Expected learning outcomes
After this masterclass, participants will be more confident managing complex psychiatric disorders that pose difficult clinical and ethical dilemmas and may involve serious risks to patients themselves and to others.
By attending participants will:
- Learn to deal with narratives and symptoms that provoke unease, eeriness, and horror.
- Develop strategies to support patients through experiences that are frightening, repulsive, and distressing.
- Learn to distinguish between dissociation, denial and psychosis.
- Understand the concept of countertransference and better master their own unconscious anxieties, biases, and triggers when dealing with patients.
- Improve their risk assessment skills.
Programme can be subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances.
DAY 1 Thursday 20 February 2025
SESSION 1: Thursday morning: When things are not quite right – creepy feelings explained
Chair: Jessica Yakeley
| Teaching time | Topic | |
| 08.30 09.00 | Registration | |
| 09.00 09.05 | Welcome (Ursula Werneke) | |
| 09.05 10.20 | 75 min | Opening lecture and Case presentation 1: A brief introduction to the Uncanny: Encounters with the uncomfortably strange and the strangely uncomfortable. (Julian Stern) |
| 10.20–10.50 Fika / Coffee break | ||
| 10.50 11.50 | 60 min | Case presentation 2: Dissociation and denial: The woman who let her adolescent son die of starvation (Cleo van Velsen) |
| 11.50 12.00 | 10 min | Thoughts and reflections |
| 12.00–13.00 Lunch | ||
SESSION 2: Thursday afternoon: Skeletons in the cupboards
Chair: Julian Stern
| Teaching time | Topic | |
| 13.00 14.00 | 60 min | Playing with the uncanny: Understanding and making the most of countertransference phenomena (Joram Ronel) |
| 13.45 15.30 | 90 min | Tales from the Edge: An unusual case of bodily distress syndrome – Therapy Lab No. 1 (Joram Ronel/ Judith Gorgass) |
| 15.30–16.00 Fika / Coffee break | ||
| 16.00 17.00 | 60 min | Case presentation 3: Hidden aggression and psychosis: A case of double infanticide (Jessica Yakeley) |
| 17.00 17.10 | 10 min | Thoughts and reflections |
| 17.00–17.15 Short break | ||
| 17.15 18.15 | 60 min | Keynote lecture The good, the bad, and the ugly: Movie portrayals of psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis |
| 19.30 Conference dinner Restaurant Nine/Skybar (separate booking) | ||
DAY 2 Friday 21 February 2025
SESSION 1: Friday morning: Crime and punishment – what makes people criminals
Chair: Joram Ronel
| Teaching time | Topic | |
| 08.05 08.10 | Welcome back (Ursula Werneke) | |
| 08.10 09.00 | 50 min | Case Presentation 4 Haunted by guilt: The man who was trapped in a pathological psychic retreat (Cleo van Velsen) |
| 09.00 09.50 | 50 min | Case presentation 5: When primitive fantasies meet extreme mindsets. Confessions of a gang criminal (Jessica Yakeley) |
| 09.50–10.20 Fika / Coffee break | ||
| 10.20 11.10 | 50 min | Nordic Noir: Risk assessment: When you think you are right, but you are wrong (Ann-Christine Samuelsson) |
| 11.10 12.00 | 50 min | Talk: The compulsion to repeat and acting out (Julian Stern) |
| 12.00–13.00 Lunch | ||
SESSION 2: Friday afternoon: Behind closed doors – insights into borderline personality disorder
Chair: Cleo van Velsen
| Teaching time | Topic | |
| 13.00 14.30 | 90 min | Behind Closed Doors: Insights into Borderline Personality Disorder – Therapy Lab No. 2 (Joram Ronel/Judith Gorgass) |
| 14.30 14.45 | 15 min | Final thoughts and reflections |
| 14.45 14.50 | Close (Ursula Werneke) |