Presenters
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Stephan Doering, MD – Keynote on Friday, Oct. 4 Dr. Stephan Doering is psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, IPA). He is chair and professor of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and head of the Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. His main research foci are psychotherapy research, diagnosis and treatment of personality disorders, implicit aspects of the therapeutic relationship. He is editor and co-editor of three scientific journals and member of numerous scientific associations. He is past president of the European Society for the Study of Personality Disorders (ESSPD), vice president of the German Society for Research and Treatment of Personality Disorders (GePs); he is past president of the International Society of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (ISTFP) and TFP teacher & supervisor. Watch this interview with Dr. Doering on YouTube! |
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Richard Hersh, MD Dr. Richard Hersh is a Special Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He received his undergraduate B.A. degree in History from Stanford University and his M.D. degree from George Washington University. He completed his residency training in psychiatry at Northwestern University and earned a certificate in psychoanalytic training from the Columbia Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Dr. Hersh was an attending psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and McLean Hospitals while an Instructor in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School before coming to Columbia University Medical Center where he was a psychiatrist on the inpatient service before serving for fifteen years as the Associate Director of the Department of Psychiatry's Intensive Outpatient Program. Dr. Hersh has been trained in Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) for treatment of personality disorders and has fulfilled the requirements for Teacher and Supervisor status for TFP. Dr. Hersh has also been trained in Good Psychiatric Management for Borderline Personality Disorder (GPM) and has fulfilled the requirements of Official Trainer status for GPM. Dr. Hersh teaches TFP in the Columbia Psychiatry residency curriculum. He is the first author the textbook Fundamentals of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy: Applications in Psychiatric and Medical Settings published in 2016 by Springer and he is co-editor of the forthcoming Implementing Transference-Focused Psychotherapy Principles: General Psychiatric Care for Personality Disorders now in press with Springer. |
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Ben McCommon, MD Dr. Benjamin McCommon is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University in New York and a member of TFP-New York. He graduated from Harvard College and received his M.D. from Columbia University. He completed his psychiatric training and a fellowship in public psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. He completed his psychoanalytic training at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. He is a certified supervisor and therapist in Transference Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) and has been an official trainer and therapist in Good Psychiatric Management for Borderline Personality Disorder (GPM). Dr. McCommon has a long interest in the use of evidence-based treatments including medication and psychotherapy in outpatient psychiatric care. He was a psychiatrist at the Columbia University Intensive Outpatient Program and was director of the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Mental Health Center at Columbia University. He was a therapist in a study of Panic Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy at Cornell University. Currently, he supervises and teaches psychiatric residents at Columbia University, including courses in TFP and GPM. His publications include a focus on GPM in residency training, treatment of narcissistic problems, and treatment of gay men; TFP for higher level personality disorders; and using GPM and TFP to flexibly provide a spectrum of psychodynamically-informed treatment. Dr. McCommon has a private practice in Manhattan in adult psychiatry, including medication management and psychotherapy. |
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Karen Weihs, MD Dr. Karen Weihs is a Professor with tenure in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson, AZ, where she has a psychotherapy and general psychiatry practice, does federally funded research and teaches courses in communication and interviewing skills, emotional development and personality disorders, well as marital and family therapy for the Psychiatry Residency. She supervises psychiatry residents in the treatment of personality disorders with Mentalization Based Therapy. Her psychotherapy practice integrates Mentalization Based Therapy with Emotion Focused Therapy and Experiential Psychodynamic Psychotherapy. She received her undergraduate B.A. from the University of Northern Iowa and her M.D. degree from the University of Iowa. She completed her Family Medicine residency followed by 4 years on the faculty at Brown University while doing post-doctoral training in Family Therapy at the Ackerman Institute in NYC and in the McMaster Model of Family Therapy with Nate Epstein, MD and Duane Bishop, MD at Brown. Dr. Weihs completed Child Psychiatry residencies at the University of Wisconsin. Her receipt of a Scientist Development Award for Clinicians from NIH launched her 38 years of federally funded research studying family systems and emotional development and their impact on medical and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Weihs was trained in Mentalization Based Therapy (MBT) by Peter Fonagy and Anthony Bateman in 2016-17 and completed supervision with Robin Kissel, MD at UCLA in 2020. She implemented a program of individual and group MBT for borderline personality disorder in the outpatient psychiatry clinic at the University of Arizona Department of Psychiatry, which serves as a training environment for psychiatry residents. |