conversation with
Dr. Leslie Greenberg

"There is no doubt that Greenberg is both a pioneer and the field’s premier investigator in the important work of applying the basic research on emotions to the process of psychotherapy... a fabulous compendium of strategies for working with emotions." Marsha M. Linehan

Emotion-focused therapy (EFT) was developed by Leslie Greenberg and his colleagues in the 1980s out of empirical studies of the process of change and has developed into one of the recognized evidence-based treatment approaches for depression and marital distress as well as showing promise for trauma, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, and interpersonal problems.

EFT is itself an integration of client-centered, gestalt, and existential approaches (6). Although it differs from psychodynamic therapy in focusing more on the here and now, it is similar to self-psychology in the attention paid to empathic attunement, and it is dynamically informed, incorporating attachment theory, the importance of interpersonal processes, and repairing alliance ruptures 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 of dealing with emotion in therapy involves the transformation of emotion by emotion.

In this conversation, Leslie Greenberg will discuss EFT's unique methods for both accessing emotion and changing emotion. Together with Leslie, we will explore effective interventions in EFT such as empathic attunement to affect, bodily felt experience, new, corrective, emotional experiences, and memory reconsolidation processes.  In addition to generic methods of working with affect, Leslie will describe more structured methods for arriving and leaving emotion, such as chair work and imaginal re-entry to past situations. Clinical examples will demonstrate EFT methods.