Dr. Dan Siegel's Certified Attachment & Personality Patterns Specialist (CAPPS) Training

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Daniel J. Siegel, MD Related seminars and products

Mindsight Institute

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Dr. Dan Siegel is the founder and director of education of the Mindsight Institute and founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, where he was also co-principal investigator of the Center for Culture, Brain and Development and clinical professor of psychiatry at The School of Medicine.

An award-winning educator, Dan is the author of five New York Times bestsellers and over fifteen other books which have been translated into over forty languages. As the founding editor of the Norton Professional Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology (“IPNB”), Dan has overseen the publication of over one hundred books in the transdisciplinary IPNB frame which focuses on the mind and mental health.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Dan completed his postgraduate training at UCLA specializing in pediatrics, and adult, adolescent, and child psychiatry. He was trained in attachment research and narrative analysis through a National Institute of Mental Health research training fellowship focusing on how relationships shape our autobiographical ways of making sense of our lives and influence our development across the lifespan. Financial: Dr. Dan Siegel serves as the Medical Director at the Lifespan Learning Institute and is the Co-Founder and Director of Education at the Mindsight Institute. He is also the founding editor of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology. Dr. Siegel receives royalties as a published author and serves as a scientific advisor for the Inner Development Goals initiative and as an advisor for the Center for Child Well-Being. Additionally, he receives honoraria and recording royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. Dr. Siegel has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.

Speaker Disclosures
Financial: Dr. Dan Siegel serves as the Medical Director at the Lifespan Learning Institute and is the Co-Founder and Director of Education at the Mindsight Institute. He is also the founding editor of the Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology. Dr. Siegel receives royalties as a published author and serves as a scientific advisor for the Inner Development Goals initiative and as an advisor for the Center for Child Well-Being. Additionally, he receives honoraria and recording royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. Dr. Siegel has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Dan Siegel is an honorary member of the Austrian Federal Association for Mindfulness. He also serves on the Board of the Garrison Institute and as an advisory board member for both Gloo and Convergence.

 

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Objectives

1. Analyze how the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) serves as a valid and reliable tool for assessing the quality and organization of a child’s attachment to their parent. 
2. Differentiate the implications for understanding developmental pathways between the four primary classifications of AAI findings—secure/autonomous, dismissing, preoccupied, and unresolved/disorganized. 
3. Integrate AAI results into psychotherapeutic formulation and intervention planning to enhance attachment security, foster neural integration, and promote adaptive personality development within the PDP framework. 
4. Examine the interplay of temperament and attachment in the development of personality and human flourishing. 
5. Identify nine Patterns of Developmental Pathways (PDPs) that help illuminate distinct growth-edges for lifelong development. 
6. Determine how an individual’s insights into their own PDP and those of others can give powerful avenues for understanding life journeys and personal relationships. 
7. Examine how the neuroplasticity of the brain enables clinicians to support clients in reshaping maladaptive personality patterns through targeted interventions at PDP specific growth-edges. 
8. Identify client-specific strategies for fostering emotional regulation and resilience with the Patterns of Developmental Pathways (PDP) framework.
9. Evaluate the influence of interpersonal neurobiology on therapeutic approaches to treating trauma-related constrictions in personality development. 
10. Integrate the understanding of early temperament and attachment stances into the development of personalized treatment plans for diverse populations. 
11. Choose methods to facilitate client awareness of their own developmental patterns and utilize this insight for therapeutic breakthroughs. 
12. Examine strategies for maintaining clinician well-being by recognizing how PDPs and attachment patterns affect therapist-client dynamics and countertransference.

Outline

Why Focus on Personality in Psychotherapy

• Expand your learning beyond traditional “Personality Disorders”
• Explore personality patterns emerging from temperament
• Understand attachment and how it can lead to a low or high level of each personality pattern
• Apply insight into personality patterns, research on temperament and attachment with popular views of personality, such as the Enneagram system

Attachment and Personality Patterns

• Summary of current research, risks, and treatment limitations
• Neurobiologically informed framework of personality
• Lifespan model of personality
• Importance of seeking a sense of “wholeness”
• How temperament shapes the development of specific adaptive strategies underlying personality
• Role of trauma and attachment relationships in shaping the level of adaptive strategies

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) and the Nine Personality Patterns

Overview of the AAI as a Clinical and Research Tool

• Purpose: Assess attachment quality through the caregiver’s narrative coherence and state of mind regarding attachment
• Validity and reliability: Evidence supporting its use as a measure of internal working models and transgenerational attachment patterns
• Focus: Evaluates organization of discourse, independent of factual accuracy of memories

Primary AAI Classifications and Clinical Implications

• Secure/Autonomous (F):  Attachment Stance—Free secure 
  • Coherent, balanced discourse; valuing of attachment relationships 
  • Linked to organized, secure child attachment and integrated emotion regulation 
• Dismissing (Ds):  Attachment Stance—Dismissing avoidance 
  • Minimizes or idealizes attachment; limited recall of autobiographical details 
  • Associated with avoidant attachment and emotional disconnection 
• Preoccupied (E):  Attachment Stance—Preoccupied ambivalence 
  • Maximizes attachment drive; overinvolved or entangled in attachment experiences 
  • Correlates with ambivalent child attachment; heightened affect dysregulation 
• Unresolved/Disorganized (U):  Attachment Stance—Unresolved disorganized 
  • Lapses in reasoning or discourse when discussing trauma or loss 
  • Predicts disorganized child attachment and trauma-related dysregulation

Developmental Pathways and Intervention Insights

• Attachment stance shapes emotional regulation, reflective insights, and neural integration
• Each stance offers insight into adaptive or defensive strategies shaped by early caregiving
• Clinical interventions can target specific relational patterns to enhance coherence and security

Integration of AAI Findings into Psychotherapeutic Formulation

• Use results to identify implicit and explicit attachment scripts and transgenerational patterns
• Guide treatment planning: strengthen reflective functioning, emotion regulation, and secure base narratives; cultivate integration across nine domains from consciousness to identity
• Within the nine personality patterns, apply findings to:
  • Promote neural integration across domains of experience
  • Support adaptive personality development through relational repair and coherence
  • Foster attachment security as a foundation for therapeutic change

Integrate Interpersonal Neurobiology Approach

• Integration of neuroscience into clinical practice to transform personality patterns
• Insights from interpersonal neurobiology to help clients cultivate a sense of well-being and connection, flourishing and wholeness
• Strategies to integrate the PDP framework into an interpersonal neurobiology model for effective treatment

Integrating the nine personality patterns into Clinical Practice

• Outline the nine patterns of personality
• Describe how these patterns emerge from early temperament and are intensified by nonsecure attachment experiences
• Identify personality patterns to illuminate a client’s distinct growth-edges to move from low to high levels of functioning
• Help clients use their own personality patterns as a powerful tool to understand their vulnerabilities for burnout and stress—and their areas of strength and reslience

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Addiction Counselors
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Nurses
• Psychiatrists
• Physicians
• Other Mental Health Professionals