ISTDP Academy: Fall 2024: Michelle May

The Danish and Swedish Societies for ISTDP are pleased to welcome their members to yet another semester of the ISTDP Academy! The ISTDP Academy is our shared platform for continued learning and inspiration, as well as for bringing together our Scandinavian ISTDP community. For our coming semester, we have four interesting presentations, all at 17.00 until 19.30.

Please note that the days of the presentations this year alternate between Tuesday and Wednesday!

September 3: Michelle May (USA)
October 2: Jon Frederickson (USA)
November 6: Kostas Monas (GR)
December 3: Nat Kuhn (USA)

Attendance is possible for members of either of our two societies. It is important that you have paid for 2024-membership before the first presentation of the semester, as you will otherwise not be allowed entry into the session. Membership as well as participation in the semester can be bought through our online store: https://istdp-danmark.dk/store/

Please help us spread the word about the ISTDP-Academy to your colleagues in the Scandinavian ISTDP community.

Detailed information on this semester’s four presentations:

September 3rd: Michelle May: From the Cognitive to the Soul: A Case of High Resistance to Hope

About Michelle: Michelle M. May, LPC, is the chair of the Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) Core Training program at the New Washington School of Psychiatry in Washington, DC. She is a licensed psychotherapist specializing in intensive dynamic therapy with a private practice for adult individuals and couples in Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, DC. She is a Certified Teacher and Supervisor by the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association (IEDTA) and provides trainings to health practices, organizations, and universities seeking to learn about mental health and intensive dynamic therapies. She is the author of the upcoming book, What I Couldn’t Tell My Therapist, which will be available October 8, 2024. Also a board-approved supervisor with the state of Virginia and a sought-after teacher and supervisor, Michelle specifically focuses on presenting to practices and supervising licensed clinicians with an interest in intensive dynamic therapies. Michelle is passionate about educating professionals and the public about intensive therapy. She can be contacted at maymichellem@gmail.com and found on Instagram @michellemmaylpc.

About Michelle’s presentation: Michelle will share a consultation session conducted with her supervisee’s patient, who was struggling to understand why he could not get any traction with his patient. Michelle will delve into how she assessed the barriers to effective treatment, illustrating the effective application of what Michelle calls the Six Triangles of the Conscious Therapeutic Alliance, which are the Internal Emotional Problem, Will, Positive Goal, Specific Example, Awareness of the TOC, and Task triangles. Additionally, the case offers glimpses into the diverse ways to clarify and work with highly syntonic defenses and how not to get caught up with tactical defenses.

October 2nd: Jon Frederickson: Systematic Attention to Transference in a Severely Fragile Patient

About Jon: Jon Frederickson, MSW, is on the faculty of the Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) Training Program at the New Washington School of Psychiatry. Jon has provided ISTDP training in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, India, Iran, Australia, Canada, the U.S., and the Netherlands. He is the author of over fifty published papers or book chapters and seven books, including Co-Creating Change: Effective Dynamic Therapy Techniques, Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Learning to Listen from Multiple Perspectives, The Lies We Tell Ourselves, Co-Creating Safety: healing the fragile patient, Healing Through Relating: a skill-building book for therapist, and the forthcoming Clinical Thinking in Psychotherapy: how to do it and how to teach it. His books have been translated into fifteen languages. He has DVDs of actual sessions with patients who previously failed in therapy at his websites www.istdpinstitute.com and www.deliberatepracticeinpsychotherapy.com There you will also find skill-building exercises designed for therapists. He writes posts on ISTDP at www.facebook.com/DynamicPsychotherapy .

About Jon’s presentation: TBA

November 6th: Kostas Monas: Object Relations Theory and IS-TDP – Working in the Depressive Position

About Kostas: Dr. Konstantinos Monas is a 67-year-old psychiatrist and psychotherapist who worked as a member of staff at the Psychiatric Hospital of Thessaloniki, Greece, from 1990 until the end of 2020, achieving the Greek NHS rank of Director. In the beginning and for many years he worked in the Psychiatric Hospital’s Rehabilitation units, mostly with patients experiencing psychotic and mood disorders. For the last 13 years he worked at the Community Mental Health Center of the Central District of the city of Thessaloniki, of which he also served as the director, for six years. Since 2017 he has been approved a licensed therapist of Davanloo’s Intensive Short- Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, as well as a licensed trainer and supervisor for this modality, by the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association. The
training program in collaboration with MPC is also accredited by IEDTA.

About Kosta’s presentation: In psychotherapy, there are patients, mainly with borderline personality organization, who face significant difficulties when they separate from their therapist, usually during holidays, summer vacations or upcoming termination. At that phase, they experience depressive feelings and intense anxiety. Trying to overcome their experienced depressive feelings and anxiety, they often use manic defenses which push them to regress to a previous developmental phase, the Paranoid – Schizoid Position. At that condition, they use mechanisms as splitting, projections, projection identification and denial which are present in the room and we can address them asking the patients to experience their emotions in the transference. The most valuable for this condition is when the patients experience their murderous rage towards the therapist – the person of the past, but mainly the guilt about the rage and also the grief! Sessions from three cases will be presented with comments about the mechanisms of the patients and the interventions of the therapist.

December 3: Nat Kuhn: The importance of Action in ISTDP

About Nat: Nat Kuhn, MD has been studying, practicing, teaching, and writing about Experiential Dynamic Therapy since 1996, when he began a decade-long association with Leigh McCullough. He was her co-author on Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual for Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, and Assistant Director of her Psychotherapy Research Program at Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). He was instrumental in the development and validation of the Achievement of Therapeutic Objectives Scale (ATOS). He has been practicing Habib Davanloo’s ISTDP since 2008, and has studied with Allan Abbass and Jon Frederickson. As a Lecturer (Part-Time) in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, he teaches short-term therapy to BIDMC psychiatry residents, in addition to other teaching both in the US and internationally. He is a past president of the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association (IEDTA), and serves on their Board of Directors. He has a private practice in Belmont, Massachusetts. In a previous life, he was a mathematician.

About Nat’s presentation: TBA