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SFPRG News December 2020

By George Silberschatz

Posted: 2020-12-11T15:15:00Z

As we prepare our calendars for the New Year, most of us are all too happy to leave 2020 behind. Rather than belabor the many problematic aspects of the past year, it’s worth recalling the positive and truly exciting events and developments at SFPRG.

We started the year with an excellent class, “Becoming a more effective therapist: A unifying theory of psychotherapy”, taught by Trevor Ahrendt. This was followed by our annual March workshop on corrective experiences in psychotherapy taught by 16 SFPRG members and thoroughly enjoyed by participants from all over North America, Italy, Denmark, and Japan. The pandemic related lockdown went into effect shortly after the March workshop and SFPRG quickly pivoted to offering virtual classes and conferences. These on-line offerings covered both familiar clinical topics as well as entirely new areas – at least new for SFPRG. Among others, we offered “Psychotherapy in the time of Corona”, Moral injury, spirituality in psychotherapy. In January SFPRG will continue will continue exploring new areas with a conference titled“You Believe What?! Working with Polarized Views in Psychotherapy”(click herefor more details) and “Cultural factors in psychotherapy case formulation” (to be posted soon). And also coming soon is the March workshop and the SFPRG 24-week certificate training program. Stay tuned!

Since all educational events are now being done online, SFPRG members have been teaching more broadly and widely than ever before in clinics, training programs, and at national and international conferences. And speaking of international, the Italian CMT group continues to expand its membership, teaching, research, and scholarly work. Kudos and gratitude to Francesco Gazzillo and colleagues for their leadership and hard work.

2020 has been an extraordinarily productive year for research on Control-Mastery Theory. We are in the process of completing an important new study on how patients coach their therapists, refinement of the pathogenic belief scale, research on attunement, countertransference, conceptualizing therapist responsiveness, to name but a few. We have benefitted from very fruitful collaboration with colleagues from Yeshiva University, Santa Clara University, Palo Alto University, and the University of Haifa. As the field of psychotherapy continues to evolve away from antagonistic theoretical camps (i.e., tribal warfare) toward transtheoretical principles of change processes, I anticipate that our collaborative efforts will expand considerably. Control-Mastery Theory has much to contribute to psychotherapy integration.

SFPRG has been making great strides and we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Jacky Moore our office manager who keeps the ship afloat and to our incredible, hardworking Board members. We have done a lot and plan to do much, much more, but there is one crucial element that is needed - YOU. From its inception nearly 50 years ago, SFPRG has relied on our membership to carry out our activities. Our mission is to promote scholarship, research, and education on how psychopathology develops and how therapy works. Psychotherapy that works for everyone is our goal. If you share this vision, we warmly and enthusiastically invite you to join us! Please join or renew your SFPRG membership here.We are a 501(c)3 nonprofit, so your membership dues and contributions are all tax-deductible (click hereto go to our donations page).

Thank you for your continued support of SFPRG. We couldn’t do it without you nor would we want to! If you or colleagues you know are considering new office space, we have two lovely offices available in our SFPRG suite located in the Presidio. Contact Jacky for details.

Best wishes for the holiday season and the New Year.

George Silberschatz

SFPRG, President

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