (661) Self Psychology in History of Depth Psychology
• (662) Discussion (Arnold Goldberg, MD; and Charles Stozier, MD)
• (663) Self Objects and Self Object Transferences Discussion
• (664) A Change in the Self: The Development and Transformation of an Idealizing Transference
• (665) Perspective in the Curative Process: A Summary of Kohut's Views
• (666) The Curative Process (Morton Shane, MD; and Ernest Wolfe, MD)
• (667) Transference and Countertransference in Treatment of Self Disorders

This course offers an unique opportunity to explore, in depth, current concepts and observations of four of the most creative clinical thinkers in our field. The group of participants attending this program will have an opportunity to work closely with these leading clinicians.

Each eminent speaker begins with a theoretical presentation and case illustration followed by an open discussion with program participants. Case material is presented by our main speakers, London therapists who are supervisees of our faculty.

 The focus of this program is on treatment of adult psychopathology. The goal is to share in a small group, various ideas about the influence of early childhood on adult pathology, and the implications of this in treatment.

• (709) Clinical Application of Theories of Attachment, Separation and Loss
• (710) Therapeutic Factors in Treatment
• (711) Autistic States and Adult Pathology
• (712) The Understanding of Normal and Pathological

Habib Davanloo is the founder and pioneer of the method of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), which is taught and used at psychotherapy and psychiatry centers worldwide. The method offers theoretical, metaphysical and technical knowledge which can be used with extraordinary precision to mobilize unconscious mental processes in order to achieve therapeutic results. 

This conference  brings together four senior clincians who have studied and evaluated the technique of ISTDP and have gone on to revise the process according to their own personalities and clinical experiences.

• (770) Davanloo's Method of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy Theory
• (771) Theory and Research: Changing Character
• (772) Techniques of Outcome Evaluation
• (773) Metapsychology of the Unconscious
• (774) Accelerated Empathetic Therapy Theory
• (775) The Road Ahead: The Frontier of Dynamic Psychotherapy

Neuroscience research shows that most experience is automatically processed on a subcortical level by unconscious reactions that are made outside of conscious awareness. Traumatic memories are processed differently from normal memories, as they are often dissociated and may be inaccessible to verbal recall or processing. Reenactment plays out in the theaters of the body, and in the individual’s inability to form and sustain reciprocal interpersonal relationships.

• (415) Awakening the Mind to the Wisdom of the Body
• (416) Love or Trauma? How Neural Mechanisms Mediate Bodily Responses to Proximity and Touch
• (417) Already Set-Up for Trauma: Infants' Coping with Stress, Memory, and Autonomic Reactivity
• (418) Treatment of Traumatic Memories in Complex Dissociative Disorders: Resolving Insecure Attachment
• (419) When You Stop Moving You're Dead: The Psychology of Action
• (420) Attachment Trauma and the Developing Right Brain: Origins of Pathological Dissociation
• (421) Empowering the Body in the Treatment of Trauma: The Role of Sensorimotor Processing in Trauma Trtmnt
• (422) The Many Faces of Trauma: Neuroimaging Perspectives
• (423) Final Panel Discussion

• (105) The Me That Nobody Knows

Early attachment disturbances can lead to a wide variety of adult relational problems, especially when combined with unresolved trauma. The ability to form and sustain reciprocal interpersonal relationships is notably disrupted in individuals who experience early traumatic attachment patterns.  

In this conference, leading experts discuss the ways in which personality development shapes and is shaped by ongoing interactions with important attachment figures, with the goal of developing a deeper understanding of the interrelationship between emotional, cognitive, social, and biological disciplines within the fields of psychiatry and psychology.

• (450) Advances in Regulation Theory: Role of Attachment and Right Brain Development
• (451) Relational Context of Trauma: Fear, Dissociation, and Early Caregiving Environment
• (452) Manifest Dissociation in Adult Attachment: Interviews from Individuals with Multiple Personality Dis
• (453) How Effective Treatment of PTSD Affects Mind, Brain, and Body
• (454) Traumatic Responses in Infancy and Early Childhood: Relationship-Based Approach
• (455) Integrating Attachment and Object Relations Theories with Neurological Development
• (456) EMDR and Adaptive Information Processing
• (457) Discussion

We are increasingly aware of the significance of affective processes in essential human survival functions.  A number of scientific and clinical research studies have been converging on the centrality of affect, including unconscious and dissociated affect.  These are now becoming a central focus of psychotherapeutic work. 

This program is composed of pioneers and essential contributors to the ongoing paradigm shift. All are authors who have written extensively on the themes of the relationship between early development, affect regulation, relational trauma, psychopathogenesis, and psychodynamic models of the treatment of both mind and body, especially with the more severe personality disorders. The conference faculty includes infant researchers, neuroscientists, psychoanalysts, and trauma investigators, and yet all are experienced clinicians, each with decades of psychotherapy practice.

All of the presentations focus on the practical applications of ongoing neurobiological and developmental studies, groundbreaking clinical explorations, and interdisciplinary theoretical modeling of survival-related affective and self- regulatory phenomena. Presenters discuss various aspects of their current work, as well as dialogue between other presenters and the audience.

PRESENTATIONS: 

Negotiating Safe Space in Therapeutic Settings and Social Relationships -Stephen Porges, PhD

The Social Emotional Brain: From Distress to Social Bonding to Play - Pat Ogden, PhD & Jaak Panksepp, PhD

Mirror Neurons and Clinical Treatment - Lou Cozolino, PhD

Regulation and Disregulation: A Psychobiological Approach to Treating Couples - Stan Tatkin, PhD

Mindsight and Integration in the Cultivation of Well-Being - Daniel Siegel, MD

Emotion and Recognition: Energy, Vitality, Pleasure, Truth, Desire and the Emergent Phenomenology of Transformational Experience - Diana Fosha, PhD

You Knew Me When I Didn’t Know Myself, but I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know: Treatment of Complete Dissociative Trauma - Christine Courtois, PhD

The Brain That Changes Itself: The Neuroplasticity Revolution in Context - Norman Doidge, MD

In Search of Luderons*: The Modern Search for the Cerebral Fountains of Youth - Jaak Panksepp, PhD  

Therapeutic Enactments: Working in the Right Brain Windows of Affect Tolerance - Allan Schore, PhD

Safe but Not Too Safe: “The Inevitability of Therapeutic Enactments in Attachment-Oriented Psychotherapy” - Pat Ogden, PhD and Allan Schore, PhD (with pre-recording of Philip Bromberg, PhD)

Reflections and Integration - Daniel Siegel, MD

Exciting developments in the field of infant observation and research have yielded a wealth of new data with significant implications for theories of development and for the treatment of both children and adults.

 Accumulating research evidence suggests that infants may come into the world already programmed to process surprisingly complex data related to self perceptions and to perceptions of and communications with other human beings.

We can being to integrate the implications of this exciting research into our clinical theory and to consider the influence on the insights of psychoanalysis.

• (628) The World of Self and Others: Overview of Issues
• (629) Opportunities for Strengthening the Parent/Infant Interactions in the Face of Changing Lifestyles
• (630) The Interpersonal World of the Infant
• (631) Affective Core of the Self: Motivational Structures from Infancy
• (632) Implications of Infancy for Adult Treatment: The Rashomon Phenomenon
• (633) Current Issues in Infant Development: Consensus & Divergence (Drs. Brazelton, Stern, Ornstein, Pine,
• (634) A case Discussion: Initiative, an Issue from Infancy to Adulthood
• (635) Highlighting Parental Dysfunction in Adult Psychotherapy