Malmö Center for ISTDP

03/11/2025

Good times in Rome with Jonathan Entis last week.

17/10/2025

Trauma and ISTDP Workshop

Join us at Ersta in Stockholm next year for a deep dive into ISTDP and Trauma with Jonathan Entis and Peter Lilliengren. On June 5-6, we will gather for a two-day workshop filled with videos and supervision.

Within the field of psychotherapy, treating the lasting effects of trauma is a major point of discussion and debate. The metapsychology of Davanloo’s Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) has its own explanatory model for the development and maintenance of trauma-based symptoms. In this workshop in Stockholm during the early summer of 2026, we will explore the origins of trauma and its sequelae and address the following questions:

– How do we understand the concequences of trauma from an ISTDP perspective?
– What skills or knowledge do we need to deepen our capacity to help a broad range of patients who have endured various traumatic experinces?
– How do different therapeutic stances affect the delivery and effectiveness of ISTDP treatment?
– Do we assess if patients who have experienced trauma present with fragility, repression, resistance, or something else?
– How can a multi-pronged focus on detecting thresholds, building capacity, work on resistance, and providing corrective emotional experiences heal the effects of trauma?
– How does dealing with the effects of our own traumatic experiences affect our ability to help others with trauma?

Over two days, you’ll have the opportunity to observe and reflect on the clinical work of renowned ISTDP clinicians Jonathan Entis and Peter Lilliengren. Through detailed case presentations, video excerpts, and in-depth discussion, participants will explore how ISTDP can be used to access, process, and resolve traumatic experiences in diverse clinical populations.

Whether you're an experienced ISTDP clinician or newer to the model, this workshop will provide both knowledge, inspiration and practical tools for deepening your trauma work in a dynamic, experiential way. We highly recommend attending both days to gain the full experience. During the second half of the second day, two participants will be offered supervision.

Location: Ersta konferens, hotell och terrass

1 day ticket: 3500kr* (excl. VAT 25%)

2 day ticket: 5000kr* (excl. VAT 25%)

*Lunch and coffee are included in the price

Ticket link in comments!

11/10/2025

Sugen på att lära dig grunderna i ISTDP? Kom på introduktionsutbildningen pre-core i Malmö i mars med Thomas Hesslow och Hanna Radomski.

Intensiv dynamisk korttidsterapi (ISTDP) utvecklades under 1980- och 1990-talet i Kanada. Behandlingsmetoden är specifikt utvecklad för komplexa och kroniska tillstånd där andra behandlingar inte haft önskad effekt, men går även att anpassa till mildare former av psykologiska besvär. Den hä...

05/10/2025

The regional health care authorities here in Skåne occasionally announce that they are considering cutting funding for psychodynamic therapy, including ISTDP. Some weeks ago, they released a new report with this very message.

This week, together with a group of dynamic colleagues, we have responded in writing in the local newspaper. We argue, among other things, that limiting treatment choice will worsen healthcare quality for patients. In comparison to the rest of Sweden, psychotherapy is well funded here in Skåne - and we see no reason to change this very effective system before it has been evaluated systematically.

https://www.sydsvenskan.se/opinion/ingen-metod-inom-psykoterapi-fungerar-for-alla-olika-alternativ-behovs/?fbclid=Iwb21leANK9TVjbGNrA0r1ImV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEeslY8RF7kzj_T0q9xrYElkGLiD33xaKtNe6M0y7EuQpOpI41akeCi3iJQHNc_aem_wOEWoZjkLKrfrIMutKtgYg

Länder som Finland, Danmark, Tyskland, Nederländerna och Frankrike rekommenderar psykodynamisk psykoterapi lika starkt…

14/09/2025

The first Hungarian cohort of ISTDP therapists graduated yesterday! Congratulations! 💐💐💐

Thank you so much for all the good times in Budapest! ❤️❤️❤️

24/07/2025

Slowly, but surely, ISTDP is growing across the planet. In the third issue of the JCI, we get to meet Igor Kundrát, the president of the newly formed Slovak society for ISTDP.

"Thanks to ISTDP, I started finding answers to questions that used to feel like insurmountable obstacles. What once felt like dead ends in the therapeutic relationship began to feel more like a clear process—a challenge where solutions could actually be found."

You can read the full interview and more in the print version of JCI issue #3! Subscribe here: https://www.istdpjournal.com/buy-subscribe/

24/07/2025

Will psychodynamic therapy survive in the long run? Maybe, maybe not. Some years ago, Winfried Rief and colleagues published a paper on current trends in psychotherapy research, finding that psychodynamic therapy over time was decreasing in proportion to the overall field. "Third wave treatments such as mindfulness increased their representation in research, while the part of psychodynamic treatments decreased."

In this interview with Ellen Driessen, published in the third issue of the Journal of Contemporary ISTDP, Ellen discusses the need for dynamic clinicians to do more empirical research in order to keep psychodynamic therapy alive. In the past, Ellen has done some very important empirical research showing the efficacy of dynamic therapy in the treatment of depression, including a landmark non-inferiority RCT study in the Netherlands. In the interview, Ellen specifically notes that dynamic therapy might be more effective than other treatments for depression with a duration longer than one year. Maybe this is a path where psychodynamic therapy can find a future? The interview with Ellen is filled with signs that psychodynamic therapy research is alive and kicking. Will psychodynamic therapy survive in the long run? Of course it will.

"In the end, what you’re trying to do is improve the treatment for the 300 million people worldwide who suffer from depression. Of course this is a long term aim, but in the end, that is what you’re trying to help accomplish, right?"

You can read about this and more in the print version of the third issue! Subscribe here: https://www.istdpjournal.com/buy-subscribe/

(Rief, W., Kopp, M., Awarzamani, R., & Weise, C. (2022). Selected trends in psychotherapy research: An index analysis of RCTs. Clinical Psychology in Europe, 4(2), e7921.)

24/07/2025

25/06/2025

ISTDP for Eating Disorders

In a recent publication, Jon Frederickson and colleagues presented naturalistic outcome data from the treatment of 61 adults with eating disorders at the Eating Disorder Center of Montana. While earlier findings from the Halifax group suggested preliminary effectiveness of ISTDP for eating disorders, this is the first study to systematically assess ED symptomatology using psychometrically validated measures.

The study reported improvements in eating disorder symptoms, general psychiatric symptoms, quality of life, and interpersonal functioning in both the partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs. These programs were grounded in ISTDP principles, providing preliminary support for the integration of ISTDP into eating disorder treatment across various levels of care.

Horne, S.J., Kahn, D.L., Frederickson, J. et al. Stepped Care for Eating Disorders: A Naturalistic Comparison of Treatment Programs for Eating Disorders. J Contemp Psychother (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-025-09674-w

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10879-025-09674-w

24/05/2025

Deborah Pollack presenting on the next generation of ISTDP, discussing Don Carveth's ideas about guilt, superego and conscience.

24/05/2025

Peter Lilliengren presenting the case of the shaking grandmother at the Nordic Conference.

He also mentioned that today he and colleagues published an updated meta-analysis of ISTDP/EDT in Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy.

24/05/2025

Christofer Gradin Franzen and Robert Johansson presenting today here at the Nordic ISTDP conference in Malmö.

What does the future of ISTDP hold?