Continuing education
Continuing Education for Licensed Clinicians
Empathy Architects offers continuing education for Oklahoma clinicians, taught by Sterlin Mosley, PhD, who is an approved continuing education provider with the Oklahoma State Board of Behavioral Health Licensure.
Workshops run in person in the Oklahoma City area and carry clock hours toward licence renewal for licensed professional counselors, licensed marital and family therapists, and licensed behavioral practitioners.
The next workshop
Beyond Grandiose and Vulnerable: Differential Assessment of Narcissistic Presentations
- Date
- Saturday 5 December 2026
- Time
- 11:00am to 2:00pm Central
- Credit
- 3 clock hours, Oklahoma BBHL
- Fee
- $89
- Format
- In person, Norman, Oklahoma
- Presenter
- Sterlin Mosley, PhD
Contemporary research divides narcissistic presentation into grandiose and vulnerable phenotypes, and recent clinician-rating studies suggest that division is too coarse to support accurate assessment. In a controlled vignette study, ninety-seven percent of clinicians identified a grandiose presentation as narcissistic personality disorder, while a vulnerable presentation was distributed almost evenly across depressive, narcissistic, trauma-related and borderline classifications. The same research found measurably more negative clinician response to grandiose presentations, which raises questions about assessment reliability and about the clinician's own position in the room.
This three-hour workshop examines where the two-type model holds and where it breaks down, works through the presentations most often misclassified in routine practice, and introduces a finer-grained descriptive framework for differentiating narcissistic presentations in clinical formulation. Attention is given throughout to what the evidence supports, what remains contested, and where a more specified taxonomy risks over-reading the material in front of you.
Learning objectives
Upon completion, participants will be able to:
- Identify the diagnostic and countertransference patterns that distinguish grandiose from vulnerable narcissistic presentations, drawing on current clinician-rating research.
- Analyze why vulnerable narcissistic presentations are differentially classified as depressive, trauma-related or borderline in routine practice.
- Apply a multi-subtype descriptive framework to differentiate narcissistic presentations that the grandiose-vulnerable binary treats as equivalent.
- Evaluate the limitations of subtype models, including the current state of the evidence base and the risk of over-specification in clinical formulation.
Agenda
| Time | Segment |
|---|---|
| 11:00 to 11:10 | Introduction, learning objectives, presenter disclosures |
| 11:10 to 11:50 | What the grandiose-vulnerable model captures, and what recent evidence shows it misses |
| 11:50 to 12:00 | Break |
| 12:00 to 12:50 | The differential problem, worked through case vignettes |
| 12:50 to 1:00 | Break |
| 1:00 to 1:45 | Differentiating within the category, applied to formulation |
| 1:45 to 2:00 | Limitations, contested ground, questions, evaluations |
The workshop spans the middle of the day with two ten-minute breaks, and no meal is provided, so plan to eat beforehand.
Target audience and level
Oklahoma licensed professional counselors, licensed marital and family therapists, and licensed behavioral practitioners. Instructional level: intermediate. No prior familiarity with narcissism typologies is assumed. Clinicians holding other licences are welcome to attend, and should read the credit statement below before registering.
$89, three clock hours. The venue address in Norman is sent by email after registration.
Credit statement
Who receives credit for this workshop.
Sterlin Mosley, PhD, is an approved continuing education provider with the Oklahoma State Board of Behavioral Health Licensure. This workshop offers three clock hours of continuing education for Oklahoma licensed professional counselors, licensed marital and family therapists, and licensed behavioral practitioners.
Continuing education credit is not currently offered for licensed psychologists or licensed social workers, whose licences are governed by separate Oklahoma boards with separate approval requirements. Clinicians in those professions, and clinicians licensed outside Oklahoma, are welcome to attend and should confirm with their own board whether the hours will be accepted. We will state plainly here when that changes.
Who receives credit
Three boards, three sets of rules.
Three separate Oklahoma boards license the clinicians who might reasonably sit in this room, and because those boards do not share approval rules, credit does not extend uniformly across them.
Sterlin Mosley is an approved continuing education provider with the Board of Behavioral Health Licensure, which governs licensed professional counselors, licensed marital and family therapists, and licensed behavioral practitioners, so those three licence types earn clock hours here. Oklahoma records these as clock hours, which is the term the board uses for what most clinicians call CEUs.
Licensed social workers are governed by their own Oklahoma board, and although a provider application is prepared it has not yet been submitted, so no credit is offered for that licence today, while licensed psychologists fall under a third board that approves individual events one at a time and at a cost for each, which is a route we are not pursuing this year and perhaps not the next one either, since the arithmetic seldom favours it at this scale.
Clinicians in both of those groups are welcome in the room, as are clinicians licensed outside Oklahoma, and we will say plainly on this page when any of it changes.
About the presenter
Sterlin L. Mosley, PhD
Sterlin L. Mosley, PhD, is Associate Professor of Human Relations at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches personality psychology, social change, cultural awareness, and women's and gender studies. He holds a master's degree in Human Relations Counseling with a specialization in personality typologies and personality pathology, and a PhD in Intercultural Communication. He is the author of The Narcissist in You and Everyone Else: Recognizing the 27 Types of Narcissism (Rowman and Littlefield) and Center of the Universe: Transforming the 27 Types of Narcissism from the Inside Out (Bloomsbury Academic).
Conflict of interest disclosure
Dr. Mosley is the author of two commercially published books on the subject matter of this workshop and receives royalties from their sale. He is co-founder of Empathy Architects, which offers a paid certification program in personality typology. Neither the books nor the certification program is required for participation, and no product will be offered for sale during the accredited portion of this workshop.
References
The evidence this workshop is built on.
Day, N. J. S., Green, A., Denmeade, G., Bach, B., & Grenyer, B. F. S. (2024). Narcissistic personality disorder in the ICD-11: Severity and trait profiles of grandiosity and vulnerability. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 80(8), 1917–1936.
Day, N. J. S., Biberdzic, M., Green, A., Denmeade, G., Bach, B., & Grenyer, B. F. S. (2025). Clinician diagnostic ratings and countertransference reactions towards grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 32(2), e70070.
Maples, S. T., Neumann, C. S., & Kaufman, S. B. (2025). Profiling narcissism: Evidence for grandiose-vulnerable and other subtypes. Journal of Research in Personality, 115, 104585.
Policies
What applies to every workshop.
These policies apply to every workshop Empathy Architects runs, and they are set out here in full because the terms tend to be the first thing a careful clinician looks for when deciding how to spend a Saturday.
- Completion requirements
Full attendance is required for credit. Participants must sign in at the start and sign out at the conclusion, and must complete the course evaluation before a certificate is issued. Verification of attendance is issued by email within thirty days and records the participant's name, the provider, the title and date of the program, and the number of continuing education hours earned. Partial credit is not available.
- Refunds
Full refund if cancelled more than seven days before the workshop. Fifty percent between seven days and forty-eight hours. No refund within forty-eight hours, though registration may be transferred to another person at no cost.
- Cancellation
Should Empathy Architects cancel, all registrants receive a full refund within ten business days and are notified by email at the address given at registration.
- Accessibility
To request accommodations, contact [email protected] at least fourteen days before the workshop. We will work with you to meet the request.
- Venue and parking
The workshop is held in Norman, Oklahoma. The venue address and parking guidance are sent by email after registration, and again in the week before the workshop.
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