Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy: A Review of the Treatment Method and Empirical Basis

Based on over forty years of videotaped case-based research, Habib Davanloo of McGill University, Canada, discovered some of the core ingredients that can enable direct and rapid access to the unconscious in resistant patients, patients with functional disorders, and patients with fragile character structure. We will describe here some of the main research findings that culminated in his description of a central therapeutic process involved in the intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP) model. We will also describe the evolution of the technique over the past thirty years and summarize the empirical base for Davanloo’s ISTDP.