Experiential Techniques in Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy with Personality Disorders The Therapeutic Relationship

1. Interactions between experiential techniques and the therapeutic relationship: A classification; 2. Personality psychopathology in metacognitive interpersonal therapy; 3. The therapeutic relationship in MIT: general principles and interaction with techniques; 4. Decision-making and relational procedures: shared formulation of functioning; 5. Decision-making and relational procedures: change promoting; 6. Narrative episodes, early access to healthy parts, and dynamic assessment; 7. Identify the narrative structures underlying the episodes; 8. Reconstruction of coping and beginning work on symptoms when metacognition is poor; 9. Reconstruct functioning and recognize the Interpersonal pattern as such: the completion of the shared formulation; 10. Differentiate and strengthen the healthy parts, recognizing the shifts back to the schema; 11. Pursuing wishes by exploring the environment and interrupting avoidance: counteracting tendencies to return to schemas after successful experiments; 12. Forming a more mature theory of others’ minds: recognizing one’s own contribution to relational dysfunction and building an integrated model of self and others; 13. Dealing with relationship problems, coping, and residual symptoms; 14. Conclusions: technically active yet relationship-conscious

Biography

Giancarlo Dimaggio is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session; senior associate editor for the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration; and associate editor for Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. He is a co-founding member of the Center for Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy.

Antonella Centonze is a clinical psychologist at the Center for Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy.

Paolo Ottavi, psychologist and psychotherapist, is the main developer of two published treatments with empirical support: Metacognition Oriented Social Skills Training and Metacognitive-Interpersonal Based Mindfulness Training.

Raffaele Popolo is a co-founding member of the Center for Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy, a trainer at the Società Italiana di Terapia Comportamentale e Cognitiva (SITCC), and a trainer of the psychotherapy school ‘Studi Cognitivi’.

"The authors have succeeded in writing another masterpiece on Metacognitive Interpersonal Therapy (MIT). The book is a natural and well-written extension of its predecessors focusing on the therapeutic mechanisms of MIT with particular attention to the therapeutic relationship when treating individuals manifesting personality pathology and related symptoms. The authors master the balance between offering up-to-date theory and research while at the same time providing several, helpful case examples and concrete clinical techniques. This way, the book is of great interest to a wide audience of researchers and clinicians interested in MIT and experiential practices more broadly. I thoroughly recommend this!"
Majse Lind, Ph.D., Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark

"This book is a much needed addition to the literature on psychotherapy. This is an innovative, insightful, and sophisticated approach to the interpersonal issues involved in therapy that often can be used or misused in the therapeutic relationship. Both scholarly and practical, this book should be required reading for any therapist who wants to deepen the quality of the work that they do. There was much wisdom to be gained here. Bravo!"
Robert L. Leahy, Ph.D., Director, American Institute for Cognitive Therapy, Past-President, Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies

"Wow. When I read this book, I could not help but wish I had written it myself. Integrative, pragmatic, and authentic, DiMaggio manages to strike a balance between the flexible humanity of classical psychodynamic therapeutic approaches with the precision and incisiveness of modern technically driven manualized therapies. Both imaginative and directive simultaneously, metacognitive interpersonal therapy (MIT) preserves the humanistic spirit of a psychotherapeutic intervention which aims to heal the burden of early and current adversities that all people face when their personality problems cause them to trip and fall, from time to time throughout their life trajectory."
Lois W. Choi-Kain, M.D. M.Ed.