“Celebrating the Working Alliance During and In-between ISTDP Sessions” will be the theme of our international conference, which will be held in Berlin on September 11 and 12.

On Friday, September 11 and Saturday, September 12, 2015 the focus will be on establishing the conscious and unconscious working alliance with our patients, maintaining and  increasing it’s quality during and in-between sessions.

Several  pre requisites of such an establishment as, for example:

• the therapist’s ability to function as an external constructive superego
• helping the patient to use the therapist’s eyes to win the intrapsychic battle against his self-defeating mechanisms of helping the patient to understand the self-defeating function of their front door and cellar door defenses and to quit them
• to assess the degree to which the patient´s anxiety is healthy/unhealthily regulated and to help the patient to adequately cope with his anxiety
• to assess nature and degree of a patient`s ego adaptive capacity and to help the patient to increase the quality of his ego adaptive capacity
• to help the patient keeping his motivation to take responsibility for his own functioning and taking his part oft he working alliance

On both days, all presentations (including the workshops) will be highlighted with videovignettes from therapy sessions. During the mornings all presentations will be plenary. During the afternoons there will be parallel sessions of workshops and presentations.

One workshop will be on anxiety regulation ( our Polish colleagues). The other workshop will be on helping the patient to quit their frontdoor defenses (our Italian colleagues).

Presenters who already promised their participation are Kees Cornelissen, (the Netherlands), Alexandra Fanning (UK), Josette ten Have-de Labije (the Netherlands), Robin Kay (USA), Robert Neborsky (USA), Diego Rocco (Italy), Anthony Theuninck (UK). Colleagues that take part in the making oft he workshops are Mark Stein (UK) ; Italy : Silvia Marin, Giovanna Pezzetta, Cyrus Roustayan, Lorenzo Zucotti, Ross Crowther-Green (UK); Poland : core group 2, teachers group.

Spoken Language will be English. The Conference is open to colleagues, working in the mental health sector and to psychology students in their last year of study and medical doctors, finishing their degree as psychiatrists.

Payment by Paypal (type Paypal in your internet search engine), choose transfer of money, use the following email address cornelis.cornelissen@gmail.com and add that you’re paying for the conference (Name of the account is Stichting ISTDP Nederland).

Before May 1 : 450 euro. After May 1 : 675 euro (including lunches). Students (psychology, psychiatry) in their last year of training pay 350 euro.