
During the ISTFP conference in Vienna, we had the opportunity to attend the presentation of the award-winning paper written by Arianna Sinisi and her colleagues.
It constitute a remarkable example of how scientific rigor, a passion for teaching the principles of TFP, and innovation can come together to address one of the most persistent challenges in psychiatry.
Radical answer to a familiar problem
There is something quite radical about this paper. In eight hours, two workshops in Modena, Arianna Sinisi, Tennyson Lee and colleagues shifted something that decades of stigma research tells us is stubbornly resistant: How psychiatric trainees feel about patients with personality disorders.

Glauco Valdivieso
Glauco Valdivieso is a Peruvian psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and researcher based in Lima, Peru. He completed his medical degree at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and specialized in psychiatry at the Hospital Nacional Víctor Larco Herrera, becoming a board-certified psychiatrist in 2018.
He is a certified psychotherapist in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), trained by the International Society of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (ISTFP). In addition, he has completed formal training in Cognitive Psychotherapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT).
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Dr. Valdivieso is the co-founder and medical director of the Instituto Peruano para el Estudio y Abordaje Integral de la Personalidad (IPEP), where he also coordinates the TFP Peru division. He founded and currently leads the Chapter on Personality Disorders within the Peruvian Psychiatric Association (APP), and works at the Mental Health Unit of Hospital de Villa El Salvador in Lima.
He is also a co-founder and editorial board member of the Latin American Journal of Personality, a collaborative initiative with the Instituto Argentino para el Estudio de la Personalidad y sus Trastornos (IAEPD). Additionally, he serves on the editorial board of the Peruvian Journal of Psychiatry. Internationally, he is a Board Member of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ISSPD), where he chairs the Communications Committee and leads the Latin American Regional Group.
His main clinical and research interests include the treatment of personality and mood disorders, with a particular focus on advancing research in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP).

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.