Small Consultation Group

Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy (MIT) for personality disorders. 

Online only

12 October 2023 – 9.00am – 5.00pm AEST

During this small group consultation participants will bring their own cases of clients diagnosed with personality disorders such as avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, narcissistic or with depressive and passive-aggressive personality features. Clients with severe emotion dysregulation are excluded. The consultations will help participants focus on the following elements:

Status of the therapeutic relationship:

• How to recognize alliance ruptures
• How to become aware of therapists' personal contribution
• How to disentangle from problematic interpersonal cycles in session
• How to communicate about the relationship
• How to use information from the therapeutic relationship to gain awareness of clients' problematic patterns

The therapeutic contract:

• Becoming aware that every therapeutic action can be effective when made explicit and then the client is aware of the link between the desired therapy goal and commitment to therapeutic tasks
• Awareness that some situations are in a stall because a contract has not been made, or updated, is quite relevant, and common in the everyday practice of many therapists
• Formulating interpersonal schemas
• Making a treatment plan fitting the formulation

  Using experiential techniques:

• Realising that practices such as guided imagery, role-play, two-chairs, sensorimotor exercises can be safely used in any treatment moment
• Using these techniques to better understand patients' inner experience
• Adopting rescripting during guided-imagery, role-play and chair work or adopt psychomotor techniques in order to break schemas and foster the emergence of healthy self aspect
• Consolidate results through ongoing behavioural experiments

About the Presenter:

Giancarlo Dimaggio, MD, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, is a co-founding member of the Center for Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy in Rome, Italy, and trainer for the Italian Society of Cognitive and Behaviour Psychotherapy (SITCC). His primary interest is in personality disorders. He has co-authored and edited six books on psychopathology and psychotherapy, and more than 250 papers in scientific journals. Dr Dimaggio is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In-Session, an associate editor of Psychology and Psychotherapy and the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration.