Dan P. McAdams

Personality development

Dan P. McAdams is the Henry Wade Rogers Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. He was Chair of the Psychology Department 2009-15. Author of over 300 scientific articles and chapters, numerous edited volumes, and 7 books, Professor McAdams works in the areas of personality and life-span developmental psychology. His theoretical and empirical writings focus on concepts of self and identity in contemporary American society and on themes of power, intimacy, redemption, and generativity across the adult life course. He has pioneered research on the manifestation and development of life stories, especially in midlife and older adults.

Professor McAdams is the author of The Art and Science of Personality Development (2015) and The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By (2006/2013). His book, The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning, was published in the summer of 2020, by Oxford University Press. Professor McAdams has won numerous awards in personality and developmental psychology including the Henry A. Murray Award for the study of lives, the Theodore Sarbin Award for theoretical innovations, the Jack Block Award for career contributions to personality psychology, and the 2006 William James Award for best general-interest book in psychology, for The Redemptive Self. His work has been featured in many popular venues, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, and he has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and many other television and radio venues.

Pim Cuijpers

Methods in treatment research

Pim Cuijpers. Ph.D. is full professor of Clinical Psychology at the Department of Clinical, Neuro and Developmental Psychology, Amsterdam Public Health research institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is also director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Dissemination of Psychological Interventions in Amsterdam.

He is specialised in conducting randomised controlled trials and meta-analyses on prevention and psychological treatments of common mental disorders across the life span. Much of his work is aimed at prevention of mental disorders, psychological treatments of depression and anxiety disorders, and Internet-delivered treatments. He has also published on several other research topics, including global mental health, student mental health, and psycho-oncology.

Pim Cuijpers has published more than 950 peer-reviewed papers, chapters, reports and professional publications, including more than 750 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is on the Thomson-Reuter Web of Science lists of the ‘highly cited researchers’ since the first edition of this list in 2014 (http://highlycited.com/).

Theresa Wilberg

Avoidant Personality Disorder

Theresa Wilberg is a professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo and senior researcher at Department of Research and Innovation, Oslo University Hospital. She has published several scientific articles and book chapters on assessment, treatment and longitudinal course of patients with personality disorders, and has co-authored a textbook on personality psychiatry. Her main current areas of research are personality disorders, including quantitative and qualitative studies on avoidant personality disorder, social cognition, assessment of reflective functioning and change processes in mentalization-based, psychodynamic and cognitive psychotherapies.

Professor Wilberg is a former board member of the International and European Societies for the Study of Personality Disorders, ISSPD and ESSPD, and head of a Norwegian research network for avoidant personality disorder.

Martin Bohus

Treatment of comorbid PTSD and personality pathology

Martin Bohus, M.D. Is full professor and chair of Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH), Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Germany. He is also Scientific Director of the Institute of Psychiatric and Psychosomatic Psychotherapy at the CIMH and he holds a visiting professorship at University of Antwerp and Harvard Medical School. He and his team are investigating the broad field of borderline personality disorder (BPD), including epidemiology, phenomenology, neuropsychology, animal models, treatment development, treatment evaluation and dissemination.

Most recently, he has focussed on the development and evaluation treatment programs specifically targeting co-occuring PTSD in patients with BPD.

Martin Bohus has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers, chapters, reports and professional publications, including more than 150 peer reviewed scientific papers on BPD. He is founding editor of the BIOMED-Central Journal “Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation”. Martin Bohus received several awards for psychotherapy research. He is past president of the European Society for the Studies of Personality Disorders (ESSPD), and president of the German Association for DBT. In 2010, he was president and initiator of the 1st International Congress on Borderline Personality Disorder in Berlin.

Dusica Lecic-Tosevski,

Personality disorders in ICD-11

Dusica Lecic-Tosevski MD, PhD is full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and professor of psychiatry. She was chair of Department of Psychiatry at Belgrade University School of Medicine, director of the Institute of Mental Health, a leading university psychiatric hospital, from 2004-2019, head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Healthcare Force Development, and a WHO national counterpart for mental health.

Prof. Lecic-Tosevski is actively involved in WPA, as past Zonal Representative for Central Europe, past chair of the Section on Preventive Psychiatry, co-chair of the Committee for Scientific Publications, an honorary member and member of a few sections.

Chairing the National Committee for Mental Health she made significant contribution to reform of mental health care in the country.

She is APA distinguished fellow, International Associate of the Royal College of Psychiatry, EPA Fellow, president of the Psychiatric Association of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, president of the Serbian Association of Social Psychiatry and immediate past president of the Serbian Psychiatric Association.

Prof. Lecic-Tosevski was coordinator and investigator in many international, multicentric and national research projects as well as psychosocial programmes for mental health care of refugees. Author of numerous scientific articles and chapters, edited volumes, books, she works in the areas of personality disorders, affective disorders, traumatic stress and comorbidity of mental and somatic disorders. She was a member of the WHO Working Group on ICD-11 Classification of Personality Disorders.

Master clinician

Professor Michaela Swales

Michaela Swales PhD is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Professor in Clinical Psychology on the North Wales Clinical Psychology Programme, Bangor University. She trained in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy in Seattle in 1994 / 95 with Marsha Linehan and for twenty years ran a clinical programme for suicidal young people in an inpatient service. Professor Swales is the Director of the British Isles Training Team, an International Affiliate of the Linehan Institute.

She has trained more than a thousand professionals in DBT, seeding over 400 programmes, in both the UK and further afield. She co-authored, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy: Distinctive Features (2009; 2017) and Changing Behavior in DBT: Problem-Solving in Action (2015). She is the Editor of the Oxford Handbook of DBT (2019).

Her primary research interest is the effective implementation of evidence-based psychological therapies in routine clinical practice. Professor Swales was a member of the Working Group on Classification of Personality Disorders, reporting to the World Health Organisation (WHO) International Advisory Group for the Revision of ICD-10 Mental and Behavioural Disorders.

Irene Sarno

Irene Sarno Ph.D. is a psychotherapist and a psychoanalyst of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). In her clinical practice she works mainly with adolescents, young adults, and adults. She trained between USA and Italy with Otto Kernberg and coll. on Transference-Focused Psychotherapy for adults and adolescents, and she is a certified TFP teacher and supervisor. She is a founding member of the Personality Disorders Lab (PdLab), branch society of the International Society of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (ISTFP). With the PdLab she has organized a number of training programs on TFP in Italy.

She is Adjunct Professor of Psychotherapy and Counselling at the University of Milan-Bicocca, where she is also consultant at the Psychological Counselling Centre for University Students.

She is author of national and international scientific articles, books and book chapters on Non Suicidal Self-Injury, diagnosis and assessment, and personality disorders.

Dawn Bales

Dr. Dawn. L. Bales, clinical psychologist – psychotherapist, founder/former director MBT the Netherlands (MBT NL), partner in the worldwide network of the Anna Freud Centre (AFC).

Dawn is co-author of the MBT Quality Manual, author of several articles and MBT chapters in guidelines and handbooks and completed her dissertation on the implementation of MBT in the Netherlands. She is a certified MBT consultant, trainer, supervisor and consultant with focus on: AFC licensed MBT training programs, research, and supporting implementation and quality improvement of MBT programs for patients with severe personality and other psychiatric disorders.

E-mail: d.bales.MBT-E@outlook.com

Specialty: MBT and trauma.

Sigmund Karterud

Sigmund Karterud, MD PhD, is professor of psychiatry, formerly at University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital where he directed, since 1984, the Department for Personality psychiatry, the Norwegian Network for Personality Disorders (since 1992) and the Norwegian Competence Centre for Personality Psychiatry (since 2012). His clinical background is psychoanalysis, group analysis, self psychology and mentalization-based treatment (MBT). His PhD dissertation concerned Wilfred Bion’s theory of group dynamics (“Experiences in groups”).

He has published around 200 scientific articles and 15 books, among them “Group analysis and psychodynamic group psychotherapy” (1999), “Mentalization-based Group Therapy” (Oxford University Press, 2015) and “Manual for group course on personality and personality problems” (2019). He trains group therapists at Institute of Group Analysis, Oslo and at Norwegian Institute for Mentalization, and supervises group psychotherapy with personality disorders in Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

His current approach may be described as personality-focused therapy, paying due attention to the three major components of personality: Temperament/primary emotions, attachment and mentalization/self-consciousness.

Keynote speakers / Master clinicians