Natasha C. N. Prenn

Deliberate practice exercises help trainees achieve competence in essential accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy skills and apply them in a variety of contexts while honing their own personal style. These exercises present role-playing scenarios in which two trainees act as a client and a therapist, switching back and forth under the guidance of a supervisor. The therapist improvises appropriate and authentic responses to client statements organized into three difficulty levels-beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Each of the first 2 exercises focuses on a single skill to help clients access core emotions, process past traumas, and build secure attachments. The skills include moment-to-moment tracking, validating and reframing anxieties and defenses, and initiating portrayals (i.e., speaking to an imagined other or self). Two comprehensive exercises follow in which trainees integrate these skills into a single session. Step-by-step instructions guide participants through the exercises, identify criteria for mastering the skills, and explain how to monitor and adjust difficulty. Guidelines to help trainers and trainees get the most out of training are also provided.

In this comprehensive guide, Natasha Prenn and Diana Fosha, leading voices in the development of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, offer a model of clinical supervision based on this approach. Utilizing insights from attachment theory and research in neuroplasticity, clinicians who practice accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP) help clients overcome anxiety and defenses to unearth, explore, and process core feelings in order to transform patterns of suffering into long-lasting, positive change. This book offers a model of clinical supervision that is based on the AEDP approach. Making use of videotaped sessions, AEDP supervisors model a strong focus on here-and-now interactions characterized by affective resonance and empathy. The goal is to offer trainees a visceral, transformative experience that complements their growing intellectual understanding of how to make change happen in AEDP.