«ISTDP interventions are especially designed for the restructuring of self-sabotaging patterns of behaviour.»
Geneva
THE SWISS INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION AND RESEARCH IN DAVANLOO’S SHORT-TERM DYNAMIC PSYCHOTHERAPY
Technique of the Total Removal of the Resistance and Major Mobilization of the Unconscious
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H. Davanloo’s ISTDP – a very brief history
ISTDP Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy is a unique form of psychodynamic treatment facilitating the rapid resolution of a wide range of emotional disorders. ISTDP was conceived and developed in the 1960s by Habib Davanloo MD, Professor emeritus of psychiatry at McGill University, for purposes of scientific research at Montreal General Hospital and McGill University.
ISTDP was developed to remedy the length of treatments of the psyche. From the beginning, the sessions were audio-visually recorded thus allowing little room for the therapist’s interpretation. The audio-visual recordings allow peer review and analysis; as importantly, they enable the therapist to witness where she or he encounters unconscious difficulties with the patient.
ISTDP is a unique form of treatment
ISTDP treats the dynamic pathogenic core of the human unconscious psyche.
ISTDP interventions are specifically designed to restructure the pathogenic core and subsequent self-sabotaging patterns of behavior.
With the techniques unique to ISTDP, the patients is quickly rendered un-able to activate his unconscious life-long self-defeating system with the therapist, i.e. Resistance (Transference Neurosis being a major resistance) with its array of defenses. Resistance in neurotic disorders is the cause of treatment failure : in ISTDP treatment, the therapist’s targeted and systematic interventions help the patient quickly gain awareness of, own and fight the self-defeating pathological elements of his Unconscious Defensive Organization. If and when these destructive elements are not de-activated, they will defeat the purpose of the therapy by keeping the therapist at a distance, by creating a transference neurosis and not letting the patient access his deeper repressed feelings.
Relentlessly, the therapist and patient fight together to clear the path for the patient to experience the repressed unconscious feelings and impulses that constitute the pathogenic core of his suffering.
Originally, pathological behaviors emerge as the child’s or infant’s coping mechanisms, unconscious adaptive responses to traumatic, insecure, difficult bonds with the significant figures in his life.
These adaptive survival responses allow the child to maintain the life bond, the necessary nurturing portion of attachment from his significant figures. The responses are structured and fueled by Unconscious Guilt. By repressing feelings, the Guilt helps the child deal with the feelings of destructive rage generated by the pain and the suffering he experiences in the bond.
Pathogenic Guilt comes into existence as the only way of coping with the suffering while at the same time protecting the nurturing bond that is the source of this suffering.
Thus, the engine of the unconscious pathogenic core and subsequent suffering of the patient in adulthood is the Guilt that had helped him at some point in his distant past.
ISTDP treatment fundamentally differs from other forms of therapy on several essential points
Transference and its interpretation
In ISTDP : The initial task of the therapist in ISTDP treatment is to defeat unconscious attempts by the patient’s Resistance at reproducing the original core conflicts with the therapist – i.e. developing a Transference Neurosis – and activating the defense mechanisms used to avoid the emergence and experience of repressed feelings attached to these conflicts.
The therapist’s targeted interventions – relentless Pressure, Challenge and Head-on Collisions – enable the therapist to adress the Resistance immediatly. These interventions are first and foremost aimed at making the Resistance emerge and “show itself” as quickly as possible in the course of the first sessions. This makes it possible for therapist to adress the Resistance directly.
The transference of the infantile conflicts onto the relationship between patient and therapist and the subsequent emergence of a Transference Neurosis is viewed as a major self-defeating, self-sabotaging defense mechanism produced by the Unconscious Resistance of the patient to avoid the experience of destructive painful feelings : Transference Neurosis in treatment acts as a protective shield and decoy, hiding the patient’s original core neurosis from view and allowing it to remain untouched in the course of treatment. The existence of a transference neurosis in therapy results in the therapist treating the Transference Neurosis that was created in the course of therapy whereas the pathological core and the organization of the psyche around the core remain out of reach.
If the patients, as often happens, consults several therapists in the course of his life, the original neurosis becomes cemented under several successive layers of transference neuroses and becomes all the more inaccessible.
The patient’s commitment
In ISTDP : The personal free-willed commitment to the therapy is ascertained in the first session. Then, monitoring the patient’s degree of anxiety in order to maintain it at levels that will allow the patient to keep an active will to work, the therapist helps the patient confront and fight his purpose-defeating unconscious Resistance and the defense mechanisms that block the access to the core of his suffering. Without the patient’s active committment to work against the destructive part of himself, no work is possible.
The conscious and unconscious therapeutical alliance
In ISTDP : The therapist seeks to establish a Therapeutical Alliance with the patient at both conscious and unconscious levels. The alliance at both levels enables them to work together at removing the Resistance erected by the dynamic destructive forces of the Guilt at work in the patient’s Unconscious. Therapist and patient deal with the defense mechanisms as they emerge until the patient is finally able to reach the Guilt and the feelings repressed by Guilt.
Audio-visually recorded sessions
In ISTDP : The sessions are audio-visually recorded. Psychoanalytical investigation makes sense and begins only after the Unconscious Resistance of the patient has been activated and removed, the “Unconscious unlocked” or partially unlocked and repressed feelings experienced.
The therapist’s interventions are based on the neurobiological responses of the patient. Between sessions the therapist views the audiovisual recordings, and by observing the type and timing of the defenses, the patient’s physiological and neurobiological responses, recalibrates and readjusts his interventions. Patient and therapist collaborate in removing the Resistance and unlocking the way to deeply repressed feelings and impulses which lie at the core of the patient’s neurotic suffering.
ISTDP treatment fundamentally differs from other forms of therapy on several essential points:
Transference and its interpretation
In ISTDP : One important initial task of the therapist in ISTDP treatment is to defeat unconscious attempts by the patient’s Resistance at reproducing the original core conflicts with the therapist – i.e. developing a Transference Neurosis – and activating the defense mechanisms used to avoid the emergence and experience of repressed feelings attached to these conflicts.
The transference of the infantile conflicts onto the relationship between patient and therapist and the subsequent emergence of a Transference Neurosis is viewed as a major self-defeating, self-sabotaging defense mechanism produced by the Unconscious Resistance of the patient to avoid the experience of destructive painful feelings : Transference Neurosis in treatment acts as a protective shield and decoy, hiding the patient’s original core neurosis from view and allowing it to remain untouched in the course of treatment. The existence of a transference neurosis in therapy results in the therapist treating the Transference Neurosis that was created in the course of therapy whereas the pathological core and the organization of the psyche around the core remain out of reach.
If the patients, as often happens, consults several therapists in the course of his life, the original neurosis becomes cemented under several successive layers of transference neuroses and all the more inaccessible.
The patient’s commitment
In ISTDP : The personal free-willed commitment to the therapy is ascertained in the first session. Then, monitoring the patient’s degree of anxiety in order to maintain it at levels that will allow the patient to keep an active will to work, the therapist helps the patient confront and fight his purpose-defeating unconscious Resistance and defense mechanisms blocking the access to the core of his suffering. Without the patient’s committment to work against the destructive part of himself, no work is possible.
The therapeutical alliance
In ISTDP : The therapist seeks to establish a Therapeutical Alliance with the patient at both conscious and unconscious levels, to enable them to work together at removing the Resistance erected by the dynamic destructive forces of the Guilt at work in the patient’s Unconscious. Therapist and patient deal with the defense mechanisms as they emerge until the patient is finally able to reach the Guilt and the feelings repressed by Guilt.
Audio-visually recorded sessions
In ISTDP : The sessions are audio-visually recorded. Psychoanalytical investigation makes sense and begins only after the Unconscious Resistance of the patient has been activated and removed within the therapeutical relationship, the defenses have been overcome, the doors to the Unconscious unlocked or partially unlocked and repressed feelings experienced.
The therapist’s interventions are based on the neurobiological responses of the patient. Between sessions the therapist views the audiovisual recordings, and by observing the type and timing of the defenses, the patient’s physiological and neurobiological responses, recalibrates and readjusts his interventions. Patient and therapist collaborate in removing the Resistance and unlocking the way to deeply repressed feelings and impulses which lie at the core of the patient’s neurotic suffering.
Trainings
Day 1
09:00h – 11:00h Presentation of a first interview (without explanation)
11:30h – 13:00h Davanloo´s Research “Search for the Resistance”
14:30h – 16:00h Video presentation “Davanloo´s Techniques” demonstrated in a first interview
16:30h – 18:00h “Projective Anxiety” demonstrated in a first interview
19:00h – 20:00h Repetition of the first interview (without explanation)
Day 2
09:00h – 11:00h Presentation of a follow-up interview (without explanation)
11:30h – 13:00h “The Malignant Transference Neurosis and the Superego Resistance” demonstrated in a follow-up interview
14:30h – 16:00h Video presentation “Davanloo´s Techniques” in a follow-up interview
16:30h – 18:00h Discussion
Atessa Petermann-Firouz
ISTDP therapist trained by Prof. H. Davanloo, MD
MA Sociologist, Sophrologist.
Bio
Atessa Petermann Firouz works in her private practise or via Skype. She is an H. Davanloo’s ISTDP therapist trained by H. Davanloo. She also holds a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Geneva, she is a Master Practitioner in Sophrology trained by Prof. Alsfonso Caycedo. and a Practitioner in Ericksonian Hypnosis. She travels to Montreal several times a year to attend the theoretical and practical courses given by Dr. H. Davanloo. She is a membre of a group led by Dr. H. Davanloo in a training workshop program aimed at the “Total Removal of the Resistance of the Unconscious” where she has undertaken an intensive experiential training under his supervision. The D/istdp – Swiss Institute for Research and Teaching of H. Davanloo’s Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, the Technique of the Total Removal of the Resistance and Major Mobilization of the Unconscious – was created in 2015 and is the only ISTDP Institute in Switzerland recognized by H. Davanloo. She works in her private practice.
Litterature
Alan R. Beeber : Davanloo’s New Metapsychology of the Unconscious : Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, Mobilization of the Unconscious and Total Removal of the Resistance
© Nova – Open – Acess
Alan R. Beeber : Davanloo’s New Metapsychology of the Unconscious : Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, Mobilization of the Unconscious and Total Removal of the Resistance
© Nova – Open – Acess
Contact
Chemin des Lucioles 5
1234 Vessy (GE)
+41 (0)76 379 77 63
For long-distance treatment (take into account Swiss time) : Skype
Chemin des Lucioles 5
1234 Vessy (GE)
© D-istdp & Atessa Firouz – Webagency BaseGraphic Geneva