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This workshop is for clinicians who work in behavioral medicine, and who wish to develop skills in working with patients with immune-related disorders. The presentation will include an overview of the immune system, and the role of psychological factors affecting immune-surveillance and health maintenance. We will review three broad areas of psychotherapeutic and hypnotherapeutic treatment approaches: coping enhancement, wellness enhancement, and direct immunotherapy. Specific treatment protocols will be reviewed for general disease resistance and for use in the treatment of: cancer; HIV; autoimmune conditions, e.g. rheumatoid arthritis; allergy; chronic fatigue syndrome; fibromyalgia; burns; inflammatory bowel disease; and reflex sympathetic dystrophy. Teaching format: lecture, demonstration, and case presentation.

Sophisticated assessment tools are available to identify attachment pathology in adults. Less attention, however, has been paid to the development of effective treatment protocols. The second day of the workshop is specifically about state-of-the-art, effective ways to treat insecure attachment pathology, primarily in personality and dissociative disorder patients. One approach involves the strategic use of the psychotherapy relationship in a way that consistently focuses on developmental repair of attachment pathology through providing an emotionally corrective stance, careful affective attunement, and interpreting insecure attachment behaviors. The other approach involves the use of structured hypnotic protocols to: 1. Foster internalization of positive internal working models for secure attachment (ideal parent protocol); 2. Develop collaborative behaviors in the treatment relationship; and 3. Develop a variety of specific meta-cognitive skills that lead to increased coherence of mind in personality and dissociative disorder patients. Teaching format: lecture, demonstration, and case presentation.

Learning Objectives:

1. Participants will be able to define operations of the immune system and classification of immune-disorders
2. Participants will be able to describe specific hypnotherapeutic treatment protocols applied to a range of immune disorders.
3. Participants will be able to assess attachment psychopathology 
4. Participants will be able to describe psychotherapeutic and hypnotherapeutic  treatment of attachment psychopathology

Review the Weekend Agenda Here.