Thinking Here and Now –
Conversation with Innovators in Psychotherapy (zoom)
Aner Govrin and Sharon Ziv-Beiman hosting
conversation with
Dr. Leslie Greenberg
emotion-focused therapy (eft) changing emotions with emotions
2.5.21 Sunday , 7:30pm - 9:15 pm (Israel Time; UTC+2)
"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.
Leslie Greenberg, Ph.D. is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Psychology at York University in Toronto. He has authored the major texts on Emotion-focused approaches to treatment for individuals and couples including 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 of the International Society for Psychotherapy Research as well as the American Psychology Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contribution to Applied Research. He conducts a private practice and trains people in emotion-focused approaches.
He received the 2004 Distinguished Research Career Award of the Society for Psychotherapy Research: An International Interdisciplinary Society. He is a founding member of the Society of the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and a past President of the Society for Psychotherapy Research (SPR). He has been awarded the Canadian Council of Professional Psychology Program Award for Excellence in Professional Training and the Canadian Psychological Association Professional Award for distinguished contributions to Psychology as a profession as well as the Carl Rogers Award of the American Psychology Association’s Society for Humanistic Psychology. He is a recipient of the APA Award for Distinguished Professional Contribution to Applied Research. He is on the editorial board of many psychotherapy journals, including the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, the Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, and the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. He conducts a private practice for individuals and couples and trains people in Emotion-focused approaches.