A reader commented: “Help! What is the difference b/t IEDTA and ISTDP and Diana Fosha’s work? So confusing…how does one get ‘certified’ in one or all of these disciplines? Thank-you!!!”

Your question taps into a frustration I’ve had for years…and tried unsuccessfully within our community to resolve.

This community is represented by IEDTA, the International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association, which produces a biennial conference around the world and consists of many exceptional therapists who trained directly with Davanloo or his students and who identify themselves as practitioners of either ISTDP, STDP, AEDP, AET, STPP, IEDP, EDT or others. I had proposed that all those who were significantly influenced by Habib Davanloo, MD, the brilliant psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who developed ISTDP, would additionally utilize the designated umbrella name, EDT, when they practice and teach. This would increase awareness of our school of therapy and produce more activity for the IEDTA website. Therefore, we might say “I practice ISTDP, which is one of the Experiential Dynamic Therapies” This would be similar to, “I practice Rational Emotive or Dialectic Behavior Therapy, which is one of the Cognitive Behavioral Therapies.” However, this was not to be the case in our community for many reasons. Davanloo himself did not want a common identification with those who who do not adhere strictly to his methodology and others share this view.

Davanloo began developing Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy in 1960 and continued through the 1990’s out of disenchantment with existing psychotherapy treatments. ISTDP was based on empirical, video-recorded research that I would describe as an emotion-focused, experiential, accelerated psychodynamic therapy. It also incorporates body awareness, mindfulness and attachment based theory and has cognitive/behavioral aspects! How is that for a mouthful! I love that it is so multi-dimensional and comprehensive. Davanloo devised powerful interventions within a “central dynamic sequence” that have demonstrable success with a broad range of clients with diverse clinical symptoms.

Davanloo established a robust training institute in Montreal and Diana Fosha was one of many accomplished therapists who travelled there to train with him. You would need to ask Diana Fosha about the specific differences between her approach and Davanloo’s but she acknowledges his influence in her work.

Therapists can be certified in AEDP and IEDTA is working on such a process. When I trained with Robert Neborsky, M.D., and Patricia Coughlin, Ph.D. and several others, I received a certification of having completed a “core curriculum” in ISTDP after an intensive 3 year program. Therapists, like myself, who teach this approach can provide certification of study completed.

However, I myself am not a purist and to be quite honest, I’ve never settled comfortably with a designation for this therapy because there is no umbrella name that has been officially adopted by our community. I have referred to it alternately as EDT, STDP and ISTDP. So, we’ll have to share a certain amount of confusion!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Treatment Process. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.