Editor’s Letter and Introduction to the Issue: Gil Tunnell, PhD.

Using AEDP with Special Populations 

By Gil Tunnell, PhD

As I put the final touches on this issue devoted to using AEDP with special populations, I am saying to myself, “WOW!”  Herein Mark Green writes on using AEDP in treating addictions (“unwrapping the urge”); Jessica Slatus writes on using AEDP with eating disorders (literally “bite by bite”); Carrie Ruggieri writes on using equine-assisted psychotherapy as an adjunct to AEDP (with a rich history of the horse-human connection); and Matt Fried gives us a very personal essay on his work with psychotic populations (from an observing college student to working on a psychiatric unit). These four authors have developed their own original, new, and creative ways of using AEDP with these groups.  

Furthermore, in a new column for Transformance, Kari Gleiser and Diana Fosha describe original, new and creative ways of incorporating sexuality into AEDP theory and practice. They present to us their cutting-edge thoughts on sexuality, a void thus far not addressed in AEDP for individuals. Their goal is “to graft a theory/phenomenology of sexual experience onto AEDP’s four states of emotional processing,” and they include a diagram illustrating it. Following AEDP ethos, Kari and Diana view sexuality through a lens of health, not pathology.

To me, it is the originality throughout this issue that makes it so special. As I finished editing each article along the way, I said, “This is really great!” When they are all put together in one place here, they add up to a huge “WOW!”  See what you think, but I believe you are in for some very interesting reading.