Therapy on the Cutting Edge

In this episode, Carmen discusses her work in family therapy and her Socioculturally Attuned Family Therapy. Carmen shared that she entered the field when there were feminist critiques of family therapy and a focus on power in the therapeutic relationship. She explained that she went to Loma Linda University to direct the family therapy doctoral program, and worked with Douglas Huenerardt, Ph. D....

In this episode, Terry discusses starting off his career working in residential treatment programs for kids and becoming interested in the idea of probability, and how in making behavior goals, he could increase the probability for the child’s success. In grad school he focused on instructional strategies for kids with challenging behaviors, and finding effective ways to intervene. He discussed ho...

In this episode, I speak with Laco about his work and research in the area of Emotion Focused Therapy (EFT). Laco discusses how he originally was trained in Client Centered Therapy and was drawn to Les Greenberg’s, Emotion-Focused Therapy as it was an extension of Carl Rogers’ work, with Les Greenberg being a student of one of Rogers’ students. We discussed Emotion-Focused Therapy and how Les Gree...

In this episode, I speak with Dave about his journey to becoming the first podcaster in the field of psychology and his prolific career publishing over a 1,000 interviews. Dave explained that he had learned about podcasting very early on and it fit with his interest in radio, which, as a teenager, he got involved with amateur radio, had taken the FCC exams, and built his own components. This lead...

In this interview, I speak with Diane about her expertise in sex therapy, and her American Association of Sexual Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) certification. She discusses sex therapy, couples therapy with sex issues, and she discusses the PLISSIT model, which describes various levels of intervention, which include Permission, Limited Information, Specific Suggestions and Intensiv...

In this workshop, Karin discussed her career where she trained in Argentina, then came to Palo Alto to learn at the Mental Research Institute forty years ago. She discussed the place the MRI has in the history of developing family and systemic therapy. She worked with Paul Watzlawick, Dick Fisch, and John Weakland, and eventually became the Director of the Brief Therapy Center, a title she still h...

In this episode, I interview Carolyn and Phil about their decades of research on couples and the changes they experience after the birth of the first child. They discussed how Carolyn had been an elementary school teacher and was pregnant with their second child when they moved to Berkeley where Phil was starting his new job at the University of California, Berkeley. They discussed how their own l...

In this episode, Carol discusses how early in her career she was hired to be the assistant director of training for a child and family guidance clinic, and became very intrigued in the processes of clinical supervision. After a decade, she became Director of Training at another American Psychological Association accredited program and developed the site visit documentation, which led her to collab...

In this episode, Angelique discusses her career as a sleep consultant for parents of newborns. She explained that she started off as a midwife, then a birth doula, and a post partum doula, and spent a great deal of time helping babies sleep through the night, and new families navigate the transition to parenthood. She explained that she saw sleep as a portal into multiple areas such as post partum...

In this episode, Bob discussed how originally substance misuse was not an area that he worked with, but after it kept showing up with his clients he decided he needed and pursued more training. He discussed how he was part of the Family Recovery Project at the Mental Research Institute with Drs. Stephanie Brown and Virginia Lewis, a study aimed at what happens in couple and family systems after be...

In this episode, I speak with Sheila about her lifelong work of working with clients with shame. She explained that she got interested in this subject from her experience as a child and being shy, but overcoming it by becoming a children’s magician and performing. She explained how she trained in a number of approaches such as Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, Drama Therapy, Dialectical Behavio...

In this episode, I speak with Rebecca, who discusses her career working with children, which led her to focusing on treatment and research of children on the autism spectrum. She discussed being influenced by her training in Philadelphia, which had a strong family systems component, and how working with the parents and children is a foundation for her Regulating Together work. She explains that th...

In this episode, I speak with Susan about how she came to develop Cognitive Behavioral Play Therapy (CBPT). She explained that she was originally trained in psychodynamic play therapy and found it helpful. Talking with and reflecting on a child’s experience was important, but she wanted to find ways to help children gain more adaptive skills to deal with their emotions and difficulties. At the tim...

In this episode, Deb discussed how she was inspired after hearing Stephen Porges, Ph. D. speak about his polyvagal theory, and found ways to use this theory in helping clients to heal. She explained that there are three states of the autonomic nervous system, which are the ventral (feeling regulated, safe, connected), sympathetic (fight or flight, activated), and dorsal (collapse, shut down, disco...

In this episode, Scott discusses his beginnings as a family therapist and his struggles with helping families, which lead him to working with Charles Fishman, MD, an expert in Structural Family Therapy, and later Jay Haley. He discussed reviewing videotapes of their work and began to see the patterns in family therapy and got interested in process analysis research. He noticed that there were "key...

In this episode, Leanne talks about her experience working with Sue Johnson on the Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) efficacy research, and her involvement with EFT and Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT). We discuss the EFT and EFIT approaches, and Leanne explains how in both EFT and EFIT, the therapist uses the attachment frame and EFT Tango (macro set of interventions) to hel...

In this episode, I speak with Michelle about her Social Thinking work, and we discussed her career working in an autism spectrum clinic, working with adults with brain injury, working in a high school, and later starting her own clinic. She talked about her enjoyment in working with those on the autism spectrum who have an established expressive and receptive language, as well as others with socia...

In this episode, Janina discusses her career in learning, treating, and teaching about PTSD and Complex PTSD. She discusses being inspired when hearing Judith Herman talk about how that the events in one’s life shape our experiences, as opposed to just being driven by childhood sexual fantasies as was the main viewpoint based on Freud’s work. She explained how the prevailing thought in treating tr...

In this episode, I speak with Karen about her past as a Child Protective Services caseworker and how she was confused by the therapists who did play therapy, not understanding it fully until she herself got her LCSW and began training in play therapy in Philadelphia. She discussed her experience working with the developers of Filial Therapy, which uses child centered play therapy developed by Virg...

In this episode, I speak with Louise about her journey from switching careers as a retail buyer, to going to university and getting a degree in psychology, and working as a behavioral therapist. She discussed being introduced to Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) and really liking the model, and applying it in her work with adolescents. She explained that the developmental differences between ado...

In this episode, Tony discusses being inspired as an early career clinician to track his outcomes with clients, and upon doing so, saw that 50% of his clients were not progressing. He was concerned about this, and reviewed the research, he found that is within the average range of progress that clinicians were having. He explained that psychotherapy is one of the only fields where students and int...

In this episode, I speak with Shafia about her path to becoming a health and sex educator. She discussed how she had worked in case management and social work with kids who were experiencing dual and triple diagnosis, and a common theme was having a history of being harmed. She decided she wanted to try to help increase the prevention of such harm, and was fortunate enough to work at a great schoo...

In this episode, Terry discusses his experience initially being trained psychodynamically and psychoanalytically, but finding that it did not seem to be a good fit for the population whom he was working with, which were families in Chinatown in San Francisco, many of which were immigrants. He discussed how a training at the Mental Research Institute (MRI) had a profound impact on him when he heard...

In this episode, Mary Jo discussed her background in community psychology, which lead her to start her career working with child abuse, leading to a lifelong career working with interpersonal violence, family therapy, and community interventions. Mary Jo discusses her Collaborative Change Model (CCM), which is a meta-model, being concept driven , as opposed to intervention based. The two main conc...

In this interview, Dick discusses how his work with families lead to him learning from clients about their parts. He discusses how his clients talked about their parts, and at first he and his client tried to argue against that part and try to get rid of it or for it to not be doing what it was doing. When this wasn’t working, he and his clients began to have compassion for those parts, and learn...