ISTDP and Experiential Psychotherapy - an interview with Patricia Coughlin
Channel: Experiential Psychotherapy Training
Date: 2022-06-11

Other interviews at: https://tinyurl.com/mrymdnn2

From ISTDP.com:
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is a unique form of psychodynamic treatment that facilitates the rapid resolution of a broad spectrum of emotional disorders. It is an evidence-based psychotherapy that is strongly supported by current clinical research studies. ISTDP interventions are specifically designed to resolve anxiety, depression, somatization and personality disorders, as well as alleviate a variety of self-defeating behaviors, many of which derive from unstable or troubled early life attachments.

ISTDP has common roots with classical psychoanalysis aimed at treating patients with psychoneurosis (environmentally acquired mental illness). Both treatments focus on unconscious mental processes (perceptions, past events, feelings about events, and distorted beliefs) as the cause of neurotic disorders. What distinguishes practitioners of ISTDP is that we believe that psychological treatment should be both:

Comprehensive and efficient-- (usually under 40 hours) to remove symptoms and/or change character traits when necessary 
- and -
Findings of clinical improvement must be confirmed by scientifically designed studies that demonstrate that the above changes occur and that they are long lasting, and finally, that treated patients continue to improve even after termination.

To accomplish the above goals, the ISTDP therapist is an active advocate of change rather than a neutral observer as in traditional analysis. The attitude of the ISTDP therapist is that the patient's time is irreplaceable and comprehensive change is possible in a reasonable, cost-effective time frame.

In ISTDP, experience of core emotion from the past is seen as the transformative vehicle and the therapist relies on non-interpretive techniques: encouragement to feel; challenge to take responsibility to change; and confrontation of resistance to change.

ISTDP therapists ask patients to address the historical roots of their difficulty through highly focused attention on transference phenomenon or life events that activate defenses.

ISTDP therapists strive to uncover repressed emotions or “complex feelings” about the past attachment failures. Many patients develop punitive self-structures to cope with these unresolved emotions during their development. ISTDP, as taught by this faculty, actively addresses the existence of these punitive structures beginning with the first interview.

ISTDP treatment is usually video recorded to facilitate supervision (senior, peer and self), consultation, and research into the process of dynamic psychotherapy.