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Fear is an emotion that encloses and precludes change... I think the opposite of fear is honesty.  Honesty and belief.  

- Stephen King

Who looks outside, dreams.  Who looks inside, awakens.

 - C G Jung

 

Psyche and Soul

Psychodynamic Perspectives on Personality Disorder

 

A 3-Day Workshop

April 1-3

Barrett Center

Pacifica Graduate Institute

Ladera Lane Campus

Core Content

 

The specific needs of course participants may determine priority and emphasis of these content areas.  The content areas include:

 

1. Introduction and/or review of psychodynamic principles involving affect, affect modulation, and the concept of affect tolerance.  Specific attention will be paid to basic emotional experiences like shame and guilt.

2. The role of affect will be considered adjunctive to the higher-order roles of ideation and cognition, with psychotherapeutic emphasis on integrating these aspect of the personality.  

3. Specific defenses deployed in the service of affect management, such as repression and suppression, introjection, omnipotent control, primitive idealization and devaluation, undoing, intellectualization, and others.

4. “Primitive” vs. “mature” defenses will be reviewed, with emphasis on clinical implications of each.

5. Overview of classical conceptualizations of developmental personality structure, including psychotic, borderline, and normal personality functioning.

6. Brief review of theories of personality as reflected in current diagnostic nosologies (the Diagnostic and StatisticalManual of Mental Disorders, the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual) and influential theories of personality organization (i.e., McWilliams, Kohut, Kernberg, the Interpersonal Circumplex model).  Emphasis is placed on therapeutic implications of each personality organization.

7. A review of each of the major personality organizations.

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:

 

1. Recognize and name basic defensive operations used by individuals in order to modulate affect and  avoid emotional pain or pressure.

2. Identify key features of psychotic, characterological / borderline, and neurotic / normal personality development in therapy populations.

3. Analyze key features of interpersonal behavior in such a way as to develop tentative hypotheses about underlying character organization.

4. Select and support a stance in a therapeutic relationship specifically designed to be maximally effective with various personality types.