Reaching the Core Self: Understanding EDT Fundamentals through Analysis of Two Phases of Treatment
Presenter: Steven Shapiro, PhD
Date: Saturday, September 20th, 2025
Time: 9:00am – 5:00pm
Location: Virtual Online
6 CEs/CMEs pending
Can you relate to the common misconception of Experiential Dynamic Therapy as being harsh, confrontive and unrelenting? Do you tend to think of "experiential” as equivalent to “emotional?” Are you tempted to over emphasize feeling as if the goal is simply catharsis? It is natural to rely on overly simplified guidelines to help understand a process as unpredictable and complex as intensive psychotherapy. With good intentions, in the spirit of efficiency, have you had your share of (unnecessary) ruptures? I certainly have!
Analyzing a case initially involving Severe & Persistent Mental Illness (SPMI) that progresses through various stages will give us the opportunity to emphasize “Phase-Specific treatment.” Primarily using video demonstration, we will examine ways to understand the intrapsychic and interpersonal action in the room (conceptual knowledge) to inform interventions (procedural knowledge) in a way that is not only attuned, but “contingent” in each moment. Alliance building is not just about avoiding ruptures; it is also about leveraging these challenging interpersonal moments into growth and capacity building experiences.
Click Here for Full Conference Program and Agenda
Click Here for Conference Learning Objectives and References
Speaker Bio:
Steven Shapiro, PhD is a clinical psychologist who maintains full-time private practice in suburban Philadelphia and has over twenty-five years of clinical and teaching experience. He has been practicing various forms of Experiential Dynamic Therapy (EDT), since the mid-1990’s, including Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP), and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP). He is a founding member and currently an adjunct faculty member of the AEDP Institute in New York City. Dr. Shapiro conducts training of psychotherapists internationally. His instruction is often commended for translating complex clinical theory into clear, precise, and practical techniques which are easily understandable and readily applied immediately and deliberately in clinical settings by therapists of all orientations. For 16 years, Dr. Shapiro was the Director of Psychology and Education at Montgomery County Emergency Service (MCES), an emergency psychiatric hospital, where he worked with a range of severe disorders and those committed involuntarily to treatment. This intensive experience has helped inform his approach to transforming resistance with challenging patients who have a history of trauma, a high degree of resistance, or excessive anxiety and dysregulation.
Accreditation Statement and AMEDCO Continuing Education Certification pending
Brunch Meeting
The Other Significant Others:
Rethinking Friendship’s Potential
When the child finally finds a chum—somewhere between eight-and-a-half and ten—you will discover something very different in the relationship namely, the child begins to develop a real sensitivity to what matters to another person:
Harry Stack Sullivan on the importance of friendship in human development.
Presenter: Rhaina Cohen
Date: Sunday, October 5th, 2025
Time: 11:00am – 1:00pm
Location: Maggiano's Little Italy, 5333 Wisconsin Ave NW, Washington, DC
No CEUs for this event
Program Description:
In this meeting, join NWSP colleagues at Maggiano's for brunch and a talk by author and NPR reporter, Rhiana Cohen elaborate on the importance of friendships and share insights from her recent book “The Other Significant Others: Rethinking Friendship’s Potential”. Based on years of reporting, Cohen tells the stories of people who have chosen friends as life partners — taking on roles typically reserved for romantic relationships, including co-homeownership, caregiving, and co-parenting. This talk will explore how these platonic partnerships can help us better understand the nature of intimacy, commitment, and family. By examining this alternative relationship model, we can gain fresh perspectives on what constitutes meaningful partnership.
Cost: NWSP Members: $40; Non-members: $50, Students: $25
Rhaina Cohen is an award-winning journalist who tells deeply reported, intimate stories. She’s the author of the national bestseller The Other Significant Others and a producer and editor for NPR’s documentary podcast Embedded. Rhaina also contributed to a forthcoming anthology about shared living, A Home For Tomorrow (Beacon 2026). Her writing, which often focuses on social connection, has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere.
Seating is limited: Register before September 27, 2025.
The National Group Psychotherapy Institute (NGPI) of the New Washington School of Psychiatry (NWSP)
has now opened registration for individuals interested in single-weekend participation for its award-winning, 2-year Intensive Training Program, Group Therapy in the 21st Century: Dynamics, Identities, Hope and Healing
Rupture and Repair: In Therapy Groups, Organizations and Society
Co-Chair: Kavita Avula, PsyD, CGP & Haim Weinberg, PhD, CGP
Date: October 24-25, 2025
Time: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM on Friday, October 24th and 8:30 AM - 5:15 PM on Saturday, October 25th, 2025
Location: Friends Meeting House of Washington, 2111 Decatur Pl NW, Washington, DC 20008, In-Person Only
11.50 CEs
Group therapists and our communities worldwide are grappling with overwhelm and societal fractures. In recent times, the tensions have become even worse, with conflicts moving towards impasse and regression to binaries of right versus wrong. Seemingly intractable conflicts have found their way into our therapy and training groups, professional list serves and organizations.
Through social dreaming, small and large group, this weekend will examine what makes difference malignant and how to foster benevolent co-existence. Presenters with different intersectional identities will discuss ruptures from a theoretical and clinical perspective and examine how to work through them starting with each other. Dr. Kavita Avula and Dr. Haim Weinberg will discuss ruptures in therapy groups, training groups, co-leadership, and organizations.
Learning Objectives
1. List two types of ruptures in group therapy.
2. Evaluate how social dreaming impacts large group process.
3. Compare the impact of facilitators with different intersectional identities on a group.
4. List 3 skills that facilitate repair in therapists and clients.
5. Describe strategies coleaders can employ to stay connected while holding different perspectives.
6. Identify barriers to repair.
7. Describe how letting go of pushing an agenda changes a conversation.
8. Describe how social dreaming evokes the social unconscious and analyze its impact on communal dignity.
9. List five current challenges that emerge in psychotherapy groups that represent polarization.
Click Here for the Full Program and Learning Objectives
Click Here to Register
Note: Participation is limited to 40 people
Click Here for Conference References
For information about NWSP membership, go to the NWSP website — newwsp.org.
For information about potential scholarship opportunities for these workshops, contact Stacey Saltzman at stacey_saltzman@yahoo.com.
