19/07/2026
🎉 Dear EDT Colleagues,
An issue of “Psychology in Practice” (“Psychologia w Praktyce”), a Polish professional journal for psychologists and psychotherapists, devoted entirely to Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) has just been published.
📖 A full thematic issue in one of the leading Polish journals in the field gives ISTDP a chance to reach thousands of professionals across the country, many of whom will encounter the method in depth for the first time.
🔗 https://psychologiawpraktyce.pl/czasopismo
The issue is the result of many months of collaborative work and a shared belief in presenting ISTDP in a reliable, practical, and evidence-based manner.
📚 What you’ll find inside:
🔹 Short, Intensive, Dynamic. An Introduction to ISTDP, Part 1 (Joanna and Przemysław Duchniewicz)
The origins of the method from Habib Davanloo through David Malan, what “short,” “intensive,” and “dynamic” really mean, the Two Triangles, the therapist’s stance, and the institutional landscape in Poland and abroad.
🔹 Short, Intensive, Dynamic. An Introduction to ISTDP, Part 2 (Joanna and Przemysław Duchniewicz)
A look inside the consulting room: the core techniques and how they combine into the Central Dynamic Sequence, from the first question to breakthrough, along with the path of competency development.
🔹 Diagnosis in ISTDP: A Map of the Patient, Not a Label (Joanna and Przemysław Duchniewicz)
How dynamic diagnosis complements a nosological one: Davanloo’s spectrum, the three pathways of anxiety discharge, the four pillars of resistance, and the Unconscious Therapeutic Alliance.
🔹 RAEC: Resistance Against Emotional Closeness in ISTDP (Marek Figiela)
A case-based study of the “front-door” defenses that keep the patient at an emotional distance, their developmental roots, and the spiral character of the therapeutic process.
🔹 Spiritual Bypassing and Spiritual Defenses in ISTDP (Agata Sobiecka)
The idea of spiritual defenses, illustrated with fictionalized vignettes, and how to distinguish a living relationship with the sacred from a defense dressed in religious language.
🔹 When the Group Becomes a Mirror: On Experiential ISTDP Work in the Group Process (Kamila Sieraczkiewicz)
Four key areas of group work (anxiety regulation, defenses, contact with feeling, and projection), what the group uniquely adds, and emerging research on group and residential ISTDP.
🔹 The CIC Technique (Confrontation, Identification, Clarification) (Lidia Człapska, Anna Meller, Anna Stańczyk)
A practical worksheet for one of the foundational intervention sequences, with operational definitions, quality criteria, common pitfalls, and exercises for self-practice and supervision.
🔹 The Significance of ISTDP Elements in the Everyday Work of a Psychiatrist (Julian Maciaszek)
How ISTDP’s dimensional thinking about anxiety, defenses, and relational patterns can enrich psychiatric assessment, the therapeutic alliance, pharmacotherapy, and inpatient work.
🔹 ISTDP Today: New Research, New Recommendations, New Possibilities (Łukasz Konowalek)
The current evidence base and the new frontier of process research, including the use of AI and language models to analyze sessions, and why clinical theory still matters more than measurement alone.
🙏 We warmly thank Ola Deryło and the entire publishing team at “Psychology in Practice.” It was a great pleasure to work with them.
🙏 We also thank Ron Albucher, President of the IEDTA, for contributing a letter about the IEDTA and our upcoming Congress in Dubrovnik. We hope it will bring even more attention to this wonderful gathering.
🌱 This issue is part of a much larger story.
Dr Adam Zemełka, the journal’s scientific editor, wrote to us:
“I have been quietly observing the blossoming (yes, a fair correction - blossoming, not merely sprouting 😊) of ISTDP in Poland, and I am genuinely impressed.”
We share this joy, and we are glad that this blossoming has many gardeners here in Poland.
For well over a decade, several organizations have been working on the development, standards, and ethics of ISTDP in Poland, among them Polskie Stowarzyszenie ISTDP, Polskie Towarzystwo Psychoterapii ISTDP, and Sekcja ISTDP przy Polskim Stowarzyszeniu Integracji Psychoterapii.
As Polskie Stowarzyszenie ISTDP, we sincerely cheer for the growth of all these communities.
The Persian poet Saadi, a countryman of Habib Davanloo, wrote seven centuries ago that human beings are members of one body, created from a single essence.
We believe the same is true of the EDT therapeutic community: we are gathered here around Habib Davanloo’s essence; we grow together through our discussions, supporting each other, exchanging information and publications, celebrating each other’s successes, while also debating and sometimes disagreeing—like in a real family. That is the sign of a healthy community. (And one that is growing FAST.)
❤️ Above all, we thank the Members of Polskie Stowarzyszenie ISTDP.
This publication grew out of what we have been doing together: mutual learning, supervision, clinical discussion, voluntary work, and care for high standards.
Whatever value readers find in it belongs to this whole community.
It is also a meaningful way to mark the 10th anniversary of our community, which began in 2016 as the informal ISTDPpl community and continues today as the registered Polish Association for ISTDP.
👏 Our special thanks go to the authors and editorial team (alphabetically by first name):
• Agata Sobiecka
• Ania Meller
• Ania Stańczyk
• Joanna Duchniewicz
• Julian Maciaszek
• Kamila Sieraczkiewicz
• Lidia Człapska
• Łukasz Konowalek
• Marek Figiela
• Przemek Duchniewicz
💙 Thank you for your knowledge, time, attentiveness, and willingness to share your experience.
⸻
On behalf of the Board of Polskie Stowarzyszenie ISTDP
Przemek Duchniewicz, MD
IEDTA Certified Teacher and Supervisor
President of Polskie Stowarzyszenie ISTDP (Polish Association for ISTDP)
⸻
P.S. 📖 We are working with the publisher on English translations and on making some of the articles available in open access. Don't purchase anything on that platform, two articles are in open access and others once will be we will let you know. Already there are some discussions with our international colleagues around topics like: ISTDP and groups, or ISTDP and Spiritual Bypassing, if you would like to join, just let us know, we will connect you with authors and others interested in those topics
