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PERSONAL STATEMENT

My 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 Segal and Mark Williams. Thanks to this important experience, I contributed to spreading Mindfulness throughout Italy. 

In 2005, I founded – together with my wife Valeria – my own company, the Institute of Cognitive Sciences (Istituto di Scienze Cognitive in Italian),  now renamed ISC International, 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.

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 International has carried out over the last almost 9 years, we have organized 64 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, Poul Perris, Travis Atkinson, Eshkol Rafaeli and so on.

I have also founded a publishing house, named ISC Editore, to translate into Italian and publish 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 5 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.

In the 2016, 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 5 years, more than 7,000 participants coming from more than 54 different Countries have been gathering in Rome, London, New York to attend the Congress "Attachment and Trauma". 

During 2017 we have organized three incredible editions of the Congress Attachment and Trauma in London, New York and Rome. They were defined by thousands of therapists coming from all around the world as the “most important event of ever” about this topic.

Besides starting organizing courses at the international level (in the UK, in Northern Europe, in the USA), the ISC International has several key events in the pipeline for 2019: the Congress "Attachment and Trauma" will also take place in London (www.uk.international-isc.com), Rome (www.international-isc.com) and Philadelphia (www.uk.international-isc.com). We are also organizing the first edition of the Congress “Treating the Narcissism”, in collaboration with Wendy Behary and with the participation of some of the best experts of this field. This conference will take place in Washington DC, next year.

This year I have also contributed to organize for the Italian Society for Schema Therapy SIST its first Congress with the participation of the most important experts in the field and with the participation of many therapists who gave workshops, symposiums, presented posters, coming form several different Countries, Australia, China, South Africa, Brazil, Lithuania, Italy and several others.

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 these innovative 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, OCD, Eating Disorders and so on,  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, 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 committed the last years of my life to spreading Schema Therapy as much as possible, 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 International 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. 

I have been living in London for more than one year and from here 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. 

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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