Professor Myunghee Jun
AEDP Therapist Certification Announcement
On behalf of Yuko Hanakawa and myself, it is our shared delight and honour to announce that Professor Myunghee Jun from South Korea has officially achieved Certified AEDP Therapist status.
First, allow us to share a synopsis of her reviewer’s exceptional feedback:
Myunghee’s AEDP certification package is praised by reviewers as a masterful embodiment of the “spirit of AEDP,” combining rigorous theoretical knowledge with a deeply attuned, heartfelt presence. Both reviewers emphasize her ability to foster “transformational healing” by creating a secure base through the explicit undoing of aloneness.
Myunghee demonstrates exceptional clinical skill in navigating the four-state process of AEDP. Specific techniques highlighted include defence restructuring, privileging emergence and dyadic regulation.
The reviewers were particularly impressed by Myunghee’s self-supervision, noting her ability to identify moments where she could have used more silence to let the patient’s experience arrive naturally. Her organizational strategy is described as “exemplary,” featuring color-coded, annotated transcripts that illustrate the phenomenology of the transformational experience and the Triangle of Experience (defense-anxiety-core affect). Ultimately, her work is recommended as a teaching tool, proving that her clinical interventions and “warmth and kindness” transcend language barriers to facilitate profound “leaps” in healing.
Second, as Myunghee’s supervisors, Yuko and I bear witness to her growth and development as an AEDP therapist. A must mention is that Myunghee and her academic colleagues has set the historical record in the global AEDP community in translating Diana’s Transforming Power of Affect into Korean within one year. Myunghee is the exemplary embodiment of the Korean work ethic: unrelenting dedication to efficiency with precision and academic rigour.
Third, we invite the the worldwide AEDP community to join us in championing Myunghee’s heartfelt personal and professional commitment to working with trauma survivors from North Korea. Myunghee’s sustained dedication towards healing her fellow Koreans who has suffered such historical and trans-generational wounds are deeply moving and praise worthy.
Going beyond, we are privileged Myunghee is the Regional Leader for the emerging AEDP community in South Korea. Academically outstanding and humble, Myunghee is deeply respected by her colleagues in spearheading the nurturance of the AEDP teaching and development in South Korea.
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One final thing. Myunghee received such glorious and stellar feedback from the certification reviewers that is worthy of quoting in its entirety (italics mine):
Reviewer 1
Wow! Myunghee Jun’s certification package is truly exceptional.
The organizational clarity, clinical expertise displayed, and capacity to explain application of AEDP principles is truly impressive. Myunghee Jun has gone beyond mere mastery of the AEDP interventions to truly absorb the ethos of AEDP as well. Both patients obviously feel seen, cared-for, and completely supported in their process. This enabled even the patient for whom this was only session #2 to relinquish defences and drop down into deep portrayal work, which resulted in transformational healing.
In viewing the session of the patient for whom it was session #8 , I wrote in my notes: “this is truly Transformance in action!”. With Myunghee Jun’s skillful, patient support, he was able to emerge from a long-held distorted sense of self that had been limiting him personally and professionally, into the “sunlight” of a felt sense of “I feel like I can do anything”. He arrived at a True Self State 4 plateau, and was supported to stay and absorb the goodness of the new experience.
It was a delight to review this work.
Myunghee Jun includes many instances where she self-supervises her interventions with her patients; she notes that she sometimes doesn’t wait for long enough to allow her patients to arrive at experience on their own. This is a good observation, and may be one of the places she continues to challenge herself to grow as an AEDP therapist. However, as I was viewing WK’s session, I realized that he needed a lot of cognitive “platforming” to help him relinquish his old, defensive patterns of thinking about himself. (He describes a painfully critical self view, as if he sees himself only “through the third person”. )
Then, once Myunghee Jun recognized he was ready, she made a summarizing statement, and waited for several long quiet spaces of time…. This allowed her patient to stay, internally, with State 2 experiences of feeling his shame and fear, with her quiet support. Then, Myunghee Jun used silence again, as he continued through the 4 State process; and this enabled him to have a huge intra-personal healing. In fact, it seems this was actually a transpersonal experience. He speaks of God!
This is truly beautiful work for me to experience as a reviewer. Even though I do not speak Korean, the emotional experience of the session is remarkable. Myunghee Jun’s warmth and kindness need no translation; her patients benefit as much from her presence as from the “interventions” she uses.
I would like to add that for me as a reviewer, Myunghee Jun’s organizational strategy is exemplary. The use of color-coded commentary in the transcripts, clearly categorized and titled in a “key” at the beginning, made it absolutely clear where each comment belonged in the therapist’s understanding of the process of each session. I’d like to personally thank Myunghee Jun for her work in this; even if I were not to watch the (beautifully moving) session recordings, the experience of reading her transcripts was wonderful. Thank you!
Myunghee Jun’s work is a beautiful example of the “spirit of AEDP” in action. Both her clients respond to the combination of skilled interventions and heartfelt emotional
presence by taking big healing leaps in the session. Even the client for whom it was only her second session dives into a brave portrayal, with beautiful results.
Reviewer 2
In Myunghee’s first video, she demonstrates adept affirmative work with the client’s defenses. Myunghee elegantly moves between following and leading as she creates space for and supports her client’s emergent experience and knowing of herself, as well as gently nudges her client to move more fully and deeply into her experience. In both videos, Myunghee demonstrates her skill in privileging the emergent experience and integrating that experience into a coherent and cohesive self-narrative.
In the second video, Myunghee’s attuned presence and explicit undoing of aloneness create safety for her client who is stuggling with negative thoughts about himself. Myunghee adeptly seizes on a transformance glimmer which launches the client into a process of increasing expansiveness. Myunghee exemplifies “going beyond mirroring” as she leads by example in inviting her client to express himself more fully. She uses self-supervision adeptly recognizing a moment in which she approached her client’s defenses cognitively as opposed to experientially.
Myunghee’s theoretical understanding of the phenomenology of the transformational experience, including a detailed illustration of the client’s defense-anxiety-core affective experience triangle, her clear descriptions of interventions and her theoretical knowledge are demonstrated comprehensively in her annotated transcripts. I think her transcripts could serve as a valuable model and teaching tool.
With a bow of chooang (deep respect in Korean)
Yuko Hanakawa PhD
Senior Faculty, AEDP Institute
Danny Yeung MD
Senior Faculty and Chair of International Development, AEDP Institutep.s. Feel free to send a congratulatory note via back channel to Myunghee’s email mjun@handong.edu