SYDNEY: Nancy McWilliams and Michael Garrett

**** Ticket sales close 12th Feb ****

Psych Ascend is honoured to present as its inaugural event, a national series of live lectures with Dr Nancy McWilliams and Michael Garrett, MD in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. This will be Dr McWilliams’ and Dr Garrett’s final teaching tour within Australia, and the last opportunity to see them presenting live in Sydney.

We welcome colleagues from psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, many of whom are familiar with and whose practice has already been enriched by Dr McWilliams’ seminal writing and teachings on psychoanalytic diagnosis, and Dr Garrett’s innovative integration of CBT and psychodynamic psychotherapy for the treatment of psychosis. We warmly encourage early-career clinicians, students and those new to the work of Dr McWilliams and Dr Garrett to take advantage of this unique and invaluable learning opportunity. This is an event not to be missed!

Programme 

22 February 2025 

9am – 10.30am Dr Nancy McWilliams

Clinically Useful Diagnosis: Understanding personality and psychopathology beyond DSM and ICD

11am – 12.30am Dr Nancy McWilliams

Schizoid Dynamics: An Introverted Psychology that DSM and ICD Diagnosis Misunderstand

1.30 – 3.30pm Dr Michael Garrett

Psychotherapy for Psychosis: Integrating Cognitive-Behavioral and Psychodynamic Treatment

4pm – 5pm Dr Nancy McWilliams & Dr Michael Garrett 

Live Consultation with audience case presentation

23 February 2025 

9am – 10.30am Dr Michael Garrett

Psychotic Symptoms as Disguised Recollections of Trauma

11am – 12.30am Dr Michael Garrett

Resistances to the Use of Logic in CBTp 

1.30 – 3.30pm Dr Nancy McWilliams

Enactment, Rupture, and Repair in the Clinical Process 

4pm – 5pm Dr Nancy McWilliams & Dr Michael Garrett 

Live Consultation with audience case presentation

Refreshments & Breaks 

Morning and Afternoon Tea served each day at 10.30am and 3.30pm. 

Lunch served each day at 12.30-1.30pm.

Early Bird Registration closes 30 November 2024

$415* Early Bird One Day Tickets 

$690* Early Bird Two Day Tickets (Both Days) 

$475* Standard One Day Tickets  

$790* Standard Two Day Tickets (Both Days)

* Prices above are exclusive of GST and Humanitix booking fees 

MULTI-VENUE DISCOUNT - If you have already paid full price at another venue, please contact us at info@psychascend.au and we will provide you with a 50% discount for your 2nd and/or 3rd venue. 

Early Career Psychologists (less than 5 years post graduation) 20% off - Limited tickets available - Promotional Code at checkout: EARLYCAREER

Current full-time Students 40%** off  - Limited tickets available (This discount is NOT available for psychiatry or psychology registrars, who should instead use the Early Career Code) - Email us at info@psychascend.au for your unique discount code, stating: your university, degree name and expected year of completion.  

Presenter Information

Nancy McWilliams is Visiting Professor Emerita at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied & Professional Psychology and has a private practice in Lambertville, NJ. She is author of Psychoanalytic Diagnosis (1994; rev. ed. 2011), Psychoanalytic Case Formulation (1999), Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (2004), and Psychoanalytic Supervision (2021), all with Guilford Press. She has edited or contributed to several other books, and is Associate Editor of the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (2006, Lingiardi & McWilliams, 2017). She is a former president of the Division of Psychoanalysis (39) of the American Psychological Association and is on the editorial board of Psychoanalytic Psychology. A graduate of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, Dr. McWilliams is also affiliated with the Center for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis of New Jersey. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA. Dr. McWilliams specializes in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and supervision; the relationship between diagnosis and treatment; alternatives to DSM and ICD diagnostic conventions; integration of feminist theory and psychoanalytic knowledge; the application of psychoanalytic understanding to the problems of diverse clinical populations; altruism; narcissism; and trauma and dissociative disorders.

Lectures 

Clinically Useful Diagnosis: Understanding personality and psychopathology beyond DSM and ICD Since 1980, diagnostic taxonomies like the DSM and the ICD have reflected the interests of insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations, governmental cost-cutters, and some academics, rather than the needs of patients and clinicians, and reducing psychological suffering in the most humane and effective ways. Dr. McWilliams will put the DSM and ICD classifications in historical context, mention several alternative diagnostic approaches, and emphasize with examples the clinical value of a dimensional, inferential, contextual understanding of personality and psychopathology.

Schizoid Dynamics: An Introverted Psychology that DSM and ICD Diagnosis Misunderstand The personality organization, affective experience, defenses, conflicts, and organizing cognitions of individuals with schizoid dynamics will be explored, with emphasis on the continuum of severity in individuals of this personality type: from high-functioning and creative to psychotically troubled and despairing. An inferential, contextual, and dimensional understanding of schizoid psychology will be elaborated, with discussion of the clinical implications of this way of understanding schizoid subjectivity. Dr. McWilliams will talk about a case and present some relevant video clips.

Enactment, Rupture, and Repair in the Clinical Process Dr. McWilliams will review evidence for the critical importance of the therapeutic alliance to therapy outcome. Enactments are now widely assumed to be inevitable in psychotherapy, and sometimes lead to ruptures of the alliance that need to be repaired. She will attempt to infer general principles of therapy process relevant to the rupture-repair cycle in psychotherapy, with examples from her clinical experience of enactments and efforts at repair of the therapeutic alliance. 

Presenter Information

Michael Garrett, MD is currently Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. He is also on the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York (PANY) affiliated with NYU Medical Center in New York City. He received his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed his residency training in Psychiatry at Bronx Municipal Hospital Center. He currently teaches and supervises clinicians doing psychotherapy for psychosis and is a consultant to several first-episode for psychosis teams in the United States and elsewhere. He has a particular interest in the integration of cognitive behavioral and psychodynamic treatment in the psychotherapy of psychosis, as detailed in a Chapter in Kaplan & Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry 11th Ed titled Individual Psychodynamic Psychotherapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis, and in his recent book, Garrett, M. (2019) Psychotherapy for Psychosis: Integrating Cognitive Behavioral and Psychodynamic Treatments. Guilford Press/New York. 

Lectures

Psychotherapy for Psychosis: Integrating Cognitive-Behavioral and Psychodynamic Treatment Dr. Garrett will describe the utility of integrating cognitive-behavior therapy for psychosis (CBTp) and psychodynamic treatment in helping patients with psychotic conditions. CBTp can help patients consider the possibility that their delusional beliefs are literally false, while a psychodynamic approach can help them understand the figurative, metaphorical truth of their symptoms as authentic expressions of their state of mind and past history. Dr. Garrett will give a detailed presentation of the first 16 sessions in the successful therapy of a chronically psychotic woman, unresponsive to medication, who for 20 years believed she had a horrible smell. Dr. Garrett will include a video of the patient reflecting on her treatment.

Psychotic Symptoms as Disguised Recollections of Trauma Dr. Garrett will summarize research that bears on the question, “What mediates between trauma and psychosis?” Dr. Garrett will compare and contrast the phenotypic manifestations of PTSD and psychosis, respectively, presenting evidence for the view that psychotic symptoms constitute disguised recollections of trauma. Dr. Garrett will illustrate this idea in a detailed description of the successful psychotherapy of a chronically psychotic man, unresponsive to medication, who feared that he might be arrested, with a video clip of the patient reflecting on his treatment.

Psychosis, Trauma, and the Bayesian Predicting Processing Model of the Brain and the Mind Dr. Garrett will describe how the phenomenology of psychosis can be understood as a consequence of the modern neuroscientific description of the brain as a prediction machine, combined with Friston’s conception of living organisms conceived of as self-organizing systems. Dr. Garrett will offer clinical examples to illustrate these theories and their implications for psychotherapy for psychosis.

Venue & Location

The Dockside Group, 2 Wheat Road, Sydney NSW 2000 

Balcony Level 1, Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling Park. Behind the bird fountain turn toward the clock, and take the escalators or elevators to L1.

Parking Information

Parking available at Darling Park Car Park. For more information click here. When pre-booking use promo code DOCKSIDE. 

Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Each day of lectures offers 6 professional development hours.

Enquiries 

For more information and enquiries about this event please contact s.may@psychascend.au

For more information about Psych Ascend visit us at http://www.psychascend.au