CC18 Workshop 15 – Personality Disorders in Couple Therapy: Borderlines, Narcissists, and Schizoid…Oh My! – Stan Tatkin, PsyD, MFT

For decades, psychoanalytic models of individual therapy were retrofitted into marital treatment models. These approaches tended to be ineffective with character disordered partners. With the recent emergence of polytheoretical, psychobiological approaches to couple therapy, the clinician can now be more effective with character disordered partners. This two hour workshop will help clinicians differentiate between those partners who are psychoneurotic, insecurely attached, or undifferentiated, and those who are personality disordered. The workshop will focus primarily on borderline and narcissistic spectrum disorders and provide practical interventions for working with these patients within the context of couple therapy.

Educational Objectives:

1. List at least five defining features of personality disorders.

2. List at least three methods of gaining a therapeutic alliance with personality disordered partners.

3. Describe at least two interventions to move partners toward secure functioning