Personality Disorders affect 10% of the population and cause a major excess of mental health, medical, social services and legal system costs. When personality disorders are present they interrupt standard treatments and result in poor outcomes. These patients are also a source of distress, anxiety and boundary violations in treating professionals due to the intense emotions that they activate.

Davanloo specifically developed Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy in order to treat complex and resistant patients who were not responding to other treatment methods. He developed specific methods to handle the highly resistant defended patient, the patient with significant somatic symptoms and repression, and the patient with primitive defenses and fragile character structure. ISTDP is an empirically supported treatment for mixed personality disorders.

In this three day video based immersion course, Dr Allan Abbass and ISTDP trainers in Sweden, will review the metapsychology, treatment processes underlying ISTDP with patients with personality disorders.

It will include the following points:

• How to detect and handle high resistance from the first contact

• How to turn a patient against his own defenses

• How detect and gauge the level of fragility

• How to recognize and manage primitive defenses

• How to detect rapidly rotating defensive fronts

• How to manage self-destructive behavior cycles

• How to build capacity to tolerate emotions and anxiety

• How to detect early markers of the unconscious therapeutic alliance

• How to manage termination in time limited varieties of ISTDP

This immersion will be held online or both online and in person in Stockholm. It is likely Dr Abbass will be in Stockholm teaching live and streaming the course. If it becomes impossible for him to teach the course live, you will be reimbursed the cost difference and provided attendance to the course 0nline.

Because the course will be held online, it is open to the following groups of healthcare professionals and therapists : 1) those who are in an ISTDP or EDT Core training or supervision, 2) those who have previously completed an ISTDP/EDT Core training program, 3) ISTDP/EDT Trainers, 4) Colleagues of these 3 groups who will attend the immersion while physically being present in the same room, and 5) those who are part of any ISTDP/EDT Societies with signed confidentiality agreements. This is all to ensure confidentiality of case materials that will be reviewed and discussed.