On November 25th, the Malmö Center for ISTDP will host a seminar with Allan Abbass on the theme of idealization and devaluation of ISTDP.
Psychotherapy is hard to learn. When faced with difficulty, we might get emotionally overwhelmed and try to deal with the feelings through using defenses. In psychotherapy learning, it’s not uncommon for some or all of the students to have shorter or longer moments of idealization and/or devaluation. Maybe we devalue ourselves, the lost beginners, and idealize the strong, focused teacher who seems to know what to do in any situation.
Maybe we idealize our method, be that ISTDP, Psychoanalysis, EMDR, CBT or other orientation and devalue the methods of other therapists. Or we might end up in a depressed position, where we as therapists devalue psychotherapy as a whole, and idealize pharmacological interventions. Or worse, we might idealize our books, and devalue our poor patients who don’t seem to want to fit into them. Anyone who works with psychotherapy knows that these are common phenomena in learning psychotherapy. We devalue, we idealize.
What are the consequences for learning if processes of idealization and devaluation don’t get addressed in the learning community? Does the high-intensity emotional focus of ISTDP make processes of idealization and devaluation more present in ISTDP than in other forms of therapy?
In this second talk in the series ”Return to Davanloo”, Allan Abbass will discuss some take-aways from studying ISTDP with Davanloo and other teachers, focusing on idealization and devaluation in the educational setting of ISTDP. Allan became a student of Davanloo in the early nineties, and continued going to courses in Montreal for about 25 years.
Allan Abbass, MD, is a psychiatrist, teacher, and researcher. He is a professor of psychiatry and psychology and the founding director of the Centre for Emotions and Health at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. He is one of the foremost psychotherapy teachers and researchers in the world, and is the author of ”Reaching Through Resistance” and ”Hidden From View.”
Details
Host: This event is hosted by Malmö Center for ISTDP, MCI.
Time and date: 18.00-19.30 on November 25th. Drinks will be available from 17.00.
Place: Malmö ISTDP-mottagning, Amiralsgatan 20 (våning 5), Malmö, Sweden. You can also attend digitally through Zoom. Note: Allan is participating digitally from Halifax.
Cost: Free
Registration: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSf5…/viewform
A zoom link will be sent out shortly before the event.
You can watch the previous talk in the ”Return to Davanloo” series, a seminar with Mikkel Reher-Langberg called “A brief overview of Davanloo’s development and metapsychology”, on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_36zVxFpbo