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The ISTFP Art / Culture Committee update – 2026

Dear members, my name is Marike Steeman, Chair of the recently established Arts Committee. In this article I will update you on our activities since our foundation.

As previously announced, during the October 2023 conference, a group was formed with colleagues interested in psychoanalysis and art/culture in the broadest sense, namely film, visual arts, architecture, literature, music, and mythology. This special interest group became the TFP and Art/Culture Committee. Its mission was to do research on art from an object-relational perspective and explore how various artistic expressions can be used in our TFP education.

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Marike Steeman

Marike Steeman is psychoanalytic psychotherapist, teacher & supervisor TFP, member NVPP, ISTFP, chair of TFP Nederland and director of the Psy Art Foundation.

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Assessing the Health of Our Society – ISTFP as we enter 2026

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As 2026 begins, it is time for our traditional assessment of our Society’s health. The reviews conducted in 2024 and 2025 highlighted encouraging signs of growth across many areas, while also underlining several challenges. Let us now see how these indicators evolved during 2025.

As you know, we at the Public Relations and Communications Committee feel a deep love for our community. Each year, we hope to ensure that every one of you feels considered and that outsiders feel welcome. Once again this year, we will use ten health markers to illustrate our strengths and vulnerabilities, so that their continued monitoring becomes a shared concern.

Do all members feel included and engages?

Are we attracting new members?

Are we fulfilling our mission?

This article contains exclusive content for ISTFP members.

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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 as a certified TFP therapist for the last 11 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.

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Let’s meet Emanuel Montalvo Ramírez

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A Clinical, Human, and Deeply Relational Perspective from Puerto Rico

Speaking with Emanuel Montalvo Ramírez is encountering a reflective, calm voice, deeply committed to clinical work understood as a human encounter. A Puerto Rican clinical psychologist, community-based therapist, university professor, and supervisor of doctoral students, Emanuel is part of a generation of clinicians who has found in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) not just a technical model, but a way to understand people and their histories from a broader, more complex, and profoundly respectful perspective.

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Diana Téllez Quiroz, PhD

Diana Téllez has been a Psychodynamic Psychotherapist since 2005. She obtained a Master’s in Psychotherapy for Children, Adolescents, and Adults in 2009 and a Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy from the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association in 2012.

She holds a PhD and Master’s in APM. Certified supervisor, teacher, and therapist in TFP, Circle of Security, and AAI. Psychologist with experience in personality disorders, specializing in MBT and EFT. Member of ISTFP and ISSPD.

Author’s website

Watch interview with Diana Diamond: TFP and attachement

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Implementing Transference-Focused Psychotherapy Principles (2024)

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Richard G. Hersh, Chiara De Panfilis

This book focuses on the practical utility of key precepts of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) in contemporary psychiatry. This volume actively addresses the pressing public health crisis related to high numbers of patients with personality disorder pathology, often with significantly compromised functioning associated with marked social burdens related to health costs and lost productivity.

TFP is one of the empirically validated treatments for patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Building on this evidence base, the contributors to this volume describe their work in multiple clinical situations utilizing these principles with varying patient populations in different treatment settings. These settings include: the adult and adolescent day hospital, short term and extended inpatient hospitalizations, group therapy, and a range of outpatient services. Each chapter follows a consistent format to cover patient population, nature of treatment setting, overview of financial support, training of clinicians, treatment targets, elements of TFP employed, measurement of effectiveness, case study examples, and future research goals. Contributors from different backgrounds describe active use of TFP principles in their work, with adjustments from standard TFP protocol made accordingly.

Implementing Transference-Focused Psychotherapy Principles builds on the growing literature about TFP by expanding the focus beyond the extended individual psychotherapy format. The text will resonate with psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and mental health counselors, among others. Clinicians involved in public health systems will find the material outlined of particular value in our evolving world of mental health services.

Implementing Transference-Focused psychotherapy principles. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-68062-5

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Friends of the ISTFP – Fourth ESSPD Summer School 2025

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Investigating Psychosocial Dysfunction in Personality Disorders

The European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD) is proud to announce the fourth ESSPD Summer School for early career researchers, organized in collaboration with the University of Parma, Department of Medicine and Surgery, Section of Psychiatry, with the financial support of the Cariparma Foundation and the Personality Disorders Lab.

Aims

The aim of the summer school is to increase the methodological competencies in conducting high quality research in the domain of psychosocial functioning and recovery in personality disorders (PD) from multiple perspectives. It will be acheived by interactive presentations, group discussions, speed-talk presentations.

Research topics

The research topics will focus on trajectories of psychosocial functioning in PD and associated risk and protective factors; neurobiological correlates of the processes involved in social functioning and social learning; computational approaches to study social functioning; inclusion of the perspective of people with lived experience in research designs on recovery; and treatment strategies to address self and interpersonal functioning.

Date and location

The Summer School will take place on August 31st (arrival day) – September 6th (departure day), 2025 at the Alba del Borgo agriturismo (province of Parma, Italy). This friendly residential context for both teachers and students ensures many spaces and informal occasions to create networks among participants.

Faculty

Katja Bertsch
Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Department of Psychology,
Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

Rasa Barkauskiené
Developmental Psychopathology Research Center, Institute of Psychology,
Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

Chiara De Panfilis
Associate Professor in Psychiatry, Department of Medicine and Surgery,
University of Parma, Parma, Italy

Filip De Fruyt
Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology,
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Joost Hutsebaut
De Viersprong National Institute for Personality Disorder,
Halsteren, The Netherlands

Paolo Ossola
Associate Professor in Psychiatry, Department of Medicine and Surgery,
University of Parma, Parma, Italy

Luca Sasdelli
ESSPD Lived Experience Group and Bologna Recovery College,
Bologna, Italy

Registration process

Applications must be forwarded by e-mail to [email protected] and received by February 1st, 2025.

All applications must contain a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae and a 1-page summary of the relevant research project and how it relates to the applicant’s motivation to attend the Summer School (in one PDF file). Applications from early career researchers affiliated with an Eastern European University are encouraged.

All PhD students, MDs, or early post-doctoral fellows affiliated with a European university are welcome to the summer camp.

Fees

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TFP Training events

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We will help you

Dear members, my name is Diana Téllez and I am in charge of communication for the TFP training events. Contact me if you what all our members to know what you are planning.

Diana Téllez

Diana Téllez has worked as a Psychotherapist with a psychodynamic approach since 2005, Obtained a master’s degree in psychotherapy of children, adolescents, and adults in 2009 and a PhD in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy by the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association in 2012.
She’s a Mexican Teacher-Supervisor certified by the ISTFP, has clinical practice in TFP since 2011. She emerged as a founding member of Grupo TFP Mexico, has knowledge in certified mentalization. In addition to experience with attachment theory, she’s certified as a reliable interviewer / evaluator in the adult attachment interview (AAI) accredited by the University of Berkeley and a certified educator/facilitator from Circle of Security, institution based in Washington.
Since 2016 she is responsible for the Psychology Department at a public hospital part of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) in Mexico City.
On the other hand, Diana Téllez, has been part of the Academic Committee of Mexico since 2016, involved in the organization and delivery of multiple training and supervision in TFP, with topics such as TFP Basics, TFP applied to the TNP, training for the application and qualification of the STIPO-R.
Her interest in teaching has led her to lecture at different universities and institutions, such as the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), the Monterrey’s Institute of Technology (ITESM) and the National Institute of Psychiatry Ramón de la Fuente (INPRF).
At the same time, she’s been the main point of contact for public relations, social media and promotion of Grupo TFP México, as such she’s been in direct contact with TFP stakeholders from other regions.