News

Dear Colleagues,

First, I hope everyone has had the opportunity to have a good holiday break and a good start to the new year.

My understanding is that the classical Greeks taught us to “observe moderation in all things” (it sounds like a different way to say “avoid splitting”).

In that spirit, I would like to direct your attention to the post from Mathieu Norton Poulin, our Co-Chair of the ISTFP Public Relations Committee.

Mathieu outlines a system of email communication that is designed to keep you from the annoyance of getting too many ISTFP communications but to assure that you get important news, information, and resources from our organization. His letter is of particular interest to those who have a leadership role in their local TFP group. I would like to thank Mathieu and the rest of the PR Committee for their hard and successful work.

Frank E. Yeomans, MD, PhD

Frank E. Yeomans, MD, PhD, is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University. He is a Senior Consultant in and teaches internationally for the Personality Disorders Institute, and is in private practice in White Plains and New York City.

Dear ISTFP members,

The 7th ISTFP conference ended just over two months ago, and I am still reflecting on how stimulating it was, both intellectually and emotionally. Like me, those of you who attended were able to witness our strong sense of community that prevails despite the challenges to group cohesion wonderfully described during the conference by Miguel Angel Gonzalez Torres.

Our sense of community strengthens each of us in numerous ways, so it is important that we nurture this sense of community on an ongoing basis. One way to accomplish this is to enhance our ability to share different skills and resources.

To formalize this ability to share and communicate, the ISTFP’s Public Relations and Communications Committee is creating a complimentary service that will be provided to all TFP groups. We call this service “The ISTFP Mailing List Project”. This will be especially relevant to those of you who plan lectures, trainings, and other academic events.

What is a mailing list?

Mathieu Norton-Poulin, M.Ps.

Mathieu Norton-Poulin is a psychologist in private practice in Gatineau, Québec. He graduated from Laval University in 1995 and started his training in transference focused psychotherapy in 2005. Member of the TFP-Québec group he as been practicing has a certified TFP therapist for the last 9 years. Since 2009 he organized several training events and has given lectures on TFP for medical doctors and college students. He maintains a blog where he write, in plain words, articles to explain TFP to the general public.

READ THE AUTHOR’S BLOG

In this issue of our research digest, we focus on a very recent article from Eric Fertuck, Ph.D. and colleagues entitled:

Rejection Distress Suppresses Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Dr. Fertuck is an Associate Professor of Psychology at CUNY, NY, a certified TFP supervisor and therapist, a psychoanalyst, as well as a member of ISTFP. The article investigates the neurobiological underpinning of distress related to social exclusion, often a core symptom of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We chose to feature this article not simply because its result shed light on the biological underpinning of BPD, which is of course of interest for our community, but also because its methods are driven by the profound understanding of emotional processes that TFP, and psychoanalytic approaches, allow. By applying a deeper conceptual understanding of social rejection, Fertuck et al. help elucidate a biological mechanism that in the past has been investigated as a categorical, insular, function, leading to mixed results that have been difficult to replicate. We see this contribution as one of the first compelling papers utilizing awareness gained from the psychotherapy setting and psychoanalytic theory to deepen biological knowledge. This type of studies and approaches breaks the stigma of the absence of foundations in psychotherapy and psychoanalytic theory, likewise contributing to the scientific knowledge of clinical effectiveness through its different neurobiological mechanisms.

First, we will quickly review the results of Fertuck et al., to then focus on the creativity of their methodological strategy.

Silvia Bernardi

Silvia Bernardi, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University. After graduating from medical school in Florence Italy in 2006, Silvia emigrated to the USA to work intensively in neuroscience research, studying the bases of the interaction between emotions and cognition. Silvia completed her residency in Psychiatry at Columbia and has since practiced privately in New York. She trained in Transference Focused Psychotherapy and continues to see patients for medication management and psychotherapy while conducting her research to unlock further knowledge to support the biological underpinnings of TFP and borderline personality disorder.

Glauco Valdivieso

Glauco Valdivieso is a Peruvian psychiatrist and psychotherapist who lives and works in Lima, Peru. He has been a psychiatrist since 2018, graduated from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and trained at the Hospital Nacional Victor Larco Herrera. He has training in Cognitive Psychotherapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Mentalization Based Therapy and Transference Focused Therapy, currently in clinical supervision. He is the co-founder and medical director of the Peruvian Institute for the Study and Comprehensive Approach to Personality (IPEP) and of the TFP PERU therapeutic division. He is the founder of the Personality Disorders Chapter of the Peruvian Psychiatric Association (APP) and head of the mental health unit at the Villa El Salvador Emergency Hospital. He is also co-founder and member of the editorial team of the Latin American Journal of Personality together with the Argentine Institute for the Study of Personality and its Disorders (IAEPD). His clinical interests are the treatment of personality disorders and mood disorders, and he wishes to contribute to research on TFP.

Authors’s facebook page

Meeting Glauco feels like an adventure, as he wears many hats, he is passionate about his work as a head of Mental Health Unit of Hospital de Emergencias Villa El Salvador, but above all he is passionate about studying.

He has studied a master’s degree in Health Management, and is currently pursuing two more master’s degrees, one in Clinical Epidemiology and the other in Personality Disorders.
He is also trained and certified in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and Transference Focused Therapy (TFP).

Dedicated to the study and treatment of complex patients

Veronica Steiner

Veronica Steiner Segal is a Chilean clinical psychologist who graduated in 1998. Since her beginnings she has been working with patients with Severe Personality Disorders in different health institutions in her country, and since 2018 she is a certified TFP therapist.
In 2019 she obtained her accreditation as a teacher and supervisor.
Since the same year she is coordinator of Grupo TFP Chile.
She also teaches at the University of Valparaiso, in the Department of Psychiatry, where she also teaches in the Diploma of Severe Personality Disorders.
She collaborates in different courses looking for the diffusion of TFP. Together with Luis Valenciano and Mónica Eidlin she directs an important training in TFP for Spanish speaking students, TFP Latin America.

Dear colleagues and ISTFP members,

The European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD) is proud to announce the third ESSPD Summer School for early career researchers, organized in collaboration with the University of Lausanne, Depart- ment of Psychiatry, Institute of Psychotherapy and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Service, with the financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

The aim of the summer school is to increase the meth- odological competencies in conducting high quality de- velopmental psychopathology research in the domain of personality disorders. Topics include: developmental psy- chopathology (i.e., prediction of self-harm and suicide in adolescence), inclusion of family in research designs (i.e., mothers with personality disorders and their offspring), prospective long-term follow-up studies, psychotherapy, research designs (i.e., effectiveness, mediation, modera- tion), assessment of emotional processing, socio-cognitive processing and reflective functioning in adolescence.

We will adopt a theory-integrative, disorder-oriented and evidence-based approach. Throughout the one-week pro- gram, the focus will be on the plurality of methods, their productive use for specific research questions and their creative combinations in order to deepen the understand- ing of developmental pathways and the effects of pre- vention and intervention to personality disorders in youth.

Teaching methodologies include interactive presentations, workshop exercises on actual research material, plenary and small group discussions, individual work, speed-talk presentations, playfully structured question-and-answer sessions.

Where?

The summer school takes place in a relaxing and inspiring atmosphere at the picturesque retreat center Crêt-Bérard, calmly perching over Lac Léman in Switzerland, one of the largest lakes in Western Europe. Activities as part of a social program will be organized.

When ?

Sunday, August 27th 2023 (arrival day) – Saturday, September 2nd, 2023 (departure day); 5 full days residential).

For whom ?

PhD students, MDs, or early post-doctoral fellows affiliated with a European university.
Deadline : Applications by February 1st, 2023 by e-mail to [email protected].

All applications must contain a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae and a 1-page summary of the relevant research project (in one PDF file). Applications from Eastern Europe are explicitly encouraged.

Full fee EUR 750 (includes registration to all scientific ac- tivities, six overnight stays at Crêt-Bérard, all meals/coffee breaks, and organized social activities).

Reduced fee EUR 300 for participants from Eastern Euro- pean countries (includes registration to all scientific ac- tivities, six overnight stays at Crêt-Bérard, all meals and organized social activities).

Important: ESSPD, with funding from SNSF, fully supports financially up to five participants from Eastern European countries (will be paid for: reduced fee and travel expens- es). Please attach one letter of support (e.g. from your supervisor) if you are interested to apply for this funding.

Flyer of the event (PDF)

ESSPD

The European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD)

ESSPD website