Following the meeting with Otto Kernberg, in which he illustrated the clinic of Borderline Personality Organization and the psychodynamic techniques he developed for the treatment of severe personality disorders (borderline and narcissistic) with the method of psychoanalytic psychotherapy manualized (i.e. scientifically tested, in New York and White Plains, Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell University), which he called TFP, Psychotherapy focused on transference (Clarkin, Yeomans, Kernberg, Psicoterapia delle personalità borderline, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2000), and after having explored with Vittorio Lingiardi (La Sapienza-University of Rome, author together with Nancy McWiliams of PDM-2, the ways of making a diagnosis of these disorders, often confronting patients who put us to the test,

the ISPEDI 2021 SEMINAR now presents Anthony Bateman and the MBT method, Mentalization Based Treatment, for the treatment of personality disorders. This is a manualized method developed together with Peter Fonagy (Anna Freud Center-University College London) which, unlike Kernberg's method, foresees a team work and the possibility to work in day hospital taking advantage of a personal therapy, a group therapy, various group workshops and the use of different specialized figures.

Bateman will illustrate the main strategies and techniques of MBT (Bateman, Fonagy, Il trattamento basato sulla mentalizzazione, Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2006), after proposing a review of the theoretical assumptions, namely the concept of mentalization and an indication of developmental theories that lead to mentalization, showing us how to solicit in clinical practice the development of these strategies, with role-playing exercises and examples from clinical cases.