Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) was developed by Leslie Greenberg and colleagues in the 1980s from empirical studies of change processes in psychotherapy. It has evolved into one of the best-known and most well-established treatment approaches for depression and relationship difficulties, as well as a promising treatment for trauma, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, and interpersonal relationships. EFT can be used by therapists from all schools of thought. This therapy is a combination of humanistic, existential, and Gestalt approaches. Although it differs from psychodynamic therapy in that it focuses more on the here and now, it also draws inspiration from self-psychology in its attention to empathic interventions. The influence of psychodynamic theories is also reflected in the integration of attachment theory, the importance of interpersonal processes, and the repair of ruptures in the therapeutic alliance as part of the healing process.

The main principles of EFT are: awareness, emotional expression, reflection, regulation and transformation. Transformation is probably the most important way to deal with emotion in therapy and involves changing one emotion by another.

In this session, Leslie Greenberg will discuss with Aner Guvrin and Sharon Ziv Beiman the methods of emotion-focused therapy that are designed to both make emotions more accessible and change them. Together with Leslie, we will explore effective interventions in emotion-focused therapy such as empathic attunement, body-centered experiences, corrective emotional experiences, and painful memory experiences. In addition to emotion-based interventions that are done during therapy, Leslie will describe more structured methods that aim to raise and ease difficult emotions related to traumatic events, such as chair work and imaginative re-entry into past situations. The conversation will be accompanied by clinical examples.

Leslie Greenberg, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at York University in Toronto. Among his books:

Emotion in Psychotherapy (1986), Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (1988) and more recently Emotion-focused Couples Therapy: The dynamics of emotion, love and power (2008) and Emotion-focused therapy: Theory and practice (2015) Emotion-focused therapy: Coaching clients to work through their feelings (2015), and Case Formulation in Emotion-Focused Therapy

He has received the Distinguished Research Career Award from the International Association for Psychotherapy Research, the American Psychological Association Award for Important Professional Contribution to Applied Research. He runs a private practice and trains people in emotion-focused approaches.