Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy
(ISTDP)
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is a comprehensive form of psychodynamic psychotherapy initially developed by Dr.Habib Davanloo in Montreal in the 1970s to help patients more rapidly than traditional psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Over the following decades, Dr. Davanloo further developed this method of psychotherapy to help patients experience their emotions, regulate their anxiety, and understand themselves across a broad range of clinical concerns.
It has since been refined and studied by various clinicians and researchers worldwide.
Why seek out ISTDP?
What has spared us from pain in the past often keeps us stuck and anxious in the present. Most of us wish to be free of our psychological suffering. However, we continue to treat ourselves or others poorly despite our best interest to do otherwise. We all need a therapeutic relationship where we can learn to experience our emotions safely, regulate our anxiety, and turn against our defenses.
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) provides evidence-based treatment for a wide range of psychopathology, including treatment-resistant depression, anxiety, somatic disorders, medically unexplained symptoms, and personality disorders. ISTDP can be an effective form of psychotherapy for patients who have not found other therapies beneficial to them.
ISTDP is different from cognitive therapies such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), and behavioural therapies such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and behavioural activation (BA). In ISTDP, we work together to help you see what is happening on an internal, emotional level. We work to help see what barriers you erected that keep you anxious and suffering, both interpersonally (with others), and intrapersonally (within yourself).
