Background

When clients present with symptoms of anxiety or depression, or with engrained difficulties around self-assertion or self-expression, especially in a relationship, such difficulties commonly mask deeper-seated issues around ”feeling insecure” or” lacking confidence” in one’s self.  But what do we mean when we talk about “feeling insecure”?  What is meant by sense of self – and how can a clinician help a client whose “sense of self” feels shaky or insecure?

The work of Ralph Klein MD and the late James Masterson MD pioneered an approach to the psychotherapy of those individuals who suffered engrained problems with self-esteem through an integration of self, developmental object relations theory and neurobiology. This approach was pioneered over fifty years ago and has been applied and tested regarding both conceptual reliability and validity by two generations of clinicians.

Kent Hoffman and Bert Powell trained with Masterson and Klein in the early 1990s and were influenced by this training in terms of their understanding of the key importance that an individual’s “core sensitivity/structure” plays in the development of both defenses and symptoms. They developed the Circle of Security intervention, informed in part by Masterson’s work, as a way of working with Caregiver state of mind (Powell, Hoffman, Cooper & Marvin, 2014).

Masterson’s approach emphasised how an understanding of the client’s “core sensitivity” was the clinical key to successful treatment, as it enabled clinicians to map out where the client’s real self was “hiding out” in defense against the abandonment depression. Modern attachment theory and science powerfully illustrate how such sensitivities run the risk of becoming engrained in procedural memory emerging from early attachment experiences, giving rise to maladaptive strategies for self and other regulation and warping the child’s possibilities for healthy growth and development.  

Workshop

This two-day workshop will focus on helping participants understand and map out what is meant by
“Core sensitivity/DOS structure” with specific focus on the Borderline/Separation Sensitive processes.”

An exploration of “procedural anxiety” and “parental states of mind”  and how these shape the development of a false defensive self/internal working model provides a powerful way of understanding the myriad of defensive and maladaptive behaviours presented by adolescents and adults to clinicians. 

Most importantly, this workshop will provide participants with an understanding of how to work with these defensive behaviours – eating disorders, truancy, depressive and anxiety-based disorders in order to access the client’s “real self” in order to move forward in life. 

The workshop will focus on an exploration of how the parental state of mind with respect to attachment can become engrained in the child’s procedural memory as the basis of a maladaptive internal model of attachment.

Presenter Biographies

Joe Coyne has worked for 30 years as an applied developmental psychologist in the area of child and family psychology and adult psychotherapy since graduating with a Master of Clinical Psychology. He has been specifically interested in developmental processes that lead to healthy outcomes, particularly the impacts of parenting and early life events on personal trajectories. This led him through training in Behavioural Family Systems approaches to Object-Relations supervision and training to understand the interplay of family dynamics across generations. Since the early 2000’s he has been exploring the benefits of incorporating attachment theory and research into contemporary treatment approaches for parents, children, and adults. This work led him to becoming an accredited therapist and supervisor for the Circle of Security Intensive intervention (2010 and 2011). In Australia, he is an Endorsed Clinical Psychologist and Endorsed Educational and Developmental Psychologist

From 2010-2024, he was on the staff of QUT, coordinating the Master of Psychology (Educational and Developmental), and then, from 2020-2023, also the Master of Clinical Psychology. Within the Educational and Developmental degree program, he trained over 100 graduate students in the COS-Assessment and Formulation model and supervised over 20 in COS Intensive treatment within the Circle of Security parenting clinic. Joe has had a longstanding interest in training providers in attachment and social neuroscience, starting back in 2000 when he began teaching attachment and neuroscience to foster parents and child protection staff, and then to child health staff. More recently, he has developed a deep appreciation of Romania and, since 2016, has been traveling there to support attachment-informed practice through the COS framework. Since 2023, he has branched out and been training the COSP program to audiences in Australia and has deeply enjoyed the experience of connecting a broad range of practitioners to the COS model. He currently works as a consultant and trainer for Circle of Security International and in private practice. He lives in Brisbane with his family and a small menagerie, which includes a Chesapeake Bay Retriever, two house cats and several fish.

Caroline Andrew MA is a psychologist who has worked in private practice for over thirty-five years. She is currently Director of the International Masterson Institute in Sydney, Australia and is Adjunct Faculty at the West Coast (USA) International Masterson Institute. The International Masterson Institute was originally set up in the USA to provide training for mental health clinicians in the field of “Disorders of the Self” (DOS) based on the pioneering work of the late James Masterson, MD and Ralph Klein MD. Masterson, who was Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the Cornell University Medical School, was also the Founder of the American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry.  Ralph Klein MD was Clinical Director of the Masterson Group for the treatment of Personality Disorder in NYC for many years, and was at one time Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute for Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. 

Ms. Andrew trained with the late James Masterson MD, between 1992-94 and continued a supervisory relationship with Ralph Klein MD, for nearly thirty years. She supervised trainee psychiatrists through the Faculty of Adolescent Psychiatry (HETI) in Sydney for many years and has lectured and presented papers on the Masterson/Klein approach to personality disorder internationally through conferences in Asia, Turkey, the USA and South Africa. She has conducted many workshops on this approach in most capital cities in Australia and was invited to present a paper at the World Conference for Psychotherapy in Sydney, 2011.

She is the mother and grandmother and lives with her husband in Sydney, Australia.  She also works as a farm labourer growing beef cattle on the farm she shares with her husband in the Central Tablelands in NSW.