IEDTA

  • Home
  • Info
    • COVID-19
    • Calendar
    • Posts
    • Therapist Directory
    • Teachers and Supervisors
    • IEDTA Certified Training Programs
    • IEDTA Education and Training
  • EDT
    • About EDT
    • EDT Events
    • EDT Training
    • EDT Resources
    • EDT Research
  • IEDTA
    • About IEDTA
    • IEDTA Membership
    • IEDTA Online
    • IEDTA Conferences
    • IEDTA Certification
  • Tools
    • Contact the IEDTA
    • Subscribe to IEDTA-News
    • IEDTA Forms
  • International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association

    International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association


    Many thanks to everyone who helped make our 2019 International Conference a resounding success! Click here for more information.

  • International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association

    International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association


    The IEDTA and its therapist members are dedicated to delivering psychotherapy that promotes meaningful change

  • blake-kelly-charles-day-cropped
  • International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association

    International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association


    Our next International Conference is slated for Venice, Italy in October of 2021. Stay tuned for more details!

  • International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association

    International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association


    Thanks to everyone who contributed to the great success of our 2016 International Conference in Amsterdam!

  • International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association

    International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association


    Experiential Dynamic Therapies are supported by substantial research

  • Join EDT-List
  • About IEDTA
  • Join IEDTA
  • IEDTA Updates
  • IEDTA Education and Training

Review of “Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy,” by Patricia Coughlin Della Selva

10 August 2016 By IEDTA Website

“Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy,” by Patricia Coughlin Della Selva

(Review originally published 28 May 2006) Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy: Theory and Practice, by Patricia Coughlin Della Selva. London: Karnac Books, 1996.

Reviewed by Jon Frederickson

This book is considered by many to be the best introduction to Davanloo’s version of short term therapy. Based on Freud’s second theory of anxiety, Davanloo holds that any feeling, thought, or action which could lead to separation from a loved one is dangerous, arouses anxiety, and is avoided. Symptoms arise as compromises between the wish to express a feeling to a loved one and the defense against doing so. Symptoms and defenses keep the anxiety, and feelings propelling it, out of awareness. Defenses against feeling create the symptoms and presenting problems which bring the patient to therapy.

Thus, we focus on the underlying feeling. To do so, we ask the patient to discuss a problem area. Then we identify the triangle of conflict: the impulse/feeling, anxiety, and defense. Then we show the patient how defenses create the presenting problem and invite the patient to join us in the therapeutic task. The therapeutic task can be summarized as follows: help the patient see this conflict, tolerate the anxiety, turn against the defenses, and face and experience as much of the warded off feeling as possible. The goal is to help the patient experience her feelings and desires rather than avoid them and to substitute for each defense an adaptive response. This leads to symptom elimination, greater self-empathy and intimacy with others.

Coughlin then defines the concepts of impulse/feeling, anxiety, and defense. Impulse/feeling has three components: the cognitive label [e.g. sadness], the physiological experience [heaviness in the chest], and the motoric impulse [the urge to cry]. All three components must be activated to access the unconscious. Anxiety does not refer to a conscious fantasy. Anxiety refers to unconscious pathways of discharge in the body: striated muscle, smooth muscle, and cognitive/perceptual disruption. Each pathway of anxiety discharge has important implications for treatment. Defenses are also categorized and examined for sytonicity.

Coughlin describes the central dynamic sequence: 1) inquiry into the patient’s difficulties; 2) defense analysis; 3) rise and breakthrough of complex transference feelings; 4) de-repression of important memories and feelings; and 5) interpretation and consolidation of insights.

Key elements receive emphasis: maintaining a consistent treatment focus in spite of the patient’s defenses; identifying defenses systematically; helping the patient distinguish feelings from defense; turning the ego against the defense; eradicating defense and resistance through pressure to feeling and challenge to defense. The goals of defense work are to de-sensitize the ego to previously toxic affects, allow de-repression of key memories and feelings, and use this information to make meaningful interpretations which link conflicts in the past, present, and transference relationships.

A separate chapter is devoted to restructuring regressive defenses. Here, the goals are to undo regressive defenses, re-direct the pathway of impulse/feeling into awareness, and build the ego so that impulse/feelings can be experienced directly. Separate chapters are devoted to grief work, positive and erotic feelings, working through, and termination. Each section is filled with numerous clinical examples.

Available for purchase at Amazon.com.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: Reviews

Connect with IEDTA

Search this Site

IEDTA
International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association
Contact Us
Copyright © 2023 IEDTA · Copyright and Credits

Log in