Mentalizing Inside, Outside, and Beyond 7th International MBT conference

The 6th International MBT Congress on February 2022

“Very enjoyable and refreshing for my clinical work”

“It gave me a new overall view on mentalizing and more ways of going ahead”

“Very meaningful experience - Looking forward to further such conferences”

“Outstanding conference and wonderfully organized”

MBT Basic training in Boston January 2024: (Anthony Bateman, Lois Choi-Kain, Brandon Unruh and Bob Drozek)

“I felt very privileged to have had the opportunity to be taught by Dr. Bateman who is clearly an exceptional clinician, theoretician, teacher and person.”

“Dr. Bateman and the other teachers were all excellent and personable.”

“the clinicians demonstrated the not-knowing stance with us as learners and the felt-sense with them was profoundly helpful in learning.”

“the clinicians demonstrated the not-knowing stance with us as learners and the felt-sense with them was profoundly helpful in learning.”

MBT Basic training in Madrid, 8th, 9th and 10th April 2024: (Anthony Bateman)

“to have had Professor Bateman as an instructor was a luxury”

MBT Basic training 5th, 6th, 7th June 2024: (Anthony Bateman)

“I would like to thank Professor Bateman not only for his clear and inspiring presentation of MBT but also for his inspiring hands-on work with patients that made the course complete.”

“Professor Bateman's beginning and ending summaries were supremely helpful”

MBT Narcissism training 8th, 10th and 11th May 2024: (Anthony Bateman, Bob Drozek and Brandon Unruh)

“I was also particularly struck by the compassion and humility of Brandon Unruh and Bob Drozek who imparted their knowledge in such accessible and helpful ways”

“The speakers were engaging and friendly and expressive”

“The trainers were engaging and friendly and expressive”

The Gala dinner will be from 18:00-03:00 (Denmark time).

This dinner will be an additional £92 per person and will include the following:

• 18:00 - guest arrival and welcome drink (two glasses of wine per person, ice water and sparkling water)

• 18:30 - three course dinner

• 21:00 - coffee and tea with dessert

Please note bookings for the Gala dinner must be made by 11 March 2025 and cancellations made after 28 March will not be refunded.

Peter Fonagy

Peter Fonagy is the Chief Executive of Anna Freud, London; and holds visiting professorships at Yale and Harvard Medical Schools.

His clinical interests centre on issues of early attachment relationships, social cognition, borderline personality disorder, antisocial behaviour and violence. His longitudinal studies which linked the quality of parent-infant attachment to theory of mind development have important implications for strategies for early prevention not accounted for by genetic influences. The link between human attachment and social cognition led Bateman, Fonagy and colleagues to develop a model of and a highly effective treatment approach for borderline personality disorders (BPD). Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) is now one of the two evidence-based psychological treatments used for severe PD and is widely practiced in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Peter is Senior National Clinical Adviser on Children and Young People's Mental Health for NHS England, Programme Director of the UCL Partners Integrated Mental Health programme and has chaired major national expert groups including two NICE Guideline Development Groups on childhood and adolescent depression and the attachment in children at the edge of care.

He is leader of the Mental Health theme in the North Thames CLAHRC and a Senior Investigator for the National Institute of Health Research. He has published nearly 500 scientific papers, 260 chapters and has authored or co-authored 19 books.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences and the American Association for Psychological Science, and was elected to Honorary Fellowship by the American College of Psychiatrists.

He has received Lifetime Achievement Awards from several national and international professional associations including the British Psychological Society, the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorder, the British and Irish Group for the Study of Personality Disorder, the World Association for Infant Mental Health and was in 2015 the first UK recipient of the Wiley Prize of the British Academy for Outstanding Achievements in Psychology by an international scholar.

Sigmund Karterud

Sigmund Karterud, MD, PhD, is a group analyst and professor of psychiatry, formerly at Oslo University, Norway. He has played a significant role in training, research, and organization of group analytic psychotherapy in Scandinavia. His other publications include books on self-psychology, personality, personality disorders and mentalization-based treatment (MBT).

Sebastian Simonsen

Patrick Luyten

Patrick Luyten, PhD, is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven (University of Leuven), Belgium, and Professor of Psychodynamic Psychology at the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, UCL (University College London), UK. He is also an Assistant Professor, Adjunct at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

His main research interests are disorders in the affective spectrum (i.e., depression and stress- and pain-related disorders) and personality disorders. He is involved in both basic and interventional research in both of these areas. His basic research focuses on the roles of personality, attachment and social cognition or mentalizing - that is, the capacity to understand oneself and others in terms of mental states - in these disorders from a developmental psychopathology perspective.

Carla Sharp

Carla Sharp, Ph.D. is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Houston and Associate Dean for Faculty and Research. She also directs the Adolescent Diagnosis Assessment Prevention and Treatment Center and the Developmental Psychopathology Lab at the University of Houston. Her work has significantly advanced the scientific understanding of the phenomenology, causes, correlates and treatment of personality pathology in youth. She is the recipient of the 2016 Mid-career award, North American Society for the Study of Personality Disorders and the 2018 Award for Achievement in the Field of Severe Personality Disorders from the Personality Disorders Institute in New York. She is the current Associate Editor for APA journal Personality Disorders: Theory, Research and Treatment, and a workgroup member for updating the American Psychiatric Association practice guidelines for BPD. She has published over 300 peer-reviewed publications in addition to numerous chapters and books. Her work has been funded by the NICHD, NIAAA, NIMH, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation and other foundations

Nick Midgley

Nick Midgley is Professor of Psychological Therapies for Children and Young People in the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology at University College London, London (UK). He is co-director of the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChAPTRe) at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families / UCL.

Prof. Midgley has been at the forefront of developing research in the field of child and adolescent psychotherapy, with a particular interest in promoting the use of qualitative and mixed methods. He has played a key role in the development of mentalization-based treatments for children and families. As well as continuing studies into the treatment of adolescent depression, his current research focuses primarily on interventions for children in foster care, including the development and evaluation of the Reflective Fostering Programme (Midgley et al., 2018, 2019).

Norka Malberg

Norka Malberg has 30 years of experience working as a psychotherapist. She is a graduate of the Anna Freud Centre in London and holds a clinical doctorate from University College London in the UK as well as Master level degrees in Clinical and Developmental Psychology from Harvard University and Florida International University. She brings into her practice her experiences as a clinician, researcher and trainer of other professionals as well as my dedication to the well being of her patients. She strives to run a practice based on openness, flexibility and commitment to her clients and their emotional needs.

Bob Drozek

Robert P. Drozek, LICSW, is a clinical social worker and staff psychotherapist at McLean Hospital, specializing in the treatment of personality disorders, trauma and dissociative disorders, and addictions. He is a teaching associate in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and a supervisor in the MBT Clinic at McLean Hospital. Originally trained in MBT in 2010, he currently serves as faculty in the basic and practitioner level MBT trainings offered annually through Anna Freud and McLean’s Gunderson Personality Disorders Institute. His psychoanalytic writings examine the interface between psychotherapy and ethics, with an emphasis on the role of ethics in the patient’s therapeutic change. In MBT, he is co-developer (with Brandon T. Unruh and Anthony W. Bateman) of MBT for Narcissism. He has published on using MBT to address the problem of law enforcement violence, and he has developed the domain-based theory of mentalization, a streamlined heuristic to simplify the teaching and practice of MBT. He is author of Psychoanalysis as an Ethical Process, and co-author of Mentalization-based Treatment for Pathological Narcissism: A Handbook, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. He is in private practice in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Brandon Unruh

Brandon Unruh, M.D. is an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the director of the McLean Hospital MBT Training Clinic, a program he created to deliver insurance-based empirically validated outpatient treatment and train interested clinicians in MBT. He is also the assistant medical director of the Gunderson Residence, an intensive specialized residential program for women with severe personality disorders. His clinical approach across various treatment settings is anchored in the integration of evidence-based treatments such as Mentalization-Based Treatment, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, and Good Psychiatric Management. As assistant director of McLean’s BPD Training Institute, he is dedicated to making these treatments more accessible to patients and clinicians around the world. He is a tutor in the basic and practitioner level MBT trainings offered annually in Boston and leads a supplementary 8-week online group training curriculum to assist clinicians in applying what is taught in the MBT manual and intensive trainings. He also offers ongoing group and individual supervision in MBT via online videoconferencing. He has published on a variety of topics including BPD, medical ethics, general hospital psychiatry, and literature and medicine. His academic interests include the convergence of philosophical, spiritual, and psychological issues.

Svenja Taubner

Svenja Taubner is a psychoanalyst, full professor and director at the Institute for Psychosocial Prevention at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Among her many interests is clinical applications, development and research on mentalization based treatments (MBT) for adolescents with externalizing problems and violent behaviour. She is an accredited trainer and supervisor of MBT and currently president of the MBT-D-A-CH (MBT association in German-speaking countries).

Anthony Bateman

Prof Anthony W Bateman MA, FRCPsych consults to Anna Freud about MBT training. He is Visiting Professor University College, London and Honorary Professor in Psychotherapy University of Copenhagen.

He developed Mentalization-Based Treatment with Peter Fonagy for borderline personality disorder and wrote the manual for mental health professionals on Structured Clinical Management of Personality Disorder.

He received a senior scientist award from British and Irish group for the Study of Personality Disorder in 2012 and in 2015 the annual award for "Achievement in the Field of Severe Personality Disorders" from the BPDRC in the USA.

Theresa Wilberg

Henning Jordet

Dawn Bales

Dawn Bales is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in the Netherlands. Dawn works since 2004 at the Viersprong (a Dutch treatment center offering specialized treatment for personality disorders) and lead the first implementation of Mentalization-Based Treatment in the Netherlands. This was the base of her PhD MBT: Quality in Mind. The Implementation of Mentalization-Based Treatment in the Netherlands. She was supervised by Prof. Anthony Bateman, and appointed as MBT trainer and supervisor in the Netherlands. She has had an active role in the development and implementation of multiple adaptations for new populations (i.e. MBT for adolescents (MBT-A), MBT Early, MBT for parents (MBT-P)) and currently works part-time as a clinician in a MBT-A program. Over the past nine (9) years, Dawn has set up the training and dissemination center MBT Netherlands (MBT NL). Together with Anthony Bateman and Joost Hutsebaut she initiated and developed a system for MBT quality assurance. Furthermore, she has an active role as MBT specialist in conducting a series of treatment studies at the Viersprong Institute for Studies on Personality Disorders (VISPD). She has been speaking (inter)nationally on both BPD as well as MBT since 2005 and shares her knowledge through her (inter)national publications.

Karin Ensink

Karin Ensink is a psychologist and professor of Psychology in Canada. She has set up MBT-TBM Canada, an organisation dedicated to facilitating MBT training, research and outcome studies. She is a clinician with more than 25 years of experience working with adults, adolescents and children with complex mental health problems involving trauma and personality disorders. She is a supervisor of MBT with adults, as well as MBT-Adolescent and MBT-Child. Her interest in MBT developed while working at Anna Freud in the late 90’s and completing her PhD at UCL with Peter Fonagy and Mary Target on the relationship between mentalizing and psychopathology. She has a developed a range of measures of mentalizing for patients and clinicians. She has published widely on intergenerational patterns of mentalizing and mentalizing as a resilience factor in the context of trauma and personality disorders. She is an author of Mentalization Based Treatment for Children.

Eva Rufenacht

Maaike Smits

Nicole Muller

Nicole Muller is a child and adolescent psychotherapist and a family therapist at the Private Practice Centrum Hecht, Trainings institute Centrum Hecht Opleidingen Leiden, Holland.

Eia Asen

Eia Asen is a consultant child psychiatrist and consultant psychotherapist and for many years has been the Director at the Marlborough Family Service as well as a consultant psychotherapist at the Maudsley Hospital He is one of the international leaders of family therapy and has done pioneering work in multifamily intervention.

He lectures widely and is the author of several books including "Multiple Family Therapy- the Marlborough Model and its Wider Applications", "10 Minutes for the Family: Systemic Practice in Primary Care" and "Multi-Family Therapy: Concepts and Techniques".

Gerry Byrne

Gerry Byrne is a registered Mental Health Nurse since 1990 and an Association of Child Psychotherapists registered Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist since 2003. He is clinical lead for the Family Assessment & Safeguarding Service (FASS, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire &BaNES), the Infant Parent Perinatal Service (IPPS, Oxford) and the ReConnect Service (Buckinghamshire). As an Associate Trainer and Supervisor at Anna Freud in MBT he has delivered training and supervision in his own Trust, in London and in Dublin (2014/5) and currently supervises teams in London, Oxford and Ireland. He has developed an MBT Programme for Parents; The Lighthouse MBT-P Programme which is run in both the FASS and ReConnect Services, supervised by Nick Midgley (AF/UCL) and which is undergoing an independent evaluation by AF/UCL, led by Professor Pasco Fearon and Dr Michelle Sleed.

Martin Debbane

Prof. Martin Debbané is Professor of Psychopathology at the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London (UK), and at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva (Switzerland). With Mario Speranza, he co-founded (2016) the French speaking MBT Network (réseau francophone des thérapies basées sur la mentalization, RF-TBM) based at the University of Geneva. Martin Debbané and his team conduct training and supervision in MBT (basic, practitioner, supervision, family, adolescents) for practitioners in Geneva, Paris, and other francophone countries globally. His research involves a number of longitudinal projects following youth cohorts with clinical risk (schizotypy, borderline, ADHD, antisocial traits) for severe psychopathology. He is a trained and licensed psychodynamic psychotherapist. He acts as associate and trainer in mentalization-based therapies at Anna Freud in London. He teaches, practices and supervises mentalization-based psychotherapy with adolescent and adult patients.

Dr Dickon Bevington

As Medical Director and Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, I offer medical/psychiatric support (consultations and assessments) to clinicians across Anna Freud, and oversee the appraisal and revalidation of other medical staff employed at the Anna Freud. I chair the Safeguarding Oversight Group which oversees staff training and the safeguarding systems that are in place across Anna Freud. As Caldicott Guardian I act as the ‘conscience’ of the organisation in relation to questions about data-sharing, especially as this relates to patients and families. I have co-led the development of the AMBIT programme with Dr Peter Fuggle, which supports teams around the world in working with complex risky client groups and have published a wide range of material on this work as well as reviewing evidence-based practice. In parallel to my work at AFNCCF, I have worked continuously for 30 years in the NHS, focusing on young people with multiple and intersecting needs, who present with high risk and are frequently underserved by mainstream services. I am a father of three.

Dr Peter Fuggle

Co-founder of AMBIT and Consultant to the Programme and Community Development Lead

Peter is a clinical psychologist who has worked in child mental health throughout his career. He currently works as a Consultant to the AMBIT team at Anna Freud in London. He worked for many years in the NHS in London as Clinical Director of Islington CAMHS, and was particularly concerned about the children and young people with major needs who did not come to the main services that were provided. This interest led him to join a group at Anna Freud who were concerned about the same issue, which resulted in the development of the AMBIT approach. He has been involved in publishing two books on AMBIT. Most of his time now is spent on supervision, training and writing.

Mihael Jeklic

Mihael Jeklic is a Lecturer and the Director of Professional Skills at The Dickon Poon School of Law at King's College London. Before joining academia, Mihael was a principal banker with a development bank in London, and a teaching assistant at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard. His academic research focuses on (social) cognition in negotiation and strategic decision making with special emphasis on optimization strategies in negotiation, (social) cognitive biases and debiasing techniques in negotiation and decision making relevant to litigation and arbitration. Mihael has a law degree from Harvard and a PhD in psychology from UCL.

Lois Choi-Kain

Lois W. Choi-Kain, MEd, MD, is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the director Gunderson Personality Disorder Institute, formerly knowns as the Adult Borderline Centre and Training Institute. In 2009, she developed the Gunderson Residence, an intensive, specialized residential program for adult women with severe personality disorders which uniquely integrates multiple evidence-based treatments for borderline personality disorder (BPD) in a rigorous and scientifically informed way. Dr Choi-Kain also founded the BPD Training Institute in 2013, a centre for proliferating evidence-based treatments for severe personality disorders, including Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT), Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP), Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (DBT-PTSD), and General Psychiatric Management (GPM). Lois's research focuses on personality disorders, attachment, mentalization, psychotherapy, and accessibility and implementation of care.

Martin Bohus

Martin Bohus, MD, received his specialty in Psychiatry and in Psychosomatic Medicine. 2003 – 2021 he hold the Chair of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy at Heidelberg University and was Scientific Director at the Central Institute of Mental Health (Mannheim). He holds now a Senior Research Fellowship at the Ruhr University Bochum, and holds a visiting professorship at University of Antwerp and Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Bohus has 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. He was President and initiator of the First International Congress on Borderline Personality Disorder, Berlin 2010. Dr. Bohus is founding editor of the world leading journal on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPDED).

Dr. Bohus has currently published 450 original papers and books, mainly on psychopathology and treatment development of Borderline Personality Disorder and PTSD.

Majse Lind

Majse Lind is an assitant professor at Aalborg University’s Department of Communication and Psychology . She studies personality and personality pathology with a main focus on narrative identity, mentalization, and mechanisms of change in psychotherapy.

Sebastian Euler

PD Dr Sebastian Euler is a consultant psychiatrist and psychotherapist, deputy clinical director at the Department of Consultation Psychiatry and Psychosomatics at the University Hospital Zurich (Switzerland), and a Private Docent at the University of Zurich (UZH). He has delivered MBT to multidisciplinary teams, offering inpatient and outpatient treatments for personality, eating, and psychosomatic disorders. He has been a senior research fellow at the Research Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London (UK) and has published several studies on PD and other disorders. Sebastian is a trained and licensed psychodynamic psychotherapist, group psychotherapist, and specialist for psychosomatics and psychosocial medicine. Supervised by Anthony Bateman, he has been teaching, practicing and supervising MBT and MBT-G in Germany, Switzerland and Austria since 2012. He is an MBT trainer and supervisor and - together with Prof Svenja Taubner - he is chairing the ANFCCF associated German speaking association of MBT (MBT-DACH) and established an MBT training centre in Heidelberg (ge-mit.de)

For the live training segments, we'll be using Zoom. Please ensure your device meets Zoom's system requirements before enrolling. You can test your equipment at Zoom.us/test before the training to address any technical issues.  

For self-guided learning, materials, and homework, we'll use Blackboard Learn which is compatible with most devices. For optimal access, please use Google Chrome.