Arcs of transformation: Taxonomy of affective change using accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy.

Ronen-Setter, I. H. (2025). Arcs of transformation: Taxonomy of affective change using accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy. Practice Innovations. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pri0000278

Emotions and feelings, often referred to as affects, are the fundamental agents of transformation in experiential therapeutic settings. This article explores psychotherapeutic affective change in the form of arcs of transformation and suggests a comprehensive taxonomy of transformation for processed affects. The term “arc of transformation” refers to the overarching sequence of an experientially processed affect and its expected outcome, from triggering conditions yielding affects to adaptive affective experience processing, resulting in appropriate transformative action tendencies and resolution, all leading to well-being and resilience. Through accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy, a research-based experiential therapeutic model, we integrate clinical observations with theoretical understandings of emotions and demonstrate the suggested taxonomy of the arcs of transformation of affective change processes in psychotherapy. Using a coherent description of the transformation expected by processing the described affects, therapists may use this article to plan their path to creating change, directed by a guided classification of adaptive outcomes that will clear their vision regarding expected goals while experientially processing a particular affect. Consequently, therapists and patients could work on emotional experiences aiming to identify, process, and promote adaptive action tendencies accompanied by healing affects, all directed toward recovery and growth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Impact Statement

This article explores the processes that constitute affective change through accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy. It offers a taxonomy of “arcs of transformation,” unfolding the sequence of processing core emotions toward their resolution and subsequent action tendencies. The novelty of classifying affects and their expected emotional outcomes when processed experientially has direct clinical relevance, aiding therapists in identifying the specific inner experience to be processed and its anticipated emotional resolution. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Copyright

Year: 2025

Holder: American Psychological Association

November 18, 2024

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter, in my capacity as Magda Evans’ certification supervisor, to confirm

Magda’s readiness to have her certification application advance to the review process.

I have been supporting Magda as her certification supervisor since February, 2024. Magda

has also worked closely in AEDP supervision with Malin Endredi, for many years and

throughout the cerrtification process. Malin’s comments are included later in this letter.

Magda is a skilled and sensitive AEDP therapist with exceptional tracking skills. She is very

steady and spacious in her work and in her warm, heartfelt, caring presence on behalf of

her patients. Magda’s clinical videos demonstrate a deep trust in the experiential process

and in somatic, embodied work. Her patients trust her deeply, and in both clinical tapes,

she helps coregulate patients so they can have new and corrective experiences of

connection to self, in connection to her. And to face and move through core aPective

experiences that were too overwhelming for patients to face alone. Magda notices and

focuses on moments of positive change and expands these through metatherapeutic

processing. She holds space for and resonates with patients when they are in core state.

She has a tremendous appetite for learning and growth – her own and that of her patients. A

growing edge for Magda has been to work dyadically and experientially with relational

experience and receptive aPective experience, in addition to somatic work with embodied

categorical emotion and the patient’s individual aPective experience. Her understanding of

the importance of this component of AEDP theory and practice has expanded and

deepened through the process of reviewing her certification tapes and annotating her

transcripts.

Magda’s tape with an early patient illustrates her sensitive and skilled work with a person

with a significant trauma history who experiences moments of disorganization. Her video

demonstrates multiple AEDP change processes and interventions: gentle and persistent

co-creation of safety, close moment-to-moment tracking, co-regulation of anxiety,

embodied experiential work, dyadic aPect regulation, aPirmative defense work, facilitating

core aPective experience (receptive aPective experience, connection to self and to

therapist, feeling and dealing while relating), and state 3 work, exploring and expanding

transformational aPects through metaprocessing.

In her tape with a mid-treatment patient, Magda helps the patient shift from an internal

experience of “chaos” to one of self-trust, excitement, and coherence. The patient, who

has never lived on her own (and who has a long history of debilitating physical ailments) is

in the middle of a frightening divorce from her husband, a successful businessman. Magda

invites imaginal work and oPers her own image to help co-regulate and organize the

patient, who then has a spontaneous memory of childhood. The session unfolds from there

under Magda’s guidance, and the patient experiences new felt confidence, exploratory zest

for what lies ahead, and extended, deep core state deep calm knowing, truth sense, and

integration.

Here are Malin Endredi’s reflections on her work with Magda Evans:

I have been meeting with Magda Evans as her supervisor for about five years.

This journey has been a true delight for me. Magda has always shown tapes.

From our start I’ve been struck by Magda’s warm presence and care for her clients. It’s

running as a red thread throughout, making her an ePicient psychotherapist.

Magda’s first training was Integrative Therapy and she has been working for a long time as a

psychotherapist.

It’s been lovely to see Magda shifting into AEDP. The more Magda has embodied AEDP, and

its tools, her wisdom, creativity, playfulness and sense of humor have come to the fourth.

Magda has been an Experiential Assistant several times and as such been highly

appreciated for her calm gentleness, warmth and her way of sharing her knowledge.

Magda has a beautiful ability in expressing and receiving gratitude. This is important both

as a psychotherapist and a human being.

Magda has an impressively strong strive to learn and grow. This has really shown up during

the certification process that we started in 2023. It’s been fun to choose among all tapes

together with Magda. She’s been working ePiciently with the transcripts, showing her

theoretical understanding of AEDP. She is very self-reflecting and has been asking for

comments and advice, very eager to get everything right.

I’m grateful that AEDP Faculty Richard Harrison had the opportunity to come in with his

expertise and a second pair of eyes on Magda’s Certification Package.

The tape with the early, second session client is quite recent. Compared with the other,

older tape, we can see how Magda’s AEDP skills have grown. In the transcript she is selfreflective

and sees the choice points she might have taken now.

Both of Magda’s tapes are very moving to me. In the second session tape the client reaches

third state with a dip into core state. She moves from paralysis with attacking voices to

feeling calmer and feeling her energy of life. Magda’s calm, gentle presence and her

creativity and humor made it possible.

In the other, mid therapy tape, the client moves from feeling chaotic and unsure of herself

to oscillating between third and core state. Magda holds her and supports her in the

process in a very skillful way, gently making it move forward. For every round core state is

deepened.

The client lands in a solid, realistic trust in herself and her ability to face what might come

her way. Internal secure attachment created!

None of Magda’s tapes have edits.

Richard and I certainly think that Magda Evans is ready to send in her package for

certification review!

Kind regards,

Richard Harrison and Malin Endredi

PS: Malin’s contact information is:

Malin Endredi

AEDP Supervisor

Email address: endredimalin@gmail.com

Cell phone: +46706409996

A letter from Education Committee announcing the appointment of our newest AEDP® Institute Faculty member, 

Annika Medbo, Licensed Psychotherapist, Licensed Physiotherapist. As part of this announcement, we have shared Diana’s letter welcoming Annika aboard. The letter from Diana to Annika, below, describes some of the many contributions she has made to date to both AEDP and the AEDP community. To learn about the process for becoming Faculty, see the notes* below Diana’s letter.Please read Diana’s welcome letter and join us in congratulating and welcoming Annika into our wonderful, accomplished, dedicated and growing group of Institute Faculty.

dear faculty and supervisors,

i am delighted to add my appreciation to that of the members of the Education Committee and welcome  Annika Medbo to the Faculty of the AEDP Institute. 

in the more than 13 years that Annika has been in, and fully immersed in, AEDP, she has contributed to its growth, development and well being in a myriad of ways– teaching, supervision, community development and more recently, cutting edge clinical/ theoretical work. her many gifts and contributions have been already acknowledged by the note from the Education committee.  Annika, together with Adjunct faculty Anna Christina Sundgren, has been absolutely instrumental, in  nurturing AEDP and a vibrant AEDP community in Sweden, and  now also fostering AEDP’s budding growth in Norway.

i want to personally uplift, acknowledge and appreciate one of her contributions and one of her personal qualities: 

— Annika Medbo is contributing to the growth of AEDP as a model with important work on the SELF in AeDP. many of you have had a chance to witness and experience in her recent seminars and ES2 courses, and  to read in her brilliant monograph  in Transformance: The AEDP Journal, Finding, Forming and Transforming the Self: A Journey From No Self to Core Self.  this work advances AeDP theory and clinical practice and showcases Annika’s quiet brilliance as a caring, attuned and creative AEDP clinician, and now also as a clinical theoretician. the years she spent steeped in caregiver-infant early development work clearly inform the depth, subtlety and attunement of the work she is developing — which is about the AEDP therapist being a midwife to the Self, rescuing it from non-existence. in the process, she is also extending our understanding of the maladaptive affects and how to work with them in people arrested and stunted in their growth by deep emotional  neglect 

— i also want to acknowledge a quality that stands out: Annika’s personal integrity as a person and as a clinician.  it is a quality which is impossible to not experience whether she is teaching or doing therapy. it is remarkable and deep quality, with nothing showy about it. along with her sensitivity and attunement,  it shines through, evoking trust in in  participants in her courses, in her patients and in her colleagues

it is wonderful to have Annika Medbo join the ranks of our stellar AEDP faculty. and look forward to her ongoing contributions in many realms of AEDP life

welcome Annika!

diana*The Institute revised the way people become Faculty. Until 2023, individuals had to be invited to become faculty and invitees were approved by all other faculty. Starting two years ago, supervisors have been invited to apply to become Adjunct Faculty, and starting in 2023, Adjunct Faculty may apply to become Faculty.For Adjunct Faculty to qualify to apply for a Faculty position, they must meet many requirements including completion of a number and variety of “successful” ES1 presentations (success = being highly regarded by mentor and participants), very high proficiency as an AEDP clinician, AEDP and general teaching experience beyond ES1, community involvement and commitment, plus a multitude of personal attributes and recommendations and feedback all submitted and reviewed by the Education Committee. To see the Faculty application go 

here.Meeting the requirements is very challenging and applying is not for the faint of heart. We are so pleased that Annika has met and exceeded these requirements and so excited to welcome her into the Faculty community.Lynne on behalf of the Education Committee

Eden Abraham
Gregory Czyszczon
Goretti Faria
Lynne Hartwell
Michael Mondoro
Eileen Russell

by Karen Pando-Mars (Author), Diana Fosha (Author)

Published by Norton Professional Books

Harnessing the power of attachment to transform psychotherapy.

Research shows that attachment patterns—our patterns of relating to others, which develop in early childhood—affect far more aspects of our lives than was previously thought. Given how crucial these patterns are to how every patient relates to the world and to their own selves, how can therapists harness attachment to provide more effective therapy?

Using AEDP® psychotherapy theory and methodology as a foundation, the authors present an innovative approach that tailors treatment to attachment patterns, allowing psychotherapists to help patients heal relational trauma. Here, readers will find attachment pattern-specific clinical interventions to help them translate attachment theory into transformative clinical practice. 

Case examples are used throughout to illustrate how to handle the unique challenges that psychotherapists encounter with each attachment pattern, while engaging commentary discusses how the attachment-informed experiential/relational process leads to healing attachment trauma and facilitating security, resilience, and well-being.

AEDP®Advanced Skills March 2025

“The Therapist as Organizing Other: Regulating and building self-structure in dysregulated clients through an AEDP lens”

Presented by Jennifer Edlin, MFT

Choose from two live online options:
Full Course: Friday thru Monday | March 14 – 17, 2025   
Seminar Only: Friday & Sunday | March 14 + 16, 2025 

Join your colleagues for a 3 Hour Dinner Cruise 
Saturday, April 5, 2025 | 7:00- 10:00PM

Seats are limited, so reserve a spot now for you and any family member who may have traveled with you!

Not registered for the conference yet?