Our Mission

The AEDP Institute is devoted to providing a forum for an emergent community of clinicians. We seek to co-create environments — clinical, intellectual, collegial — of shared values. Ours is a community of safety and security from which boundless exploration takes place.

Our Work

The AEDP Institute offers training and certification in the model through a series of certification courses plus access to AEDP supervision from Certified Supervisors. The Institute also offers ‘stand-alone’ workshops, seminars and online learning resources that serve to advance the practice of AEDP for clinicians at every level of experience. The Institute provides forums where clinicians share ideas and experiences, ask questions, learn from one another, raise issues and integrate new ideas into a model of thinking and clinical practice that is dynamic and continually evolving.

smiling_girlDeveloped by Dr. Diana Fosha, author of The Transforming Power of Affect and editor of Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering Into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0, it has roots in and resonances with many disciplines—among them attachment theory, affective neuroscience, body-focused approaches, and transformational studies.

There is no better way to capture the ethos of AEDP than to say this: we try to help our patients—and ourselves—become stronger at the broken places. By working with trauma, loss, and the painful consequences of the limitations of human relatedness, we discover places that have always been strong; places that were never broken.

Crisis and suffering provide opportunities to awaken extraordinary capacities that otherwise might lie dormant, unknown and untapped. AEDP, as a therapeutic approach, is about making the most of these opportunities for healing and transformation. Key to this experiential enterprise is the establishment of the therapeutic relationship as a safe, secure base.

Through the in-depth processing of difficult emotional and relational experiences, the AEDP clinician fosters the emergence of new and healing experiences for the client.

Our Ethos—to Exist in Each Other’s Hearts and Minds

This spirit of openness and connection informs all the activities—clinical, intellectual, and community-building—of AEDP Institute and its members. As the worldwide network of AEDP practitioners, teachers, and supervisors grows, this shared ethos helps us remain healthy and vibrant. In particular, we are committed to nurturing and promoting

  • a healing orientation
  • engagement
  • connection
  • shared passion
  • openness of heart
  • openness of mind
  • rigor guided by phenomenological precision
  • safe and informed therapist risk-taking
  • emergence
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We Value Openness to Divergence and Commitment to Exploration

We grow — in ourselves, our practice, our theory and our community — by staying open to new ways of thinking and working. We welcome challenges from each other from new developments in theory and practice. By reveling in our resonances and embracing our differences, we foster the emergence of phenomena which are the stuff of professional, personal and organizational growth.