København: Leone Baruh – 3rd International Immersion in ISTDP for Couples and Families

It is with great pleasure that Emotion Center Copenhagen welcomes you all to this 3rd international immersion in ISTDP for couples and families with Leone Baruh.

About the teacher:
Leone Baruh is a psychologist and psychotherapist, Vice President and Head of Education of IEDTA (International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association), Director of the SPAI Master in Intensive Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (www.masterspai.com), and founder and CEO of SPID-B (Sviluppo Psicoterapie Intensive Dinamiche Brevi). Leone has been working in private practice since 1993 and has devoted the last 20 years of his career in spreading, promoting and teaching Short Term Dynamic Psychotherapies. More recently he is developing and testing brand new ISTDP models for Couples, Families, Adolescents and Sportsmen.

What is ISTDP for couples and families?
In the form developed by Habib Davanloo and his students, ISTDP has traditionally been targeted towards individual therapy. However, many practitioners encounter patients seeking couples therapy, or patients presenting with problems deeply ingrained in family- or couple-dynamics. How can one expand the traditional framework of the ISTDP session to accommodate couples and families (couples with children), while still utilizing the powerful techniques and metapsychology of ISTDP? And how can the ISTDP model of individual therapy be enriched by knowledge of the dynamics of the couple or family? At this Immersion, Leone Baruh will shed light on these questions by means of his framework “Intergenerational Family Therapy”(TIF), and will show how we can obtain relevant and long lasting changes within the couple relation and the inner psychic organization, in a short lapse of time.

Thus, while the framework presented (TIF) will be new to ISTDP practitioners, the techniques applied within the framework are strictly ISTDP. As such, this Immersion will follow the format of a traditional Immersion course in ISTDP, welcoming both proficient practitioners and newcomers alike, but with a focus on couple-and family dynamics. In short, participants will gain practical knowledge of the application of ISTDP to couple-dynamics, and will have the chance to be exposed to Leone Baruh’s seasoned and elegant style of ISTDP.

Intergenerational Family Therapy – a framework for applying ISTDP to couple dynamics
Leone Baruh’s model “Intergenerational Family Therapy” (TIF) is a psychotherapeutic model under development. It integrates different theoretical orientations into one experiential dynamic psychotherapeutic approach for couples and families. The model is developed in order to implement psychodynamic techniques from ISTDP into the work with families and couples, which are considered the basic family unit. As such, TIF can be used as a therapeutic framework.
The linchpin of the model lies in using ISTDP to generate significant individual changes in a short time, resulting in changes in the more complex systems of the couple or the family. Techniques from cognitive therapy as well as theoretical understandings from systemic therapy are used to implement such changes in the family system. As such, TIF draws upon three different theoretical orientations:

1. Systemic family therapy as a basic support for understanding the individual family members’ roles in the family as a system.
2. ISTDP as the optimal technique for creating deep changes in the parents/couple’s respective intrapsychic conflicts. By using ISTDP, an unlocking of the parents/couple’s unconscious can facilitate deep understanding of their own psychological problems, as well as symptom reduction and a fundamental sense that the emotional problems in the family can be solved.
3. CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is used for children in order to alleviate “front door symptoms”, and as tools for the parents to handle emergencies in the family.

Specific contents of this year’s Immersion:
The overall goals of the Immersion are fourfold:

1. To provide the attendees with a basic understanding of the practical aspects involved with starting a couple or family therapy based on ISTDP.

2. To show in detail how the model works, using videos and roleplay.

3. To detect and sharpen the specific ISTDP skills needed to succeed in this complex but
exciting field.

4. To further develop the model through the attendees’ experiences shared at the seminar.
This year’s Immersion will include new material, both theoretical and audio-visual, in order to accommodate participants from previous years who want to further develop their understanding of using ISTDP in their work with couples and families. We invite you to bring questions or corrections to the model based on your experiences in the field since the last immersion.
At the same time, the Immersion will include a basic introduction to the field, allowing newcomers to participate with full benefit.

This year again, the main focus will be on working with couples, and less on how to include children in the process. We will include more roleplay and video-presentation than last year, in order to focus more thoroughly on the practical aspects of the work.

The specific contents of the seminar will follow, but for now, the general outline of the course is as follows:

Day 1:
A general introduction to Leone Baruh’s style and conception of ISTDP and to the framework for working with couples and families in this model. The focus will be, first and foremost, on theoretical aspects of the work, exemplified by audio-visual presentation.

Day 2:
Roleplay will be used to exemplify aspects of the work, hand in hand with an open discussion and the possibility for attendees to share their experiences.

Day 3:
The main focus will be on more extensive audio-visual presentations of Leone Baruh’s work, and time for discussion to tie ends together.

Learning atmosphere
The learning atmosphere at the Immersion with Leone Baruh is somewhat ‘Italian’. Leone is a passionate teacher and therapist and has a very pedagogical and easy way of conveying difficult techniques and knowledge to the attendees. Leone invites and urges attendees to participate with questions and be active in roleplay. All in all, these Immersions with Leone are insightful and fun. We try to stick to the program and then every now and then we decide to go with the flow and not look at the clock.

Practical information:
Time: 27th-29th of February 2020, all days 10.00-17.00.
Place: Emotion Center, Frederikssundsvej 60D, 1st floor – 2400 Copenhagen NV.
Price of the Immersion: 3500 DKK including lunch, coffee/tea and snacks.
Registration: Contact Mikkel Reher-Langberg at psykolog@reher-langberg.dk
Confidentiality: As the presentations will contain personally sensitive material, the course is for health professionals only, under oath of confidentiality.

Extra: Special core training group with Leone Baruh in Copenhagen
Besides the seminar, Emotion Center Copenhagen will, as of 2020, also be hosting a 3-year core- training group with a focus on working with couples and families as well as couple dynamics in individual therapy, with Leone Baruh as teacher. The group follows the conventional core-training format and offers the participant both an excellent opportunity to learn ISTDP from this master practitioner, and to further expand his/her practice to include work with couples and families. For more information, contact psykolog@reher-langberg.dk .