Good afternoon my name is Dr Ubergi I'm the coordinator of the graduate programs
Here and counsel in psychology and psychotherapy
I want to welcome everyone, specifically our guest Dr. Lance McWilliams
who is here for the third time, and Dr Kernberg that we have the great
honor of hosting here at the college.
I have to say that I'm actually personally
moved because, as a graduate student in New York
I felt very proud I had the chance to see one of your lectures.
And I never thought that I would get the chance again
so, [laughs] I have been very honored to have that
privilege for a second time.
I want to invite the provost to the podium so that he can introduce our guests.
Thank you, everyone for coming and enjoy the lecture
[applause]
Wow, this is a wonderful crowd.
Welcome, to the American College of Greece Delighted to see you all.
I want to welcome you on my behalf as well as our president who could not
be here today due to an emergency meeting.
It's always nice to have people on this campus
besides, of course, our students who are here and
always here and [...] here night and day I think
But we're here to uh to partake in this important
event because we have two distinguished people
visiting us. Of course, uh, Lance McWilliams is here
for the third time and we're delighted to have you,
thank you. And of course Otto Kernberg
Who is, of course an scholar in the field.
As I was looking at the some of his background I-I noticed that we had something
in common. Uh, which is that we spent, not at the
same time, but at different times
a number of years ago
Topeka, Kansas, both of us
Uh, and I had actually visited
the, uh, medical clinic
because I had two friends
good friends, who actually were doctors there
and they were a bad influence on me
because they, uh, told me how to smoke cigars.
Anyway. Uh,
This is one of the important reasons why educational institutions exist
, to add to the body of knowledge and to share
knowledge. That's what we're doing this next two days tonight, next two days.
Uh, you probably know much
about Professor Kernberg but, uh, I should tell you that he's the
director of personality disorders institute
at the New York Presbyterian hospital
Of course Professor Meritas, of psychiatry at Yale Medical College
Cornell. And, you know I can go on and on.
You are here because you know all of that
We're delighted to have you.
Uh, next McWilliams teaches at Rutgers University
graduate school of professional psychology
and has of course a practice as well in New Jersey
as he told me he's originally Massachusetts,
as is also renowned author and scholar.
We're delighted to have you to come up and
speak and introduce our honored guest. Welcome, thank you.
[applause]
Hello..[different language]
Thank you. Um, I see many familiar faces and it's
wonderful to be back
Uh, here's the plan for tonight
I'm going to say a few words about Dr. Kernberg. Uh, he is going
to talk for about an hour, uh, then we will
open it up for discussion. I find that I
often learn more when I'm engaged with
dialogue and that's often true with Dr. Kernberg. I've
learned more from him when he has an opportunity
to respond to questions and comments.
Uh, what I want to say about him is that he is
a great integrator, this probably has something to do
with the fact that he was both European
or all three, European, South American, and North
American. He's got very wide interests
in the science and the social sciences and especially
the arts. Um, many of you know his writings
but perhaps you don't know as much about
his longstanding interest in supervising
and engaging with creative others, whether students or colleagues.
He's been tireless politically in challenging
training procedures that deaden therapists'
natural vitality and subdue their
curiosity, and their creativity.
He enjoys differences of opinion,
and never takes them personally.
And, he never loses the differentiation
between ideas that he may not like
and thinkers that he may like very much as people.
So he's a very easy person to have an interesting argument with.
I won't go on too long because I'm going to start embarrassing him, but one
thing I do want to say is that is that unlike
many important theorists,
he is allergic to being idealized.
Uh, my personal debt to him though is very great, and I just wanted
to take this opportunity to say something
about that. When I got the idea to write the diagnosis
that I know many of you have read
I was an unknown in the field and I went to him and he gave me
of his time, he shared his lunch with me,
and he encouraged me to write that book.
I don't know if you remember that meeting, but
it made a great deal of difference
to me, and he's done that with numerous people
uh, throughout the field.
I also wanted to acknowledge his wife
Kay Heran and his longtime colleague
whom I've been pleased to know for more than 20 years.
So, having said all that, I will turn the program over to Dr. Kernberg
who's gonna be talking about components and functions
of a normal personality, the nature of personality disorders, their overall symptyomology and underlying structure, and the relationship between
neural-biological, interpsychic, and behavioral aspects
of normal and pathological personality organization.
[applause]
Thank you, Nancy, for your kind introduction
Uh, I'm impressed by the fact that I
imagine that everyone speaks english here
although that I assume that this college
can you hear me in the last row?
Yes? Okay.
Um, So I would like to
review with you the concept of personality-
personality disorder.
Um, it, um, it is a an actual issue, because,
there is so much confusion about it in the field.
There is so much controversy because different researchers
have studied different aspects of personality.
Both normal and abnormal. And each of them
classifies and organizes things according to his
own field. Um you have Cloniger who started
affect systems and um then, classifies personality
according to the predominant pathology
one of the major[....] that determine
major affect activation.
Uh, you have um, social physiologists
along with Benjamin who is interested in the
social [...] aspects of personality.
Organize into concepts of affiliative versus
aversive or hostile behavior. Dominants and submission
and that creates a structure of personality
builds on the inter-personal functions of it.
You have the psycho annalists who will use
classifications of the bases of prodominant
drive. The drive conflicts the oral, anal phallic
personality structure.
It's central. And then of course
the Epidemiologists, who study, um, large
groups of normal popluations. Make endless lists of
personality traits. About 150 and submit
thousands of individuals to them. And find out
which one by factor, by ethic status.
Group together and classify personality
according to the grouping of personality
traits of those tests. Of those instruments.
This leads to the 5 factor theory that I'm sure that everybody knows.