Use your full potential as a therapist
Do you want to increase your understanding of psychodynamic psychotherapy and develop your therapeutic skills?
I offer training in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) which will give you a more nuanced understanding of the therapeutic processes, and tools to become a more focused and effective therapist.
The courses are based on the training program developed by Jon Frederickson, Institute for Training and Research in ISTDP and Washington School of Psychiatry and adjusted to follow Professor Allan Abbass’ algorithm for ISTDP, which is a practical and systematic approach to learning and using this effective – but also demanding and challenging – form of therapy.
The courses consist of a review of relevant theory, illustrated with video recorded vignettes from therapy sessions, and skill-building exercises, where you will learn to assess the client’s responses and personality organization, called “psychodiagnosis”, and how to intervene according to different responses and psychodiagnoses.
The courses usually take place at Psykologhuset Glasgården, but can also be held elsewhere. All courses are approved by the Danish Psychological Association and the Institute for ISTDP Training and Research.
This course is an introduction to basic ISTDP theory, metapsychology, and method. It lasts five days and can be used by all therapists who work with individual psychotherapy.
In the course, you will learn to develop an effective “intrapsychic” focus together with your client, and how to, moment-to-moment, identify and handle various forms of defense mechanisms and anxiety channeling.
You will learn to assess the client’s responses, and monitor the effect of your interventions, so that you can adjust these to match the client’s tolerance for anxiety, and level of resistance, and make a “psychodiagnosis”, which is the starting point for further therapeutic work.
You will learn how to help clients mobilize their repressed emotions, and assess whether their anxiety is too high, and if so, how to regulate this so that the therapy can proceed in a safe and effective way.
The program consists of twelve modules spread over three years – a total of 36 days – where you learn to work therapeutically with clients with all forms and levels of resistance, as well as clients who have too low anxiety tolerance, and typically develop depressive or psychosomatic symptoms, gets so flooded with anxiety that it interferes with cognitive and perceptional processes, or clients who avoids contact with the therapist, which are the most frequent reasons why therapy does not work, or treatment is prematurely interrupted.
In the course, we review advanced ISTDP theory, videotaped vignettes from therapy sessions that illustrate various clinical phenomena, a series of structured skill-building exercises that gradually increase your practical skills and theoretical understanding, and supervision of the participants’ own therapy sessions, preferably using video recordings.
The three-year program includes an annual immersion with Professor Allan Abbass, and supervision by another psychologist, so that the course meets the Danish Psychological Association’s requirements for specialization.