This book evolved from the First International Meeting of the Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy Association on intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy. It will help readers to make use of the conscious working alliance with the patient to increase the unconscious part of the working alliance.

Over two decades, on two continents, Josette ten Have-de Labije and Robert J. Neborsky have struggled to define and perfect the therapeutic methods of Habib Davanloo. Between the two of them, they run active training groups in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., London, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Scandinavia. In individual practice, in teaching situations and in partnered study, they have worked carefully to translate the theory and application of the revolutionary clinician's approach. This textbook defines the terms: observing ego, attentive ego, punitive superego, transference, transference resistance, unconscious therapeutic alliance, working alliance, unconscious impulse, in very precise and clinically meaningful ways.David Malan advised that Davanloo's technique needs to be modified and softened if it is to be accepted by the majority of therapists Readers will discover that ten Have-de Labije and Neborsky have surpassed Malan's advice and have taken the practice of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy to a new plateau. Mastering Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy translates Davanloo's intuitive genius into precise language and operations that students can learn in a systematic and clear way. Thus, applying their methodology fulfills the promise of short term, effective, and safe psychotherapy for a broad spectrum of highly resistant psychoneurotic and characterolgically disturbed patients.