Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy for Functional Somatic Symptoms: A 2-Day Immersion
Date:
August 06 - 07, 2026
Place:
Silver Hill New York, 515 Madison Avenue, 13th Floor, New York, NY, 10022
This two-day immersion training, led by Dr. Joel Town, is designed for clinicians seeking a practical and clinically rigorous review of the Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) model for working with functional somatic symptoms. Through a combination of didactic teaching, extensive review of treatment video, and discussion of live clinical process, participants will learn the core framework and interventions that define the model. Dr. Town will show cases that involve the treatment of functional gastrointestinal symptoms, functional neurological symptoms, and chronic pain. On Day 1, this will include a focus on how to restructure syntonic defensive patterns of emotional avoidance and detachment, and the process of emotional mobilization to unlock the unconscious. On Day 2, Dr. Town will present the graded format of ISTDP for building anxiety tolerance, allowing increasing awareness and capacity to experience previously avoided feelings.
ISTDP is one of the most active, emotionally focused, and experientially powerful psychodynamic treatments in contemporary psychotherapy. Developed through decades of video-recorded clinical research by Dr. Habib Davanloo, ISTDP offers a systematic framework for helping patients overcome resistance, access complex emotional experience, and resolve longstanding psychological suffering.
ISTDP has been studied in over 50 published studies for FSD and shown to be an effective treatment in randomized controlled trials and naturalistic clinical settings. ISTDP, informed by attachment theory, targets unprocessed emotions associated with early life relational trauma, dysregulated unconscious anxiety and maladaptive defences. By promoting the experiencing and expression of complex emotional states related to attachment experiences, the psychophysiological pathways producing somatic symptoms can be restructured. Randomized trials of ISTDP report large effects in the treatment of FSD.
