ISTDP-Akademiet, efterår 2023: Jeanne Isaksen

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 on the first Wednesday of the month, at 17.00 until 19.30:

September 6th: Kristy Lamb (US)
Oktober 4th: Ola Berge (SE)
November 1st: Jon Anders Lied (NO)
December 6th: Jeanne Isaksen (DK)

Attendance is possible for members of either of our two societies. It is important that you have paid for this year’s 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 6th: Kristy Lamb: “Using ISTDP to Understand and Work with Substance Dependence”

About Kristy: Dr. Kristy Lamb is a medical doctor dual board certified in family medicine and psychiatry. She is the Founder and President of BOLD Health, a full spectrum psychiatric medical clinic in Encinitas, California, specializing in ISTDP informed treatment. Her clinic provides medication management, individual and group psychotherapy, and intensive outpatient programming for people suffering from addiction and mental health disorders.

About Kristy’s presentation: Between 40-60% of patients with substance abuse drop out of rehabilitation facilities before the end of treatment. Up to 85% of individuals relapse within one year of treatment for substance abuse. In 2017, 70,000 people died from a drug overdose in the US and last year, that number was up to 110,000 in 2022. Although substance abuse has often been viewed from a purely biological point of view, recent research has shown that psychotherapy can greatly enhance the outcomes for these patients. Dr. Lamb will present a unique model of addiction treatment that integrates medication management with psychotherapy, creating outcomes three times the national average. Anyone who has a patient suffering from substance abuse will find her presentation useful. Dr. Lamb will discuss how to assess the patient’s will to recover from addiction and how to identify and regulate anxiety in people suffering from substance abuse. She will also illustrate how to incorporate psychodynamic group work into addiction treatment. From her role as a psychiatrist, she will describe how to integrate medication management with psychodynamic assessment. She does not treat “addicts”; she treats people who suffer from addiction. This course will help you learn how to conceptualize substance abuse from a psychodynamic point of view in order to treat it more effectively. And this course will teach you the most important initial skills to prevent dropout in the early stages of treatment whether in a facility or a private practice.

October 4th: Ola Berge: “Superego pathology, Object relations and ISTDP – a perspective”

About Ola: Ola Berge works in Stockholm with ISTDP at an outpatient clinic for patients with personality problems. Ola is a teacher and supervisor in ISTDP and is currently involved in a research project regarding ISTDP group therapy for patients.

About Ola’s presentation: Within psychodynamic theory and ISTDP, superego pathology is a central concept. Both as a clinical phenomenon and a theoretical notion, it is notoriously difficult to maneuver. In this talk, I make an attempt to understand superego pathology based on object relations theory. I then discuss how such an understanding implicates a clinical stance that puts novelty at its core, and how that encourages us to venture into the unique possibilities of the relational now.

November 1st: Jon Anders Lied: “Conscious Collaboration in iSTDP”

About Jon Anders: Jon Anders Lied is a clinical psychologist from Norway. He was originally trained in long term intensive psychodynamic psychotherapy and mentalization based psychotherapy. Noticing the need to be more effective in the short-term frame, he started core training at the Norwegian institute for ISTDP. Since 2017 he has had regular supervision with Patricia Coughlin and has also attended her Advanced Training and Teacher Training. Jon Anders Lied is an experienced therapist, teacher, and supervisor. He has been working both in public and private healthcare and has for over 10 years taught and supervised students at the clinical psychologist master program at the Norwegian University of Technology and Science in Trondheim, Norway. In March 2023 Jon Anders Lied published the first ever Scandinavian language ISTDP-textbook, “Innføring i intensiv psykodynamisk korttidsterapi – ISTDP” at the major Norwegian publisher Universitetsforlaget.

About Jon Anders’ presentation: This webinar will focus on integrating psychodynamics and techniques in ISTDP. Through dynamic inquiry a psychodynamic case formulation and a conscious therapeutic alliance are built in collaboration with the patient. When such a therapeutic foundation is created early in the therapy, the conscious resistance is greatly reduced, and the therapeutic process gets less bumpy. This paves the way for implying ISTDP’s powerful techniques in an environment of cooperation and shared understanding. This process will be illustrated by a trial therapy with a patient struggling with health anxiety. Through dynamic inquiry into the history of symptom generating situations, patterns occur that sheds light on the patient’s conflicts. With the help of both solid conscious and unconscious alliances there is a breakthrough to feelings with links to the past, which further elucidates the conflicts that give rise to this patient’s health anxiety.

December 6th: Jeanne Isaksen: “What to do when drowning in regressive defenses?”

About Jeanne: For the last 20 years I have been working within the field of ISTDP. I finished my first core training group with Patricia Coughlin. Then I joined my second core group with Jon Frederickson and Josette ten Have de Labije. After this I went to trainers of trainers with Jon Frederickson. After my first coregroup I became very active starting up ISTDP in Denmark: via “Akademi for Integrerende psykoterapi” in Risskov/ Århus together with Carl Weltzer and others) organized a lot of seminars to expose the Danes with the method. Later I was part of establishing our Danish Society of ISTDP with some other passionate colleagues. Today my effort is primarily concentrated on training, presenting, and supervising beside of doing psychotherapy.
For the last 10 years I have offered core groups in Denmark, starting one new group up each year. Recently I also started a coregroup for organizational psychologists, who also want to develop their understanding of psychodynamic processes within coaching and groups. And each year I run multiple precores as well of advanced training on individual or group basis. – It is a great pleasure to work with and facilitate growth in so many colleagues – a mutual growth for me as well.

About Jeanne’s presentation: We have probably all met difficult clients, who are very loud (shouting) and impulsively moving arms, when they are activated with rise in feelings. Is that feeling feelings or is it discharge? And what does it mean psycho-diagnostically? And how do we handle it? I´m going to show a small vignette from one of the first sessions, where the client was drowning in her defenses due to rise in feelings. She came in with a lot of heat (rage), was choked, shouting and anxious/ panic. I worked with the graded format, but it was a bumpy road. But why was it so bumpy? I will show vignettes from a later session – after re-evaluating her as fragile.

We will see how I now work with splitt-off-processes in the graded format; how to use the therapeutic alliance to block defenses by inviting to pair up as a team; trying to do our best; recognizing modes while integrating/ complex feelings. A characteristic with the more fragile client is fast rotating fronts – from reflection – to getting too anxious – to self-attack – to splitt-off-modes (sort of enactment of feelings instead of experiencing them). I hope my presentation will be helpful to others to understand heavy regressive processes and help you find your way – when you meet clients drowning in regressive defenses. I also hope that being authentic / using my “personal style” will inspire all of you to use the psychodynamic assessment and understanding of the psychodynamic concepts & principles that is needed within this group – so you can be present and intervene more freely from within yourself. Looking forward to seeing and talking to all of you and sharing my work!

*Jeanne invites you to join her in person for her presentation, at “psykologerne på toppen”, Frederikssundsvej 60 D, 3.sal, 2400 Kbh NV. Please send Jeanne an email at psykolog@jeanneisaksen.dk if you plan on showing up*