Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)

ISTDP

Have you ever had the thought that you keep getting in your own way?

ISTDP was created by psychoanalyst Habib Davanloo. Davanloo desired to accelerate the process of psychoanalysis by working actively with a patient’s resistance. We can think of resistance essentially as all the ways we hold ourselves back, get in our own way, undermine our success, and create distressing patterns that lead to mental health disorders. In ISTDP we work actively with resistance (particularly resistance to emotional experience and emotional closeness) in order to increase awareness and accelerate emotional change and transformation. It is a therapy that requires active and emotional engagement on the part of patient and therapist alike. ISTDP is more intensive than the average therapy with the purpose of resolving distress in a shorter amount of time.

Key components of ISTDP:

  • recognition and identification or patterns that cause distress

  • active emotional engagement and emotional processing

  • working in the transference (relationship with therapist)

  • tracking and managing the somatic experience of anxiety

  • understanding unconscious conflicts and the root of one’s distress.

AEDP

Anxiety is the history of emotional danger.

- Jon Frederickson

AEDP was created by Diana Fosha, a psychoanalyst who trained extensively with Davanloo. Fosha eventually branched off from Davanloo and created her own therapeutic technique. AEDP is a psychotherapy that incorporates active experiential techniques in order to increase access to emotional experience and emotional processing. In AEDP anxiety is treated as an inhibitor to one’s emotional experience. Thus, in order to decrease anxiety, one must connect to the underlying emotions that are fueling it. AEDP has a specific focus on the transforming power of affect. That when one can connect deeply to their emotional experience, with a safe and attune other, transformational experiences can occur.

 Key components of AEDP:

  • working experientially and actively in the therapy session

  • focus on attachment patterns

  • focus on facilitating emotional experience

  • bypassing distressing defenses that block emotional connection

  • processing emotional experience

  • processing one’s experience explicitly in the therapy relationship and with therapist.