By Christophe Herbert, Psychologist
Online Training: Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
New: £39 instead of £99 today (launch price, 1h52)
Training under the supervision of Christophe Herbert, Psychologist (AI-enhanced training)
CONTINUING EDUCATION
Brief psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective and proven therapeutic approach that adapts psychoanalytic principles to a time-limited framework. This continuing education course for psychologists enables you to master the fundamentals of brief psychoanalytic therapy, developed by pioneers such as Malan, Sifneos, and Davanloo.
During this 2-hour asynchronous training, you will discover how brief psychotherapy works as a credible alternative to lengthy traditional therapies, without compromising therapeutic effectiveness. This approach is part of contemporary developments in psychological practice, responding to current demands for speed and efficiency.
You will learn to identify and establish a solid therapeutic focus in just a few sessions, a core competency in brief psychodynamic psychotherapy. The therapeutic focus allows the intervention to concentrate on the patient's priority emotional and conflictual issues, thereby optimizing psychological change even within a constrained timeframe.
This training explores the specific techniques of brief psychoanalytic therapy: how to formulate impactful interpretations, work with transference and resistance, and maintain an effective therapeutic alliance over a short duration. You will study the different schools — from Malan's model focused on the triangular relationship to Davanloo's techniques centered on accessing deep emotions.
The training also incorporates insights from current research in brief psychotherapy, showing success rates, patient selection criteria, and conditions for effectiveness. This evidence-based approach will enable you to justify your clinical choices and adjust your practice.
Participating in this continuing education course for psychologists gives you access to a professional competency in demand in hospital settings, private practices, and psychological support structures. Brief psychodynamic psychotherapy meets the budgetary and temporal constraints of the contemporary healthcare system while maintaining therapeutic quality.
4 Learning Objectives
- Analyze the fundamental principles of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy and its various theoretical schools (Malan, Sifneos, Davanloo) to adapt your clinical practice
- Determine and formulate a therapeutic focus tailored to the patient and the duration of treatment, allowing the intervention to concentrate on priority emotional issues
- Apply the specific techniques of brief psychoanalytic therapy: targeted interpretations, management of transference and resistance within a time-limited framework
- Evaluate therapeutic effectiveness based on current research data and integrate patient selection criteria to optimize outcomes in brief psychotherapy
Knowledge validation test (certified training)
FAQ
Q1: What is brief psychodynamic psychotherapy?
A1: Brief psychodynamic psychotherapy is an adaptation of psychoanalytic principles to a time-limited framework (typically 12–40 sessions). Developed by Malan, Sifneos, and Davanloo, it combines the exploration of unconscious conflicts with therapeutic effectiveness within a constrained timeframe, while maintaining the quality of psychological change.
Q2: What is the therapeutic focus in brief psychotherapy?
A2: The therapeutic focus is the core of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy. It involves identifying and concentrating the therapeutic work on the patient's main emotional and conflictual issue. This focus optimizes the intervention within a limited time by avoiding digressions and maintaining the coherence of the analytic work.
Q3: What are the differences between Malan, Sifneos, and Davanloo in brief psychoanalytic therapy?
A3: Malan emphasizes understanding the triangular relationship (mother, father, therapist) and the past–present–transference connection. Sifneos stresses rigorous patient selection and the active role of the therapist. Davanloo developed an approach based on rapid access to deep emotions through intensive engagement, called Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP).
Q4: Is brief psychoanalytic psychotherapy effective?
A4: Yes, contemporary research demonstrates the effectiveness of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy for treating depression, anxiety, relational disorders, and trauma. Success rates are comparable to long-term therapies when selection criteria are met and the therapeutic focus is clearly established.
This training includes:
Illustrated slideshow videos + Training certificate
Course Outline
Module 1 — Introduction: Why Think About Time in Psychotherapy?
The misconception that psychodynamic psychotherapy is necessarily long. The historical origins of the question: as early as Ferenczi and Rank (1925), treatment duration was a topic of debate within the psychoanalytic field. The contemporary context: patient demand for shorter follow-ups, institutional constraints, research data showing the effectiveness of brief formats. What "brief" means (and does not mean): brief therapy is not rushed therapy — it is therapy that uses time limitation as a therapeutic lever. Who this training is for: psychologists and psychotherapists wishing to integrate a structured, time-limited format without sacrificing psychodynamic depth.
Module 2 — Major Models of Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
The landscape is rich and it is important to find one's bearings. David Malan and the focal psychotherapy of the Tavistock Clinic: the triangle of conflict (impulse, anxiety, defense) and the triangle of persons (past figure, current figure, therapist). Habib Davanloo and ISTDP (Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy): the technique of pressure on defenses and unlocking the unconscious. Lester Luborsky and the CCRT (Core Conflictual Relationship Theme): identifying the central conflictual relationship theme as the guiding thread of treatment. James Mann and time-limited psychotherapy: exactly 12 sessions, with time as the central theme. Hans Strupp and Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy (TLDP): the maladaptive relational cycle. Falk Leichsenring and contemporary research data. What unites these models: the notion of focus, time limitation, therapist activity, and work on separation.
Module 3 — The Therapeutic Focus: Working with a Focus
Why the focus is essential in brief therapy: without a focus, brevity is impossible. What a focus is: a concise formulation of the patient's central conflict, negotiated with them, that guides the entire therapeutic work. How to construct it: from the anamnesis, the patient's request, recurring relational patterns, and what emerges in the first sessions. Criteria for a good focus: it is dynamic (not merely descriptive), it is linked to current suffering, it can be formulated in relational terms, and the patient can recognize themselves in it. Common mistakes: a focus that is too broad (one cannot treat everything), a focus that is too intellectual (disconnected from affect), a focus imposed by the therapist without patient agreement. Negotiating the focus with the patient as the first therapeutic act.
Module 4 — Patient Selection: Indications and Contraindications
Brief psychotherapy is not suitable for all patients — and recognizing this is part of clinical rigor. Classic indication criteria: ability to identify a focal problem, sufficient relational capacity (at least one significant relationship in the past), motivation for change (not merely a desire for relief), affect tolerance (ability to feel without being overwhelmed), minimal mentalization capacity. Contraindications: active psychotic disorders, severe personality disorders with major acting out, acute suicidal crises, multiple unresolved pathological grief, active unstabilized addictions. The gray zone: patients who seem indicated but drift during treatment — how to reassess. The ethical question: offering a brief format when a longer format would be more appropriate, and vice versa.
Module 5 — The Specific Framework of Brief Therapy: Time, Frequency, and Contract
Duration: variable formats depending on the model (12 sessions in Mann's model, 16 to 30 in Malan's, 20 to 40 in Luborsky's). The importance of setting the duration from the outset and adhering to it. Frequency: one session per week is the standard; some models (ISTDP) use longer or more frequent sessions. The therapeutic contract: explicitly stating from the first session the number of sessions, objectives, focus, and what will happen at the end. Why the contract is not a straitjacket but a structuring framework: it creates productive tension, mobilizes the patient, and prevents drift. The end date as clinical data: once set, it works on the patient — and the therapist. The paradox of brief therapy: it is by accepting limitation that movement is freed.
Module 6 — Active Techniques: What the Therapist Does Differently
In brief therapy, the therapist is more active than in long-term therapy — and this activity is deliberate, not improvised. Early confrontation of defenses: identifying and naming defenses that block access to the focus, with tact but without delay. Working with the triangle of conflict (Malan): systematically linking the observed defense to the underlying anxiety and the impulse or need it masks. Working with the triangle of persons: making explicit connections between what plays out with the therapist, what plays out in current relationships, and what played out in past relationships. Early transference interpretations: in brief therapy, one does not wait for the transference to unfold slowly — it is named early, because time is pressing. Managing resistance: in brief therapy, resistance is not an invitation to infinite patience — it must be actively addressed, or the treatment risks running idle. The balance between activity and respect: being active does not mean being intrusive — it is activity in the service of the patient, not in the service of the calendar.
Module 7 — The End of Therapy: Working Through Separation and Grief
This is the deepest specificity of brief psychodynamic therapy: the end is present from the very beginning. Why the end is not simply a stop but a therapeutic process in itself: it reactivates experiences of loss, separation, and abandonment that run through the patient's history. Grief work within the brief framework: the patient must mourn the treatment, the therapist, and what could not be addressed. Common reactions as the end approaches: symptom recurrence, emergence of new themes, attempts to extend treatment, premature flight. How the therapist manages the end: naming the process, linking the patient's reactions to their habitual separation patterns, maintaining the framework without rigidity, tolerating incompleteness. The therapist's countertransference facing the end: guilt over "not having done enough," temptation to extend, symmetrical feelings of abandonment. The final session: assessment, acknowledgment of the journey traveled, opening toward the future without false promises.
Module 8 — Research Data: What Do We Know About Effectiveness?
Foundational studies: Malan (1963, 1976), Sifneos (1972, 1979), Davanloo (1980). Contemporary randomized controlled trials: Leichsenring et al. (2004, 2013), Driessen et al. (2013), Abbass et al. (meta-analyses). What the data show: effectiveness comparable to CBT for depression and anxiety disorders, lasting and sometimes increasing effects after treatment ends (the "sleeper effect"), effectiveness of ISTDP for somatoform disorders. Methodological limitations: heterogeneity of models, difficulty in manualizing a relational approach, patient selection bias. The dose-effect debate: more sessions always better? The data nuance this intuition. What research does not yet tell us: for which patients precisely, and under what conditions, is brief therapy the best choice?
Module 9 — Conclusion: Brief Therapy as a Clinical Stance
Brief therapy is not a degraded version of long-term therapy. It is a format in its own right, with its own logic, specific techniques, and particular demands. What brief therapy teaches the therapist: tolerance for incompleteness, acceptance that not everything can be treated, the ability to trust in the patient's change process beyond the therapeutic framework. A quote from Winnicott to close: good therapy is therapy that is "good enough" — and "enough" is the key word.
Instructor:
AI-enhanced training under the supervision of Christophe Herbert, Psychologist
Psychologist specializing in psychotherapeutic follow-up of victims and severely bereaved individuals. Director of H4 Éditions
Who Is This For?
This training is reserved for professionals (e.g., psychologists, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, sexologists, psychiatric nurses, etc.) and students in a discipline such as psychology, psychiatry, etc. Others upon request at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
How to Register and Access the Online Course
1) Register for your personal training account and pay the registration fee (invoice available)
2) You will have access to the course (video lectures and downloadable documents) in your personal training account.
You can complete the course at your own pace. Once registered, you can start the course whenever you wish. There is no time limit to complete the training. You can contact the instructor to ask questions.
3) Complete the knowledge validation test
(a minimum of 70% correct answers is required to obtain a personalized training completion certificate; unlimited attempts. The goal is for you to pass the test through the acquisition of your new knowledge).
4) Download your personalized certificate bearing the Psy-Training header, confirming that you have completed and passed the training.