Presentations
Bert Powell and Steve Reed - Panel Discussion
“The Core Sensitivities: How to differentiate between Separation, Esteem and Safety Sensitivity.”
Through this live demonstration, Bert Powell and Steve Reed will share how to use a mentalizing approach to the differential diagnosis of the “core sensitivities”. The type of diagnostic questions to ask the client will be explored, as well as the reasons for asking such questions. They will discuss the possible intrapsychic meanings of the client’s responses and lay out for the audience how these responses determine specific practical interventions in order to help the therapist and client keep exploring into “where the self hides out”.
Joe Coyne
The Role of Procedural Process in the Development
of the Self.
Attachment is a procedure built on the patterned regulation of emotion between parent and child.
In this presentation, Joe Coyne will talk about how this procedure becomes a map of relational expectancies, which shape sensitivities to relationships that come to organise our vulnerability in later relationships. Such relational expectancies in early development then become our compass in how we all -as adults - navigate the struggle in close relationships between “how to be ourselves” with our own needs and how we develop nonconscious strategies to manage the anxieties of those needs being unmet.
Bert Powell
Hidden in plain sight.
How the work of Masterson and Klein contributed to the development of the Circle of Security intervention.
Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper and I learned attachment theory and the science of scoring a child’s attachment strategies in the Strange Situation assessment. With this knowledge, creating treatment plans that identified key strengths and struggles for families became clearer and more accessible. To intervene, we developed a brief therapeutic model to help the caregiver process video vignettes of key aspects of their interaction with their child. Training in the Masterson model provided us with a structure to design a defence analysis process using many of Dr. Masterson’s and Dr. Klein’s ideas. Because few therapists in the early intervention field had backgrounds in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, we created the “Core Sensitivities” as a way for clinicians to relate to these internal working models as normal procedural variations that people develop to organize and defend from memories of painful developmental experiences.
In this presentation, we will explore how much of Masterson’s model is hidden in plain sight in the Circle of Security intervention.
Joe Coyne
A lot can happen in a minute: Using moment-to-moment tracking of relational processing for reflection and intervention.
Video review and analysis is an essential tool in research methods such as infant observation and attachment studies. Since the 1970’s however it has also been used in research on psychotherapy. This workshop will introduce participants to the idea of ‘moment to moment’ introduced by Beatrice Beebe as a method for analysing their video material to discover relational processes. The value of this for real-time intervention in the clinical process will be highlighted.
Panel Discussion
Following the Arc of a therapeutic moment: The disorders of self triad.
One of the tenets of the Masterson Approach is the Disorders of Self Triad – Self-activation leads to depression which then triggers defence.
Working with this concept enables the therapist to recognize that moments of real self-activation by the patient will be shut down nonconsciously to avoid the emotional discomfort accompanying this. The skill of moment-to-moment tracking of the triad interrupts these defensive processes so that the patient can learn how to process the underlying depression to facilitate the emergence of his or herself. This panel discussion will begin with the panel moderator's introduction to this concept. Students learning this approach and faculty will present clinical vignettes which illustrate the operation of the triad.
Caroline Andrew
From the Illusion of Heaven to the Illusion of Hell.
The Working Through of an abandonment depression in a Narcissistic/Esteem Sensitive patient.
An accurate differential diagnosis is the foundation stone of a therapy which focusses on the patient’s “narcissistic vulnerability” as the portal through which flow the affects of an unconscious abandonment depression. Understanding narcissistic vulnerability opens up a powerful understanding of how procedural memory underpins the development of narcissistic structure. An understanding of where the “self hides out” through understanding structure enabled the therapist and patient work to bring to the surface the affects of a most painful abandonment depression – to provide the patient with “another chance to be real”.
Panel Discussion
How to Work with Fusion and Narcissism/Esteem Sensitivity: Clinical Applications.
The clinical phenomenon of fusion ( the pull towards one-mindedness) in esteem-sensitive patients can be challenging to identify and address therapeutically. One of the hallmarks of fusion is a sensitivity to criticism coupled with a driving need for perfection. Allying with these patients requires skill, thoughtfulness, and an understanding of how procedural memory and relational expectancies operate. This panel discussion will involve clinical vignettes and role-plays to explore the link between procedural memory, relational expectancies, and fusion, as well as the therapeutic and practical application of this conceptualisation.
Steve Reed
Psychotherapy of the Disorders of the Self with PTSD.
This presentation shows how character work and trauma work are integrated. Essentially, character work precedes trauma work. This presentation includes a systematic and practical "roadmap" to accomplish the character work phase. Then the different phases of trauma
work will be described. Topics also included will be type 1 and 2 trauma, 5 different types of dissociation, neurobiology of trauma, optimal range of trauma processing and psychic death.
Steve Reed and Caroline Andrew
Laying the Groundwork: She wore a thousand faces to hide her own. Atticus.
This conference aims to take participants on a step-by-step journey that will enable them to understand the importance of procedural memory and its role in developing personality disorder/disorder of self. This introductory session will lay out key concepts in Masterson’s work such as the real self, the false defensive self, abandonment depression and intrapsychic structure to enable participants to grasp what is meant by the expression: “where the (real) self hides out”.
Kathryn Furst, Elizabeth Ligthelm and Caroline Andrew
The Psychotherapy of the Borderline/Separation Sensitive Disorder of Self.
We are indebted to the pioneering work of Bert Powell, Kent Hoffman, Glen Cooper and Bob Marvin (2014) for their pioneering of the term “core sensitivities”. This provided a much-needed broader understanding of how many clients who present for help can function quite well but are still trapped by engrained beliefs and affects/states of mind which limit and block their abilities to feel secure within themselves. This workshop will focus on how to both diagnose and work with that range of clients who may function quite well – or poorly – whom we diagnose as “borderline/separation sensitive”.
Jonathan Keeley
“Intrapsychic Vertigo and the Disembodied Heart of the Schizoid Disorder: A Developmental Self and Object Relations Approach to the Diagnosis and Psychotherapy of the Schizoid/Safety Sensitive Disorder of the Self”
All self disorders find attachment (relationships) provoke dysphoria; this fact is the core of self pathology and helps define all of the disorders of self. The conditions of relatedness require the sacrifice of development of the real self in favor of the defensive substitution of an impaired false self. Indeed, it is the sacrifices and compromises around the conditions of relatedness that are so devastating to the self. This talk will focus on how the unique conflict of the safety sensitive/schizoid DOS can only be identified by defining the specific conditions of attachment for the schizoid patient that are so destructive to the life of the his or her self and interpersonal world. (R. Klein, 1995).