Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP)

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 is about experientially making the most of these opportunities for both healing and transformation. Key to its therapeutic action is the undoing of aloneness and thus, the establishment of the therapeutic relationship experienced as both safe haven, and secure base.

Developed by Dr. Diana Fosha, the author of the The Transforming Power of Affect and numerous articles (see Publications), AEDP is an ever-emergent model, ever-growing through the ongoing contributions of the AEDP faculty and the members of the AEDP community.

AEDP seeks to clinically make neuroplasticity happen. Championing our innate healing capacities, AEDP has roots in and resonances with many disciplines -- among them interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, emotion theory and affective neuroscience, body-focused approaches, and last but not least, transformational studies.

Through undoing of aloneness, and through the in-depth processing of difficult emotional and relational experiences, as well as new transformational experiences, the AEDP clinician fosters the emergence of new and healing experiences for the client, and with them resources, resilience and a renewed zest for life. Read more about how AEDP works.