Diana Fosha, PhD
Diana Fosha, PhD, is the developer of AEDP™, a healing-based, radically relational, transformation-oriented experiential psychotherapy. She is the Founder and Director of the AEDP Institute.
For more than two decades, Diana has championed a scientific foundation for AEDP, a therapeutic approach that focuses on healing trauma, repairing attachment wounds, and rekindling vitality. Her work integrates positive neuroplasticity, recognition science, and dyadic developmental research into experiential and transformative clinical practice. Her most recent work focuses on promoting flourishing as a seamless part of the AEDP therapeutic process of transforming emotional suffering. Drawing on affective neuroscience, attachment theory, mother-infant developmental research, and research documenting the undreamed-of-plasticity in the adult brain, AEDP exemplifies the integration of scientific research and clinical practice in psychotherapy.
Based in New York City, where she lives and practices, Fosha has been on the faculties of the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology of NYU and St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Medical Centers (now Mount Sinai) in NYC, and of the doctoral programs in Clinical Psychology at the Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University and at The City University of New York.
Her books include:
- Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0(APA, 2021);
- with Natasha Prenn, of Supervision Essentials for Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy(APA, 2016);
- with Dan Siegel and Marion Solomon The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice (Norton, 2009);
- and the book that started it all, The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change (Basic Books, 2000).
Diana is the author of numerous articles, many of which can be found on this website. She has contributed chapters to, among others:
- Clinical Pearls of Wisdom: 21 Leading Therapists Offer their Key Insights, edited by M. Kerman (Norton, 2009);
- Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders: An Evidence-Based Clinician’s Guide, edited by C. Courtois & J. D. Ford (Guilford, 2009);
- Healing Moments in Psychotherapy, edited by Dan Siegel and Marion Solomon (Norton, 2013);
- Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Personal and Social Transformation, edited by Loizzo, Neale & Wolf (Routledge, 2023);
- Moments of Meeting in Psychoanalysis: Interaction and Change in the Therapeutic Encounter, edited by Lord (Routledge, 2017);
- The Comprehensive Handbook of Psychotherapy, Volume 1: Psychodynamic and Object Relations Therapies, edited by J. J. Magnavita (Wiley, 2002).
The American Psychological Association (APA) has released four DVDs featuring Diana’s live AEDP clinical work. These include a comprehensive recording of a complete six-session treatment and a focused look at clinical supervision techniques. Learn more and purchase here.
Described by psychoanalyst James Grotstein as a “prizefighter of intimacy,” and by David Malan as “the Winnicott of [experiential] psychotherapy,” Diana Fosha is known for her powerful, precise yet simultaneously poetic and evocative affective writing and presenting style. Diana’s phrases — “undoing aloneness,” “existing in the heart and mind of the other,” “True Other,” “make the implicit explicit and the explicit experiential,” “stay with it and stay with me,” “rigor without shame” and “judicious self-disclosure” — capture the ethos of AEDP.