Mentalization and Beyond

Dates: November 22nd & 23rd, 2024 (Friday & Saturday)  

Location: East Campus Martin Center at Silver Hill Hospital 

Target Audience: Clinicians, Physicians and other professionals in clinical roles involving direct patient interaction to diagnose, treat, or manage mental health conditions

Join us for an essential and transformative exploration of Mentalization with leading organizations, Silver Hill Hospital and Ellenhorn, at the forefront of the Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) model. This two-day conference, "Mentalization & Beyond," will delve into the applications and advancements of mentalization, offering valuable insights for practitioners, researchers, and enthusiasts alike.

How can we understand what’s happening for you in regard to me, and how can we understand what’s happening within me in regard to you? This perennial question touches on our interpersonal suffering, often linked to the pain of feeling poorly held in the minds of others and the conflicts that arise when we are unable to hold their minds in our own. None of us ever gets it perfect—the ability to imagine another’s intentions, feelings, and experiences in our own minds, and the even more complex task of imagining how we are experienced by them, is never fully achievable. Despite having a large part of our brains dedicated to this task, called mentalization, the challenge remains.

Failures in mentalizing occur daily, but they take on serious implications when they become pervasive—a kind of blindness that leads to struggles over misjudging the minds of others, feeling misjudged ourselves, or, often worse, feeling invisible in others' minds.

As mental health professionals, we face these failures due to our own anxieties and stressors, which can impact our care of clients, collaboration with teams, and relationships with co-workers. If we do not feel mentalized by our team and colleagues, we risk losing the ability to effectively understand, help, and mentalize our clients.

We exclusively invite clinicians and physicians to a two-day conference packed with lectures and workshops. We will introduce the concept of mentalization and the treatments MBT (Mentalization-Based Therapy) and AMBIT (Adaptive Mentalization-Based Integrative Treatment). Our approach will be human and playful, inviting all of us to reflect on our own struggles with mentalizing.

For psychotherapists, mentalization can complement your work, enhancing your attunement. For behaviorists, understanding mentalizing can provide insights into borderline processes beyond de-skilled behaviors, offering a pathway into the inner world of a particular kind of suffering.