8-week Virtual Live Course with Jerome Blackman, M.D., FIPA
10-14-26 to 12-16-26 (Wednesdays, 7:30pm – 9:30pm ET/NYC)
[No class on 10-28 & 11-25, 2026.]
Continuing Education: 14.5 CE Hours for APA, NYS Psychologists, NYS Social Workers
Personality pathology is often approached through familiar diagnostic categories: narcissistic, borderline, obsessive-compulsive, avoidant, dependent, schizoid, and others. Yet a diagnostic label alone may tell us relatively little about how a particular personality has been organized, why a particular character trait developed, what psychological functions it serves, or how the clinician should approach it in treatment.
In this eight-session course, Dr. Jerome S. Blackman brings together psychiatric assessment and psychodynamic formulation to examine personality pathology beyond categorical diagnosis. He will consider a wide range of pathological personality traits, problems, and character configurations, emphasizing that apparently similar traits may arise from different etiologies and may perform very different internal and interpersonal functions.
Central to the course is a multidimensional assessment of personality functioning. Rather than relying on the diagnostic label alone, participants will examine the relative contributions of impairment in ego functions — such as abstraction, integration, reality testing, and self-preservation; weaknesses in ego capacities such as impulse control and affect tolerance; disturbances in object relations, including empathy, trust, and closeness; and difficulties in superego functioning involving guilt, shame, reliability, ethics, and ideals. These dimensions will be considered together with defensive operations, self-esteem regulation, and compromise formation in developing a dynamic formulation of the individual patient.
Particular attention will be given to Waelder’s and Brenner’s concept of compromise formation and Dr. Blackman’s modifications of this model; David Shapiro’s personality “styles”; Sidney Blatt’s distinctions among neurotic, infantile, borderline, and psychotic levels of functioning; and Kernberg’s criteria for borderline personality organization, including Blackman’s modifications of Kernberg’s formulation.
The course will move from description to clinical formulation and treatment. Participants will consider how persistent, reactive, and evocative character patterns operate; how adaptive, maladaptive, ego-syntonic, and sociosyntonic traits may be differentiated; and how personality structures regulate self-esteem and relationships. Specific configurations —including narcissistic, masochistic, sadistic, obsessive-compulsive, borderline, anaclitic, and introjective patterns — will be examined alongside more complex combinations of conflicts and structural impairments.
Throughout the course, assessment will be linked directly to psychodynamic technique. Participants will consider where psychotherapy should aim, when character traits can be approached through clarification, confrontation, and interpretation, when structural limitations require modification of technique, and how personality organization influences — but does not by itself determine — treatability.
Beyond Categorical Diagnosis
Examination of personality pathology as a broad range of traits, character configurations, and disturbances rather than as a limited set of diagnostic types.
Dynamic Formulation of Personality Traits
Analysis of how similar personality traits may arise from different combinations of wishes, affects, defenses, object relationships, superego pressures, environmental realities, and structural capacities.
Compromise Formation and Character Structure
Application of Waelder’s and Brenner’s concept of compromise formation, together with Dr. Blackman’s modifications, to the formulation of complex personality patterns.
Levels and Styles of Personality Organization
Comparison of David Shapiro’s personality styles; Sidney Blatt’s neurotic, infantile, borderline, and psychotic formulations; and Kernberg’s criteria for borderline personality organization, including Blackman’s modifications.
Ego, Object Relations, Superego, and Defensive Functioning
Assessment of ego functions and ego strengths, object-relational capacities, superego development, self-esteem regulation, and constellations of defensive operations within personality structure.
From Personality Assessment to Treatment Selection
Evaluation of persistent, reactive, evocative, adaptive, maladaptive, and ego-syntonic character patterns and their implications for psychodynamic intervention.
Treatability and Technique
Consideration of which pathological personality traits may be approached through dynamic psychotherapy, which structural limitations may require modified technique, and how formulation guides the clinician in deciding where and how to intervene.
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
Differentiate categorical personality diagnoses from broader pathological personality traits and character configurations encountered in clinical practice.
Analyze how similar personality traits may reflect different etiologies, psychological functions, conflicts, defensive operations, and structural impairments.
Assess personality functioning using ego functions and ego strengths, object relations, superego functioning, defensive organization, self-esteem regulation, and environmental factors.
Apply Waelder’s and Brenner’s concept of compromise formation, including Dr. Blackman’s modifications, to the psychodynamic formulation of personality pathology.
Compare selected models of personality organization, including Shapiro’s personality styles, Blatt’s levels of personality functioning, and Kernberg’s criteria for borderline personality organization and Blackman’s modifications.
Formulate treatment approaches for pathological personality traits and preconscious automatisms based on the patient’s underlying conflicts, defensive organization, and structural capacities.
Evaluate the implications of persistent, reactive, evocative, adaptive, maladaptive, and ego-syntonic personality patterns for psychodynamic treatment.
Distinguish personality traits that are amenable to interpretive psychodynamic work from patterns or structural limitations that may require modification of treatment technique.
Intended Audience: Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and other mental health professionals interested in expanding their understanding of personality pathology from a psychiatric and psychodynamic perspective. The course is suitable for clinicians at different levels of experience, from those newer to psychodynamic concepts to experienced practitioners seeking to deepen or broaden their clinical formulation and treatment approach.
Session 1 — Beyond Personality Types: Foundations of Personality Pathology
Session 2 — Object Relations and the Development of Personality
Session 3 — Superego Development, Identification, and Character
Session 4 — Defensive Constellations in Personality Structure
Session 5 — Compromise Formation and Dynamic Character Formulation
Session 6 — Assessing Levels and Styles of Personality Organization
Session 7 — Borderline Organization and Specific Personality Configurations
Session 8 — From Formulation to Psychodynamic Treatment
PSYCHOANALYTIC, PSYCHODYNAMIC, AND CLINICAL LITERATURE:
OTHER RESOURCES AND ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIALS
Professor Jerome Blackman is a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst (certified by the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Board of Psychoanalysis, the Council of Independent Psychoanalytic Societies, and the International Psychoanalytic Association). He has been in private practice since 1975 and is currently a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia. He is also an IPA Training and Supervising Analyst with the Contemporary Freudian Society in Washington, DC.
Dr. Blackman was the 12th Recipient of Akhtar-Brenner Lectureship Award from Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in 2017 where he lectured on the Expanded Mental Status Assessment. He was an invited lecturer at Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine Department of Psychotherapy in 2017, where he lectured on Differential Diagnosis and Redefinition of Masochism.
The Jerome S Blackman, MD [yearly] Lectureship in Psychoanalysis was established in his honor, in 2019, by the Virginia Psychoanalytic Society and Eastern Virginia Medical School. At the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth (VA), the Jerome S Blackman MD Teacher of the Year Award was given to 25 different teachers from 1992-2016. He received the Edith Sabshin MD Award for Teaching from the American Psychoanalytic Association.
Early in his career, while in child psychoanalytic training at the New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute, he consulted to many Child Protection Centers. Based on his experiences, in 2016 he co-authored Sexual Aggression against Children: Pedophiles’ and Abusers’ Development, Dynamics, Treatability, and the Law (Routledge) with Dr. Kathleen Dring. In 2023, they wrote Developmental Evaluation of Children and Adolescents: A Psychodynamic Guide (Routledge).
In 2003, his paper on countertransference was published in the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. He later published several book chapters on topics including stepparenting, porn addiction, the first year of life, laziness, shame, philandering, fear of injury, and the death of the analyst.
He has lectured at many universities in China, as well as psychoanalytic institutes and universities in the U.S. and worldwide. From 2018-2021, he was appointed Distinguished Professor of Mental Health at Shanxi Medical University in Taiyuan. He was a keynote speaker at the 6th and 7th China Psychoanalytic Association Congresses in Shanghai (2019 & 2021) regarding child development and developmental issues in supervision; he received the “High End Foreign Talent” Honor from Shanxi Province in 2018.
Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis Personality
Pathology Beyond the Usual Diagnostic Categories – Types, Structure,
Dynamic Formulation, and Treatability – Jerome Blackman, M.D., FIPA
October 14, 2026 – December 16, 2026
Online
Joint Accreditation Statement
In support of improving patient care, this activity has been planned and implemented by Amedco LLC and Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis. Amedco LLC is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Amedco Joint Accreditation Provider Number: 4008163
Professions in scope for this activity are listed below.
Psychologists
This course is co-sponsored by Amedco and Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis. Amedco is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Amedco maintains responsibility for this program and content. Maximum of 14.50 hours.
The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for Psychologists/Counselors: AK, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, MA (LEP ONLY), MD, ME, MN, MO, NC, ND, NH, NE, NJ, NM, NV, OH, OK*, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, WY
MI: Accepts courses from APA for Psychologists. No general CE requirement for Counselors.
OK: Accepts APA credit for live, in-person activities but not for ethics and/or online courses.
The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for MFTs: AK, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IN, KS, MD, ME, MO, NE, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NV, OH, OK*, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WDC, WI, WY
AL MFTs: Credits authorized by NBCC or any other state licensing agency will be accepted. MA MFTs: Participants can self-submit courses not approved by the MAMFT board for review. MI MFTs: There are no CE requirements for MFTs in MI.
The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for Addictions Professionals: AK, AR, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, IA, IN, KS, LA, MD, MO, MT, NC, ND, NE, NJ, NM, NY (held outside NY ONLY), OK*, OR, SC, UT, WA, WI, WY
The following state boards accept courses from APA providers for Social Workers: AK, AR, AZ, CA, CO, DE, FL, GA, ID, IN, KY, ME, MN, MO, NE, NH, NM, OR, PA, VT, WI, WY
New York Social Workers
Amedco SW CPE is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #0115. 14.50 credit hours.
New York Psychologists
Amedco is recognized by the New York State Education Department’s State Board for Psychology as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed psychologists #PSY-0031. 14.50 hours.
Tuition: $350/8-week course (can be paid in 2 installments)
[Request weekly installments by writing to ]
Registration fee: $25/course (waived for ORI’s candidates in training)
CE Certificate fee: $25
SPECIAL SCHOLARSHIPS are available for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for retired or disabled practitioners, or need-based or/and those who live outside of the USA.
To apply for your scholarship, please go to the registration form below.
