Introduction to Affect Phobia
Our Patient’s, Our Own, Our Work with Clients

Spend an enlightening one or two days with renowned Affect Phobia teacher, researcher, and master practitioner, Harvard Medical School’s Kristin Osborn, Director of the Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy Research Program.  We will examine the powerful influences of affect in the lives of our patients AND ourselves, and focus on the critical interplay between the two, including how working with emotion profoundly impacts the therapist and the therapeutic alliance.

Through lecture material that incorporates essential research instruments and findings, and by watching videotapes of actual psychotherapy sessions, Kristin brings vital concepts of Affect Phobia Therapy alive.  This workshop is eminently practical, enabling you to better recognize significant moments in the room, and then respond appropriately to expeditiously move the therapy forward.  Similarly, you can avoid missing or mishandling situations and interactions that slow, sabotage, and/or stall the therapy entirely.  Careful and detailed attention will be given to the importance of each person’s individual affect alone, as well as to the critical interactions between the two individuals.

A major intent of this workshop is to explore the emotions of the therapist as they are engaged in the process of psychotherapy.  Kristin believes that most therapists, even master therapists, activate their own ‘affect phobias’ in session.  What emotional conflicts do you activate in session?  Are you able to use your emotions to guide your work?  Do they ever get in the way of treatment?  Do they ever help in treatment?

Affect Phobia Therapy (APT) is based on the premise that internal conflicts about feelings underlie most psychologically based disorders.  The late renowned Harvard Medical School psychologist and researcher Leigh McCullough developed it as a short-term dynamic psychotherapy.  APT is an integrative approach combining cognitive-behavioral, psycho-dynamic and experiential techniques.

Learning objectives for this 2-Day seminar include:

• To learn practical & important concepts of Affect Phobia
• To use the cognitive-behavioral, psycho-dynamic & experiential techniques of Affect Phobia Therapy to assess & address emotional conflicts & thus improve therapeutic prowess, regardless of primary theoretical orientation.
• To learn to assess our own emotional conflicts that routinely arise in our work with our patients
• Increase comfort with your own emotional responses.
• Explore the interplay between therapist and client that occur when the therapist experiences her or his own emotional conflict in session.
• Develop mastery in noting – and USING – counter-transference to benefit therapy.
• Avoid missing therapeutic situations & interactions that engender frustration & impede therapy.
• Deepen your compassion for and ability to be with the affect of yourself and others. This boosts our power to face and resolve emotional difficulties in our clients & ourselves.
• Deeply understand how taking care of ourselves WHILE trusting our unconscious communications leaves us more available to engage in an authentic & trans-formative therapeutic relationship.