ISTDP International Trainings
Advanced professional development in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) with training available across Europe.
What is Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy
Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is an evidence-based, emotion-focused psychotherapy that helps uncover and resolve the unconscious emotional conflicts driving psychological and somatic symptoms. It is a strongly attachment-based therapy that enables early trauma to be understood and re-worked, at a deep level, to enable the individual to live authentically and free of early trauma.
Developed by Dr Habib Davanloo, with important contributions from Dr David Malan, ISTDP brings together deep psychoanalytic insight and an experiential focus. The process enables patients to identify and experience unconscious buried feelings, that became fused with anxiety in early attachment relationships, and that today that drive emotional suffering and result in impaired functioning and relationships. ISTDP is effective in treating a wide range of psychopathology including generalised anxiety, phobias, panic attacks, depression, chronic pain, functional neurological disorder and other somatic conditions, PTSD and other trauma reactions, personality disorders, and relationship difficulties.
ISTDP aims to achieve not only symptom relief, but character change, resulting in significant transformation across all areas of functioning and life.
Why Train in ISTDP
Training in ISTDP helps therapists understand the unconscious mechanisms that generate emotional distress and physical symptoms. It builds moment-to-moment awareness of anxiety and defences, allowing you to intervene precisely and compassionately. There is a strong focus on building a conscious and unconscious therapeutic alliance, and the importance of the individual’s desire and will to change. Therapy is seen as a compassionate and collaborative approach, focusing on identify the specifics of the individual’s suffering, and the conflicts and early attachment trauma responsible for present suffering.
Therapists describe ISTDP training as both professionally and personally transformative. The method fosters deeper therapeutic presence, emotional clarity, and clinical confidence — while also strengthening the capacity to tolerate and guide intense emotional work.
ISTDP is supported by a growing body of research across functional somatic, mood, and anxiety disorders. Learning this model equips clinicians to help even treatment-resistant patients reach sustainable, life-changing outcomes
How to Become an ISTDP Therapist
Becoming an effective ISTDP therapist requires dedicated training and practise. ISTDP is a powerful and precise method for achieving profound, lasting therapeutic change — but it also demands a high level of skill, knowledge, and self-reflective capacity from the therapist.
From the very beginning of training, many therapists report transformative shifts in both their clinical work and their understanding of emotional processes. Yet, to work at the depth where true and stable change occurs — including the reworking and resolution of attachment trauma — one must develop a solid theoretical foundation and finely tuned clinical skill.
The three-year Core Training in ISTDP is widely regarded as the most effective route to becoming a competent ISTDP therapist. The International Experiential Dynamic Therapy Association (IEDTA) recognises and certifies selected Core Trainings that meet its standards for content, supervision, and teaching quality. These small-group trainings meet regularly over three years and offer a comprehensive, experiential education in the practise of ISTDP.
Why Train with Julie Cochrane and Johannes Ermagan
Both Julie and Johannes are passionate about ISTDP and have spent many years learning not only to use ISTDP to bring about deep change in patients, but to teach and supervise in this model.
To date, Julie has taught 20 three-year Core Trainings in ISTDP, and many one-, two- and three-day workshops in ISTDP. She is described as having “the ability to integrate (knowledge) with authentic empathic attunement and compassionate understanding”, having an
“unflinching commitment to each student’s success” and a deeply supportive presence.
Johannes has also taught not only Core Trainings in ISTDP, but introduced ISTDP to adult psychiatry, and is a highly regarded speaker for one-day ISTDP trainings. He is known for his warm and compassionate approach to teaching this complex model of psychotherapy.
Julie and Johannes have collaborated in practising and teaching ISTDP for over eight years and are described as having teaching styles that are strongly supportive and complementary. They work together to do their best to help each student have a successful learning experience.
Meet the Trainers
Julie Cochrane
Julie Cochrane is a Senior Clinical Psychologist and Director of ISTDP Australia, Australia’s largest organisation offering teaching and supervision in ISTDP. She has been practising ISTDP for over 28 years and introduced ISTDP to Australia in 1999 with Australia’s first training in ISTDP with Dr Patricia Coughlin. She is also the Director of Dynamic Psychotherapy; a Melbourne-based private psychology clinic with a focus on ISTDP and 30 therapists either fully trained, or in ISTDP training.
Julie Cochrane first discovered and began training in David Malan’s short-term dynamic psychotherapy before discovering ISTDP through Habib Davanloo’s book Unlocking the Unconscious. She noticed that even in the early stages of learning ISTDP, she experienced a significant change in the style and efficacy of her therapeutic work. In 1998, Julie began supervision with Dr Patricia Coughlin, the U.S.-based author of Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy, Lives Transformed and Maximising Effectiveness in Dynamic Psychotherapy. Julie has since undertaken extensive further training in ISTDP, including further training with Dr Coughlin (including a three-year Core Training in ISTDP in Stockholm, Sweden), and with Dr Habib Davanloo, Jon Frederickson, and Josette ten Have-de Labije. She has completed Advanced Training in ISTDP, a three-year training program with Jon Frederickson. She has also completed a 3.5 year Training of Teachers training program with Jon Frederickson; a course designed to enable experienced ISTDP Therapists to effectively teach and supervise mental health professionals wishing to become highly effective in practising ISTDP.
Johannes Ermagan
Johannes Ermagan is a licensed psychologist and psychotherapist with over a decade of experience in adult psychiatry. His specialisation is Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). He completed Jon Frederickson’s teacher-training program and received eight years of advanced supervision under his guidance. Frederickson’s leadership of the ISTDP training programme at the Washington School of Psychiatry and his previous roles as chair of the Supervision and Advanced Psychotherapy Training Programs have strongly influenced his approach to teaching and supervision.
His clinical practice focuses on applying ISTDP with adults, maintaining a collaborative and respectful therapeutic alliance. Alongside his clinical work, he provides supervision and training for psychotherapists and psychologists seeking to deepen their skills in ISTDP. Over the past decade, he has offered introductory and advanced courses in Sweden and internationally. His pedagogy emphasizes experiential learning—integrating theoretical teaching with video-based supervision and deliberate practice—to help trainees cultivate attunement, technical proficiency, and personal authenticity.
Jon Frederickson
Jon Frederickson, MSW, is on the faculty of the Intensive Short-Term
Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) Training Program at the New Washington School
of Psychiatry. Jon has provided ISTDP training in Sweden, Norway, Denmark,
Poland, Italy, Switzerland, India, Iran, Australia, Canada, the U.S., and
the Netherlands. He is the author of over fifty published papers or book
chapters and seven books, including *Co-Creating Change: Effective Dynamic
Therapy Techniques*, *Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Learning to Listen from
Multiple Perspectives, The Lies We Tell Ourselves, Co-Creating Safety:
healing the fragile patient*, *Healing Through Relating: a skill-building
book for therapist, *and* Clinical Thinking in Psychotherapy: how to do it
and how to teach it.* His book, *Co-Creating Change*, won the first prize
in psychiatry in 2014 at the British Medical Association Book Awards. His
books have been translated into eighteen languages. He has DVDs of actual
sessions with patients who previously failed in therapy at his websites
ISTDP Institute and Deliberate Practice in Psychotherapy.
2026 European Core Training in ISTDP
Our next three-year Core Training in ISTDP commences 19 February 2026. Julie Cochrane and Johannes Ermagan are the main trainers. Jon Frederickson is taking one section of the training.
Training will be held online, with the option for two in-person blocks across the course of the three years, at a European location determined in consultation with participants.
Testimonials
“Training with Julie Cochrane has been a transformative experience. Her insight and compassion helped me grow both professionally and personally. I wholeheartedly recommend ISTDP training with her.”
— Belinda Jane, Clinical Psychologist