An Interview with Jon Frederickson, MSW on Experiential Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Summary: Jon Frederickson, MSW talks about Experiential Psychodyanmic Psychotherapy, which is based on Freud's original conceptions of repression and transference, but presented in a shortened, and far more active and experiential format than has been characteristic of traditional Psychoanalysis. Frederickson is quite comfortable describing what experiential therapists do using cogntive and neuroscientific concepts. His major criticism of cognitive therapy is that it is too superficial with regard to describing what is actually happening during effective therapy dealing as it does with the cognitions (defenses) that drive avoidance and dysfunctional emotion, but not the underlying and primary emotional states that are avoided in the first place, which need to be felt in order to be unlearned. The experiential dynamic therapist seeks to understand the client's responses as falling into three categories: a feeling (avoided or not), anxiety in response to a feeling, and defensive behaviors undertaken to escape from the anxiety, and further seeks to help the client become more aware of how their particular version of this chain of emotion and avoidance functions.