From Stuckness and Reactivity to the Felt Experience of Love
AEDP for Couples
David Mars
This paper offers a highly condensed description of the theory and practice of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) for Couples. It describes and demonstrates a somatically focused orientation of tracking the intersubjective field phenomena of both members of the couple.
The paper further describes how AEDP for Couples brings explicit awareness to the felt experience of love between the couple members beginning in the first session in order to set a safe container for the transformative work to follow. It describes and shows examples of working with “edges”, the paradoxical and initially non-conscious embodied reactions that are both “for” and against the very changes the couple members want and need to make in treatment. The paper shows the theory and practice of catalyzing in couples: a.) being more attuned, more self-reflective, loving and responsive to the needs of the other partner within sessions and at home, b.) cultivating new capacities of perceiving and receiving the other partner’s differing ways of experiencing and expressing not only “affect” per se, but also in a whole range of other “channels of experience” c.) providing a secure “harbor” of safety and support when the other partner is vulnerable and in core affect or a transient dissociation d.) creating sufficient safety in sessions to work through historical antecedents of trauma and deprivation in the company of and with the active support and often physical holding of the marital partner.
The King’s Speech
Through the Lens of an Eloquent Case Presentation
By Elizabeth Lehmann
The King’s Speech is an acclaimed 2010 dramatic film based on the life of King George VI of England. At the heart of the movie is the therapy relationship between the Duke of York (Colin Firth) who in the course of treatment becomes King, and his speech therapist Mr. Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush). The film is reviewed from the psychological perspective of Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) developed by Diana Fosha (2000).
The King’s Speech is a 2010 Academy Award winning dramatic film based on the life of King George VI of England, further informed by the life of screenwriter David Seidler (Seidler, 2010). It stars Colin Firth, co-stars Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham-Carter and Guy Pearce and is directed by Tom Hooper.
For the sake of transparency, let it be said that this reviewer unequivocally recommends The King’s Speech. Absolutely stunning, the relational and psychological depth of the movie captivates and inspires. Experiencing The King’s Speech is akin to attending an eloquent case presentation, the patient being Prince Albert, Duke of York, who in the course of treatment becomes King George VI, first outwardly, then inwardly.
Individuals Grieve
AEDP as an Effective Approach for Grief as a Personal Process
Candyce Ossefort-Russell
To counter the isolation that many grievers feel, and to provide information critical to facilitating the processing of grief to completion, this paper demystifies the ways that each individual grieves uniquely. Though grief is universal, each person brings his own history, and a different kind of community to the table when she loses a specific loved one in a specific way.
All of these factors impact the grief process and influence therapeutic treatment. Then, via detailed case example, the paper illustrates how AEDP’s focus on fostering security and providing dyadic assistance, so that the patient is not left alone with overwhelming emotion, helps grief to be borne; and how AEDP’s privileging of moment-to-moment fluctuations in the unfolding experience in the therapy room allows for full exploration of grief in a very personalized way. By allowing for the emergence of unique patient characteristics, traumas, and emotions that influence how grief is manifested, rather than imposing an external map of grief onto the patient’s experience, AEDP invites grief to open the door to a vast array of healing opportunities.
Building Attachment Bonds in the Wake of Neglect and Abandonment
Through the lens and practice of AEDP, Attachment and Polyvagal Theory
Karen Pando-Mars
This paper will illustrate the process of building attachment bonds in the context of the transformational journey of one patient by examining segments of four sessions over the course of a two-month period of psychotherapy.
As the bond between patient and therapist develops, so develops the patient’s capacity to engage in the healing of her early attachment trauma and to reorganize her relationship with her self. This case study provides a window into the powerful impact of the AEDP therapist stance, which is positive, helpful, and goes beyond mirroring with empathic responsiveness that truly assists patients in getting what is needed to foster a secure sense of self. Polyvagal theory offers a neuroscience perspective to help us understand which neurological circuits get activated during trauma and how therapists can engage with patients to establish the kind of safety and regulation of affective experience that facilitates transformational process.
HANDS On 2: A Trip Between Banks
The Insula and Its Role in Therapeutic Transitions
Kai MacDonald
1. Besides mediating the felt sense of experience, a neural network involving the insula appears to act as a neurobiological circuitbreaker, shifting the flow of energy and information from a network concerned with the exterior world, goals, and inhibition to a self-oriented network concerned with the interior world.
2. Clinically, this transitional network, and the state changes it bridges, is engaged through interoception (attention to the feeling self).
Welcome back, fellow traveler. If, in the interim since our earlier voyage, you have taken sup from the amnesia-inducing river Lethe, I will review. We parted last after a Dantesque descent into the insula, a tucked-away brain region that plays a crucial role in creating the felt sense of self. We explored with our Virgil, A.D. Craig, how this hidden island of cortex plays a role in interoception, decision-making, and may have participated in the evolution of our unique bondedness with others (Craig, 2009). In that first column, I suggested that a review of the functions of the insula anchors AEDP’s focus on feelings in the ground of 21st century neurobiological theories of neural networks, consciousness and the self.
In this column, I will discuss another component of the insula’s function that relates to experiential psychotherapy and AEDP. For it appears that the insula also functions as a critical part of a network that initiates an affect-triggeredtransition between different brain networks. Continuing our stygian metaphor, we are now at the near bank of the river Styx, playing the role of the ferryman Charon, guiding our patients across the river to explore the often-scary land of their emotional experiences (Gendlin [1978] notes that patients often think there are “scary things inside themselves . . . nameless horrors and weird states . . . like poisonous snakes locked in a cage”). We can even summon the three-headed hellhound Cerberus as an avatar for defenses, anxiety, and inhibition (dog whisperers, we). Herein, let’s examine how the insula participates in the bank-to-bank transitions between different neural networks and corresponding states of mind.