Deliberate Practice in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (Essentials of Deliberate Practice Series)

Deliberate practice exercises help trainees achieve competence in essential psychodynamic therapy skills and apply them in a range of clinical situations while honing their own personal style and language.

These exercises present role-playing scenarios in which two trainees act as a patient and a therapist, switching back and forth under the guidance of a supervisor. The therapist improvises appropriate and authentic responses to patient statements organized into two difficulty levels―intermediate and advanced―that reflect common patient questions and concerns.

Each of the first 12 exercises focuses on a single skill, such as engaging in a therapeutic inquiry, deepening emotional experience, pointing out defenses, making transference interpretations, and providing corrective emotional experiences. Two comprehensive exercises follow in which trainees integrate these essential skills into a single psychodynamic therapy session.

Step-by-step instructions guide participants through the exercises, identify criteria for mastering each skill, and explain how to monitor and adjust difficulty. Guidelines to help trainers and trainees get the most out of training are also provided.

To demonstrate how deliberate practice can be fully integrated into a professional curriculum, this series features exercises developed and refined within the clinical training curriculum at the Sentio online/hybrid marriage and family therapy (MFT) therapist training program in California, which is where we started developing this series. These exercises, which have been tested at clinical training sites around the world, are used to enhance clinical outcomes within the first hybrid MFT program approved by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences to fully integrate deliberate practice into its entire curriculum. By integrating these models into its hybrid MFT program in California, Sentio University demonstrates that therapist training graduate programs can use deliberate practice to bridge the gap between theory and clinical mastery through repetitive, feedback-informed practice to support the development of modern, outcome-focused clinicians.

Hanna Levenson, PhD, is a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. She also maintains a private practice in Oakland where she sees individuals and couples for therapy and professionals for consultation/supervision. Dr. Levenson has specialized in brief dynamic therapy and supervision for 40 years. She has authored over 85 professional papers and three books (Time Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy, Brief Dynamic and Interpersonal Therapy, and Brief Dynamic Therapy, Second Edition) and has released five professional videos with APA illustrating her approach. Dr. Levenson received the Distinguished Contribution to Psychology as a Profession Award given by the California Psychological Association.
 
Volney Gay, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt University and a Training and Supervising Analyst at the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute. He has published nine books on religion, psychiatry, and anthropology. Dr. Volney has won teaching awards from McMaster University and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine; the Heinz Hartmann Award from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute; the Outstanding Service Award from the American Psychoanalytic Association; and was named Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educator, International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education. His most recent book is American Slavery: Privileges and Pleasures (2021).
 
Jeffrey L. Binder, PhD, ABPP, is a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Vanderbilt University. He maintains a private practice of psychotherapy and clinical supervision. Dr. Binder has authored or coauthored over 45 articles and book chapters on psychotherapy practice, research, and supervision, as well as three books on a form of time-limited therapy developed with Hans Strupp: Psychotherapy in a New Key: A Guide to Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy, Key Competencies in Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy: Clinical Practice Beyond the Manual, and Core Competencies in Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy. Dr. Binder is a fellow of the American Psychological Association.