Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is a form of therapy developed by Dr Habib Davanloo in Montreal, Canada. It is a highly focused form of therapy that has been shown to be effective with a wide range of psychiatric problems including personality, anxiety, mood, somatoform and eating disorders. It is a highly interactive therapy focused on identifying how people experience their emotions and the types of defence mechanisms (coping strategies) people have developed to prevent, often painful guilt-laden emotions from being experienced in therapy and life.

Dr Dion Nowoweiski is a Senior Clinical Psychologist working in private practice and at St Vincent’s Health in the Functional Gut Disorders Clinic and at Monash Health in the Eating Disorders Service. He undertook his training in ISTDP under Dr Allan Abbass and worked at the Centre for Emotions and Health in Halifax, Canada. He provides supervision and training in ISTDP and helps people learn to integrate ISTDP practices and principles in a respectful and collegial style.

In this workshop he will describe the metapsychology and techniques of ISTDP and demonstrate how to apply the interventions in a systematic manner for a range of people who present in both public and private practice settings.

By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

• Recognise the three different pathways of anxiety
• Recognise the three main patterns of defences
• Categorise patients according to their anxiety capacity and defensive patterns.

Each aspect of treatment will be demonstrated with video-recorded extracts from therapy sessions with patients to help you understand the principles and techniques being described.

• Prior knowledge of ISTDP is not required.
• Prior Reading is Required.