Upcoming events

    • Sunday, September 08, 2024
    • Sunday, June 08, 2025
    Register

    Post-Graduate Program in Couple Therapy

    The Psychodynamic Couple and Family Institute of New England offers a training program for clinicians looking to expand their clinical skills in working with couples. This program also enhances the clinician’s capacity to recognize and address relational and contextual issues in the treatment of individual clients.

    Program Philosophy

    PCFINE’s faculty teaches from a clinical perspective that integrates psychodynamic and systems theories in order to understand and address the dysfunctional patterns of interaction that contribute to conflict and distance between partners. Our therapeutic approach is informed by recent understandings in neuroscience and the study of attachment, unconscious communication, and affect regulation. From our perspective, partners, in response to feeling threatened, may respond in ways that trigger recursive cycles of self-protective strategies in which past and present, self and other, perception and reality become difficult to disentangle. De-constructing key interactions and their underlying meanings and uncovering historical roots help partners take responsibility for their parts in the destructive, regressive cycles of conflict and blame. Enduring change requires both insight and new interpersonal experiences that include different ways of feeling, thinking and interacting. The couple therapist learns to intervene actively in the couple’s interactional process to both reveal and destabilize problematic patterns and introduce healthier forms of interaction.

    We teach couple therapists ways to calm and contain strong affect in order to engage the couple’s reflective capacities. This is an important element of creating a safe, non-pathologizing environment and developing a strong alliance with each partner. The therapist can then challenge assumptions, confront and work through maladaptive interactional patterns, and introduce alternative meanings, behaviors and perspectives.

    Course Structure

    PCFINE’s couple therapy curriculum begins with a theoretical overview of our guiding principles. Each subsequent class focuses on a specific aspect of clinical work, tying theory to clinical examples provided by both fellows and faculty. The first year of our training program covers topics that equip clinicians with the fundamentals necessary for providing effective couple treatments (see below). There is also an optional second year program, pursued by a majority of our fellows, in which clinicians delve more deeply into specific, but common clinical issues facing couple therapy: e.g., infidelity; working with gay and lesbian clients; parenting issues; racial and other sociocultural dimensions. After the second year, some clinicians choose to continue learning with their classmates and arrange for monthly group supervision over several years to follow. PCFINE welcomes our fellows to become involved in our professional organization which offers continuing education opportunities and professional support in sponsoring talks, case presentations, and symposia.

    The first year classes meet monthly on Sunday mornings, from 8:45am-noon, September through June, and are held at the homes of class coordinators. Each half-year has two faculty coordinators present at all classes in addition to the faculty guest speaker there to teach that month’s topic. This is to offer a window into the differences in approach that various senior clinicians take, and to allow for continuity of themes between classes. The classes are taught in the manner of a post-graduate seminar with active participation by the fellows both in exploring the theory presented and around discussion of clinical examples. A syllabus and readings are provided in advance for each meeting. There are a total of 10 sessions. There is an orientation brunch for fellows and faculty before the first class meets in September.

    In addition to the monthly class meetings, fellows will be divided into small groups of 3 or 4 clinicians and assigned to a consultation group leader, a senior faculty member with whom they will meet monthly for two hours on Sundays following classes. This provides an opportunity for ongoing case discussion of the fellows’ work as it evolves over the course of the training program.

    Topics covered in the first-year class include:

    • Psychoanalytic and systemic frameworks for couple therapy

    • Formation of the therapeutic alliance in
    couple therapy

    • Evaluation and formulation of couple cases

    • Transference and countertransference in
    couple therapy

    • Therapeutic action in couple therapy

    • Couple development

    • Defensive processes in couple therapy

    • Sex in couple therapy

    • Working with affect in couple therapy

    • Addressing “isms” and microaggressions with interracial couples

    Learning objectives and class schedule available at
    www.pcfine.org.

     

    Tuition and Fees

    The annual tuition is $1750.00.  A non-refundable deposit of $100 is due with the application.  Private supervision can be arranged at a reduced fee with any of the faculty.  Equity rate and scholarships are available.  To learn more, go to the website at www.pcfine.org.

    Continuing Education Credits

    The Psychodynamic Couple & Family Institute of New England (PCFINE) has been approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. PCFINE maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Social Workers may telephone 781-433-0906 or email pcfine1934@gmail.com to get CE information.

    Faculty

    Susan Abelson, Ph.D.

    Stephanie Adler, Ph.D.

    Jenn Bortle, Ph.D.

    Linda Camlin, Ph.D.

    Wendy Caplan, LICSW

    Larry Chud, M.D.

    Arnold Cohen, Ph.D.

    Meg Connolly, Ph.D.

    Addy Dettor, LICSW

    Sherry Dickey, Ph.D.

    Paul Efthim, Ph.D.

    Tamara Feldman, Ph.D.

    Magdalena Fosse, Psy.D.

    David Goldfinger, Ph.D.

    Keith Irving, Ph.D.

    Mary C. Kiely, Ph.D.

    Stephen Knowlton, Ph.D.

    Marina Kovarsky, LICSW

    Carolynn Maltas, Ph.D.

    Alistair McKnight, Psya.D., LMHC

    Oona Metz, LICSW

    Katie Naftzger, LICSW

    Justin Newmark, Ph.D.

    Dina Pasalis, LICSW

    Sejal Patel, Psy.D.

    Brent Reynolds, LMHC

    Daniel Schacht, LICSW

    Michelle Schuder, Ph.D.

    Rachel Segall, LICSW

    Joe Shay, Ph.D.

    Jennifer Stone, Ph.D.

    Risa Weinrit, Psy.D.


    Other Application Information or Requirements

    Trainees must be independently licensed or working under the supervision of a licensed clinician. Please submit current curriculum vitae, certificate of malpractice insurance, and license if you have one by email to pcfine1934@gmail.com.

    If you are applying for the equity rate of $750, please email a statement explaining how you meet our criteria by (1) identifying as belonging to a racial or ethnic group with historical barriers to access and/or (2) primarily working with low income individuals or those who have also endured historical barriers to access by virtue of their race or ethnicity. Send email to Alice Rapkin, PCFINE Administrator at pcfine1934@gmail.com.

    Call Alice Rapkin, PCFINE Administrator, with any questions at 781-433-0906, or send her an email at pcfine1934@gmail.com.


    • Saturday, December 07, 2024
    • 9:00 AM - 4:30 PM
    • On-line
    Register

    Agreement to Maintain Confidentiality of Clinical Information and Restrictions to Copying Workshop Content

    By attending this workshop I agree to the following:

    I understand that I may hear clinical material in this course that must be kept strictly confidential and not discussed or disseminated in any form outside of the course. I agree that I will not record, take photos, or store digital content from the course other than those materials which have already been provided by the presenter and PCFINE. I understand that I need to view the on-line program in a private place where it cannot be overheard or observed by others who are not registered for the course.

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    Therapeutic Frameworks for Depressed and Suicidal
    Teens, Young 
    Adults and their Parents:

    Spotlight on Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents and their Parents (DBT-A)

    Whether you are a new or experienced clinician, working in private practice or community mental health settings, no question asked of a teen or young adult can more evoke suspended breath than this one: "have you been thinking about killing yourself"? Similarly when working with the parents of depressed and  suicidal youth, your role in helping them to navigate their child's possibly life threatening emotions and behaviors can keep you up at night and make you feel alone.

    In this on-line, interactive program, PCFINE welcomes two expert teachers and clinicians who have devoted most of their careers to applying and training other clinicians to use two treatment models for working with this population of youth and their parents:  Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A).

    Guy Diamond, PhD, the co-creator of Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT) will teach us about this brief, emotion-focused, trauma-informed family therapy model specifically developed for adolescent depression and suicide. Attachment theory provides the theoretical framework and many of the clinical targets for ABFT. The manual is structured and flexible, aiming to help therapists get to underlying interpersonal challenges quickly and deeply. Extensive research has helped to define this approach as one of the few empirically supported family therapy models for internalizing disorders.  Dr. Diamond’s teaching will include slides and video examples of the treatment process in action.  

    Judith Mintz, PhD, the Director of Clinical Services at the McLean 3East Residential Dialectical Behavior Therapy Program for Adolescents (DBT-A) will teach about this specialized treatment program for suicidal adolescents, young adults and their parents. The DBT-A framework grows from an acknowledgement that parents of teens who engage in repeated suicide attempts and self-injurious behaviors are themselves part of an emotionally exhausted caregiving system. Struggling to be emotionally responsive to their distressed teens, parents find themselves destabilized which in turn exacerbates their child’s distress.

    Dr. Mintz will review the specific family interventions that have been designed to involve parents in their child’s treatment process and to enhance parents’ caregiving capacities in order to increase emotion regulation and to reduce behavioral dyscontrol and reactivity for parents and child alike. She will share clinical case examples from her work at the McLean 3East Adolescent DBT Residential Program.  

    Finally, Drs. Diamond and Mintz will highlight some of the ways that ABFT and DBT-A converge and others that distinguish one from the other. There will be ample opportunities for audience participation throughout the day.

    EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES

    At the conclusion of this program, the participants will be able to:

    1)    Explain how attachment theory provides the theoretical and clinical foundation for ABFT

    2)   Describe the purpose of the five-treatment-task structure of ABFT’s clinical model

    3)   Describe some of the micro, in-session clinical skills needed to facilitate ABFT

    4)   Describe the “Biosocial Theory” of Borderline Personality Disorder in Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Adolescents (DBT-A), and how this theory is shared with patients and parents in educating them about the disorder and treatment process

    5)  Explain the “transactional” nature of emotional dysregulation and how this process is connected to behaviors such as suicide attempts and self-harm

    6)  Provide examples of some of the evidence-based strategies and interventions used in DBT-A to enhance parents’ capacities to manage their own stress while more effectively parenting their Vulnerable child

    7)  Describe some of the ways that ABFT and DBT-A differ from each other

    Guy Diamond, PhD is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and was Associate Professor at Drexel University in the College of Nursing and Health Professions until he retired in 2023.  At Drexel, he was the Director of the Center for Family Intervention Science (CFIS). His primary work has been in the area of youth suicide prevention and treatment research.  On the treatment side, he has focused on the development and testing of Attachment Based Family Therapy (ABFT, especially for teens struggling with depression and suicide. ABFT has now been applied to children and young adults, LGBTQ youth and adults, and adopted in clinics all over the world. It is used as a transdiagnostic approach to patient mental health and ruptures in family attachment. Dr. Diamond is now President of the ABFT International Training Institute which disseminates this model around the world.

    Judith Mintz, PhD is the Director of Clinical services at the McLean 3East Residential BT program for Adolescents where she has worked for the past 17 years.  She is a supervising psychologist and has trained several Post-Doctoral Fellows in the program. For several years, she was one of the co-leaders of the parent skills group, and currently is a co-leader in psycho-educational groups for parents learning to manage stress related to their childs mental health challenges. In addition to her work at McLean, Dr. Mintz has a private practice in Arlington and Cambridge, MA.

    REFERENCES:

    Diamond, G., Kodish, T., Ewing, E. S. K., Hunt, Q. A. & Russon, J. M. (2022). Family processes: Risk, protective and treatment factors for youth at risk for suicide. Aggression and Violent Behaviors, 64, 101586.

    Diamond, G.S., Diamond G. & Levy, S. (2021). Attachment-based family therapy: Theory, clinical model, outcomes, and process research. Journal of Affective Disorders, 294, 286–295.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.07.005

    Fruzzetti, A. E., Payne, L. G., & Hoffman, P. D. (2021). “DBT with families” in L.A. Dimeff, S. L. Rizvi, & K. Koerner (Eds.), Dialectical behavior therapy in clinical practice: Applications across disorders and settings (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press pp. 366-387.

    Fruzzetti, A.E. and Payne, L.G. (2020).“Assessment of Parents, Couples, and Families in Dialectical Behavior Therapy.” Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 27(1), 39-49.

    Rathus, J., Campbell, B., Miller, A. and Smith, H. (2015). Treatment Acceptability Study of Walking the Middle Path, a New DBT Skills Module for Adolescents and their Families. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 69(2), 163-178.

    Stern, R., King, A., & Diamond, G. (2022). Repairing attachment in families with depressed adolescents: A task analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology

    https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23399 

    PARTICIPANTS:

    This program is open to all PCFINE members, other interested mental health professionals and students. It is intended for those with a beginner, intermediate or advanced level of knowledge and experience.

    CANCELLATION POLICY:

    Full refund if notice of cancellation is received by March 1, 2025.

    CONTINUING EDUCATION:

    Psychologists – The Psychodynamic Couple and Family Institute of New England (PCFINE) is approved by the American Psychological Association (APA) to sponsor continuing education for psychologists.  PCFINE maintains responsibility for this program and its content. Attending the full day will fulfill 6 hours of CE credit. Please note: No partial credit can be given. You must arrive within 10 minutes of the start time and stay up until 10 minutes of the end time to receive CE credit. Participants from states other than Massachusetts will need to file with their respective licensing boards. PCFINE will issue a certificate of attendance to those who complete the seminar, but this issuance does not guarantee CEU acceptance by boards other than APA and NASWMA.

    Social Workers, Licensed Mental Health Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists may call 781-449-8365 or email pcfine1934@gmail.com for CE information.

    PCFINE is committed to non-discrimination and will conduct all activities in strict conformity with the American Psychological Association’s Ethical Principles for Psychologists. If you believe that a violation of ethics has occurred during the program, or have any other complaints or questions, please contact Justin Newmark, Ph.D. at pcfine1934@gmail.com.

    There is no commercial support for this program nor are there any relationships between the CE sponsor, presenters, workshop content, research, grants, or other funding that could reasonably be construed as a conflict interest.

    REGISTRATION

    Last day for registration is Thursday, December 5, 2024.

    PCFINE Member                                   Non-Member                                   Grad Student/Equity*

    Early Bird to 11/18/24 $160                    Early Bird to 11/18/24 $190             $50*

    After 11/18/24 $190                                 After 11/18/24 $220

    *The Equity Registration rate is intended for participants who identify as belonging to racial or ethnic groups with historical barriers to access, and/or participants who work with low-income individuals or those who have also endured historical barriers to access.


Past events

Saturday, March 16, 2024 Romantic Chemistry and Its Discontents: Assessing & Treating Lost Attraction in Couples
Saturday, October 28, 2023 An Affair to Remember: How the Psychodynamic Model Has(n't) Met the Moment
Saturday, March 04, 2023 Working with Complex Childhood Trauma in Couple Therapy: From Dissociative Collusion to Shared Responsibility and Connection
Saturday, December 03, 2022 Difficult Conversations: How Therapists Can Help Families Talk about Aging, Illness, and End of Life [AM] AND From Love at Last to Not So Fast: Helping Couples and Families with Challenges Re-Coupling in Later Life [PM]
Saturday, February 05, 2022 Meeting the (Big!) Challenges of "Blended Families": What Works and What Doesn't for Couples and Families
Saturday, November 13, 2021 The Impact of Racism on African American Couples: Implications for Couple Therapy [Marjorie Nightingale, Ph.D.]
Sunday, September 26, 2021 Couple Therapy Training Program 2021-2022 -- Year I
Sunday, September 26, 2021 Couple Therapy Training Program 2021-2022 -- Year II
Sunday, September 20, 2020 2020-2021 Couple Training Program (Year II)
Sunday, September 20, 2020 2020-2021 Couple Training Program (Year I)
Saturday, March 14, 2020 Parent-Child Attachment from Infancy through Adolescence
Sunday, September 29, 2019 2019-2020 Couple Training Program (Year I)
Sunday, September 29, 2019 2019-2020 Couple Training Program (Year II)
Saturday, April 27, 2019 Reclaiming Intimacy in a Digital Age: Developing Relational Strategies for Families, Couples and Their Therapists
Saturday, October 20, 2018 Before It's Too Late: Working with Substance Use and Process Addictions in Couple Therapy
Sunday, September 23, 2018 2018-2019 Couple Training Program (Year II)
Sunday, September 09, 2018 2018-2019 Couple Training Program (Year I)
Saturday, March 17, 2018 A Contemporary Self Psychological Approach to Couple Therapy: An Overview and Comparison with Gottman and Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy (EFT) Models
Saturday, November 18, 2017 PCFINE 15th Anniversary Program: Couples on the Brink
Saturday, April 01, 2017 Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) for Couples
Saturday, October 29, 2016 When Things Get Hot or Not

PCFINE | 22 GROSVENOR RD., NEEDHAM, MA 02492 | PHONE: 781.433.0906  |  FAX: 781.433.0510  |  EMAIL | SITEMAP

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