Participants will gain practical, integrative competencies across the full arc of personality disorder care, including:

• Accurate diagnosis and differential diagnosis of severe personality disorders, including Cluster B presentations
• Cinematic case illustration of personality disorder dynamics and clinical management challenges
• Understanding levels of personality organization and their implications for treatment planning and prognosis
• Establishing and maintaining an effective treatment contract with personality-disordered patients
• Techniques for conducting sessions — managing the frame, handling crises, and working with transference and countertransference
• Disorder-specific strategies for Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorders
• Live case supervision with real-time clinical reasoning and peer feedback

In this one-day program, you'll learn to accurately diagnose and differentially diagnose severe personality disorders, including Cluster B presentations, and to apply the concept of levels of personality organization to guide treatment planning and prognosis. You'll build practical skills for establishing and maintaining a treatment contract, managing the therapeutic frame, and navigating crises, transference, and countertransference in session. The course also covers disorder-specific strategies for treating Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, illustrated through curated film case examples. Finally, you'll apply everything through two live supervision sessions, presenting and workshopping real clinical cases for direct, expert feedback.

Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

1. Identify diagnostic criteria and perform differential diagnosis across severe personality disorder presentations, including BPD, NPD, and related Cluster B conditions.
2. Apply the concept of levels of personality organization to clinical assessment, treatment planning, and prognosis for patients with severe personality disorders.
3. Establish and maintain an effective treatment contract, including strategies for managing boundary violations, crises, and treatment-frame ruptures.
4. Demonstrate effective session-level clinical techniques for working with personality-disordered patients, including management of transference, countertransference, and resistance.
5. Apply disorder-specific assessment and treatment strategies to patients presenting with Borderline and Narcissistic Personality Disorders.
6. Demonstrate integrative clinical reasoning through live supervision of complex cases drawn from participants' own caseloads.

This intensive, one-day program combines cinematic case illustration, integrative didactic instruction, and two live supervision sessions to ensure that skill transfer is immediate and concrete—not merely informational. Film is used not as entertainment but as a clinical teaching tool: curated scenes illuminate personality dynamics, diagnostic distinctions, and common treatment failures in ways that direct instruction alone cannot. Participants will have the opportunity to present their own clinical cases and receive structured, expert supervision in a small-group format.

Mental Health Professionals: MD, PNP, FNP, PhD, PsyD, LCSW, LMSW, LPC, LPC-A, L-MFT

This program is designed for licensed mental health clinicians — psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors — practicing across inpatient and outpatient settings who treat patients with severe or complex personality disorders.

Robert E. Feinstein, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Northwell/Zucker/Hofstra School of Medicine, with over 40 years of clinical, supervisory, and academic experience treating patients with severe personality disorders. He is founder and CEO of Empathian and has held senior academic leadership roles across Columbia University, New York Medical College, the University of Colorado, and Dell Medical School. He is the author of more than 100 publications and three Oxford University Press textbooks.

September 26, 2026