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PERSONAL STATEMENT

Dear Colleagues,
I have written this short autobiographic presentation to support my nomination as President of the International Society of Schema Therapy and to allow all of you to have a clear overview of my personal and professional background.

I am first and foremost the father of three amazing children, whose names are Virginia, Leonardo and Riccardo.

With respect to my professional experience, I specialized in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and, during the specialization period, I went to Philadelphia to attend an intensive course lead by Aaron Beck and Judith Beck at the Beck Institute. Afterwards, I decided to deepen my knowledge of Mindfulness and I was trained by Zindel Sigal and Mark Williams. Thanks to this important experience, I contributed to spreading Mindfulness throughout Italy.

In 2004, I founded – together with my wife Valeria – my own company, the Institute of Cognitive Sciences (Istituto di Scienze Cognitive in Italian), with the aim of organizing events in the fields of Psychotherapy and Neuroscience. We managed to meet our goal: we started organizing courses with the main leading experts in the fields of CBT, Mindfulness and Schema Therapy. One year later, in 2005, we invited Jeffrey Young to attend as Speaker one of our international workshops in Italy and he accepted our invitation. This was the very first time that I had the chance to meet him. After this first collaboration, Jeffrey Young encouraged me to go to New York to better focus on Schema Therapy. Consequently, I decided to take that

important opportunity and went to the Schema Therapy Institute in New York to seek training and supervisions. I had the privilege of being supervised by both Jeffrey Young and Travis Atkinson and, eventually, I managed to achieve the highest level of certification in Schema Therapy. As I was the only Italian Trainer and Supervisor certified by the ISST, as soon as possible I started organizing Schema Therapy trainings all over my Country, to allow other Italian colleagues to get the certification. Starting from that moment, I have fully committed myself to the tasks of teaching Schema Therapy and supervising dozens of therapists. Besides Schema Therapy, I have also attended Emotionally-Focused Therapy trainings lead by Sue Johnson and I am currently being trained by Diana Fosha in AEDP (Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy).

As regards the activities that the ISC Institute has carried out over the last almost seven years, we have organized 54 different editions of the International Training in Schema Therapy. Thanks to our courses, hundreds of colleagues have been trained in Schema Therapy: 11 of them have also achieved the Supervisor level and this figure is destined to significantly increase over the coming years. Furthermore, our Institute is now able to offer a wide variety of trainings in Schema Therapy: every year, we organize Trainings in Schema Therapy for Children and Adolescents, Group Schema Therapy and Schema Therapy for Couples. Over the past years, some of the most eminent experts in the field of Schema Therapy have collaborated with our Institute, including Arnoud Arntz, David Bernstein, Eckhard Roediger, Wendy Behary, Jeffrey Young, Christof Loose, Joan Farrell, Ida Shaw, and so one. We have also founded a publishing house, named ISC Editore, to translate into Italian andpublish the most important books on Schema Therapy.

I would also like to briefly focus on one specific event that I have been organizing and presenting over the last three years, of which I am particularly proud: the Congress “Attachment and Trauma”, which has been attended by

some of the most well-known experts worldwide, such as Daniel Siegel, Allan Schore, Pat Ogden, Kathy Steele, Peter Fonagy, Bessel Van Der Kolk, Stephen Porges, Diana Fosha, Sue Johnson, Antonio Damasio, Jon Kabat Zinn and many others. Last year, in particular, two of the most influential Schema Therapists in the world, Arnoud Arntz and Eckhard Roediger, stepped on stage to give a lecture in front of 1,250 participants coming from 42 different Countries. Over the last three years, more than 1,000 participants coming from more than 40 different Countries each year have been gathering in Rome to attend the Congress "Attachment and Trauma".

Besides starting organizing courses at the international level (in the UK, in Northern Europe, in the USA and even in the UAE, namely in Dubai), the Institute of Cognitive Sciences has several key events in the pipeline for 2017: the Congress "Attachment and Trauma" will also take place in London (www.uk-congress.com), Rome (www.italy-congress.com) and New York (www.wisemindus.com). In addition to this, our company's listserv currently includes no less than 300,000 therapists.

As far as Clinical and Research studies are concerned, we have created an integrated network of Schema Therapy Centers in Italy. Thanks to theseinnovative Centers, the Schema Therapists who have previously attended our international training programs can gather every week to seek supervisions, personal therapy and to keep on deepening their knowledge of Schema Therapy. Furthermore, the colleagues working in our Schema Therapy Centers are carrying out important Research studies. One of the main results that they have achieved so far is the validation of the SMI, but other key studies regarding Modes and emotional disconnection have also been carried out. Additionally, new Research projects aimed at assessing the effectiveness of Schema Therapy in the treatment of different disorders, such as depression and anorexia, will soon been launched.

The Italian Society of Schema Therapy (Società Italiana di Schema Therapy - SIST), whose registered members have steadily increased up to 1,574, was

founded in 2010. I have been holding the task of President of the SIST for six years and I am currently its Honorary President. With all this in mind, I would like to stress that I have commited the last years of my life to spreading Schema Therapy as much as possile, to contribute to improving our colleagues' interventions and, more generally speaking, to build a better Society.

According to both the eminent experts and the participants who have attended the Congresses, Trainings and Workshops that the ISC Institute organizes every year, I am making an outstanding and unique contribution to the field of Psychotherapy. I am not able, of course, to decide if they have reason, but I can proudly say that I am glad to see that my enthusiasm for Schema Therapy have had such a great impact on thousands of colleagues, who have become more and more interested in ST and decided to spread it throughout the world.

If I were appointed as President of the International Society of Schema Therapy, I would do my very best to make a valuable contribution to its management, to further develop it and to make it even closer to its members. I would also intend to suggest a number of initiatives to open up new possibilities and opportunities for every new member.

Many thanks for your kind attention. Warm regards,
Alessandro Carmelita 


Why Schema Therapy?

Schema therapy has been extensively researched to effectively treat a wide variety of typically treatment resistant conditions, including Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Read our summary of the latest research comparing the dramatic results of schema therapy compared to other standard models of psychotherapy.

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