What is intensive dynamic short-term psychotherapy by Habib Davanloo ?
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (IS-TDP) is a psychoanalytic method of treatment. It was developed by Habib Davanloo, Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal and senior psychiatrist and researcher at Montreal General Hospital.
IS-TDP differs from all other psychoanalytic methods in a new metapsychology, technical interventions derived from it, and the exploitation of neurobiological discoveries. It is based on a rapid and intensive increase of feelings in the transference, which mobilize unconscious fear and thus activate defence mechanisms in the transference. Patient and therapist work systematically on these forces in the transference. The patient is made familiar with his defences, recognises them as disabling mechanisms and tries to overcome them in cooperation with the therapist. The therapist pays carefully attention to the neurobiological signals of the "unconscious fear" and ensures that the patient's "fear tolerance" is not exceeded. The process makes the psychopathological forces responsible for symptoms and character disorders directly visible. The result is an "unconscious therapeutic alliance" between therapist and the patient against their self-sabotaging forces. The process results in the patient experiencing the previously unconscious feelings of transmission and a "direct view of the multifocal nuclear neurotic structure".
The development of a transference neurosis is avoided. The therapy is characterized by high efficiency and is indicated for the broad spectrum of symptom and character neurosis as well as - with modifications - also for psychosomatic disorders and fragile character structures.
Habib Davanloo's research is based on video recording and careful analysis of the entire therapeutic process as well as multi-year catamnesis.
