AEDP-Informed Equine Assisted Psychotherapy
Transformance Talk 10
Presented by Transformance Journal author Carrie Ruggieri, LMHC, BCETS
Recorded March 22, 2019
About The Talk
Ms. Ruggieri’s Transformance Talk was based on her astounding, intelligent and deeply moving article which has 4 parts:
The Talk: Part One: a historical introduction to the centrality of the horse-human relationship starting 7,000 years ago, when a human first mounted a horse, altering the course of human evolution. … Our continuing bond with the horse remains one of the few links to our finely hewn right-brain ancestral history … laid dormant over the course of time. AEDP meta-psychology is uniquely positioned to help us understand what we have lost as our evolution carried us further from the Eurasian Steppe, and has a methodology to reclaim and vitalize these capacities.
Part Two introduces the incorporation of AEDP into Equine Assisted Therapy (EAP), and illuminates the perfect mapping of each onto the other.
Part Three is a review of the horse/herd mentality, which supplies the therapeutic tools for AEDP-Informed EAP; this part of the article gives special attention to the transformational affect, awe, ubiquitous to the horse-human experience.
Part Four is a transcription of a client’s account of her healing experience in equine therapy.
View the article here
Transformance: The AEDP Journal is the official journal of the AEDP Institute. Transformance has been published yearly since it’s inaugral September 2010 and has published yearly since. It represented a quantum leap into a new era for a groundbreaking model of therapy that was introduced only 10 years earlier by Diana Fosha’s influential book, The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change. The publication also provided a much needed platform for disseminating the ever evolving advances, applications, and inspirations for the rapidly growing and highly productive AEDP community. A quick scan of the titles will reveal the vast array of topics and the tremendous fount of clinical material, in the form of session transcripts, demonstrating the application of AEDP to clinical issues such as, eating disorders, sexual abuse, work with couples, addiction, racial trauma; methodological refinements such as, adjustments to attachment style, cultivating therapeutic presence; and innovation benefitting the general field of psychotherapy such as, harnessing termination as component of the healing process and the creation of an empirically validated model of short-term AEDP. Additionally, Transformance has featured articles on cutting edge applications of neuroscience research as well as commentary on books and movies.
Meet the Presenter Carrie Ruggieri, LMHC
Carrie has been an active member of the AEDP Institute since completing the Immersion course in 2007. She completed core training with Kari Gleiser, Eileen Russel and Natasha Prenn, and ongoing group supervision with Ben Lipton. Carrie is an experiential assistant for the Essential Skills courses. She has been the Transformance Journal Listserve discussant since 2013 and Associate Editor for the Journal since 2019. Carrie has written on the applications of AEDP for the Transformance Journal in her articles, Laura Hillenbrand: Author as True Other: Inspiring Quantum Resilience, Vol 3, AEDP-Informed Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, Vol 8, and AEDP Author as True Other: A Successful Application of AEDP Ethos in a Self-Help Book: A Review of Ron Frederick’s Loving Like You Mean It, Vol. 9.
Carrie earned her Masters Degree in Psychology at the New School for Social Research and is a Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress. In her child and adult psychotherapy practice in RI she applies her years of developmental research experience through the Margaret S. Mahler Observational Research Lab at The New School for Social Research and through the Infant Behavior Clinic at Women & Infants Hospital, Brown University. In addition to AEDP psychotherapy, Carrie offers Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, and conducts trauma evaluations through the Brown Human Rights Asylum Clinic.