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
6.25 CEs/CMEs
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.
Click Here for the Accreditation Statement and AMEDCO Continuing Education Certification.
CANCELLATIONS AND REFUNDS for CONFERENCES and EVENTS
A refund of your registration fee, less a $50 administrative fee to cover the cost of credit card charges and refunds plus administrative time, will be allowed if requested in writing (admin@newwsp.org) more than 14 days prior to a scheduled event. Between 7 and 14 days prior to an event, a cancellation request in writing will result in a refund of 50% of the registration fee less a $50 administrative fee (A $200 registration will be refunded as $100 less $50 or $50). We regret that cancellation requests made 7 days or less prior to an event will not be accepted.
Registration closes Sep 19, 2025 at noon ET.
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 at noon ET.
The Critical Role of Place in the Aging Process
Date: Sunday, October 19, 2025
Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Location: Online via Zoom
Co-Chairs: Jane Brewster, MSW & Annemarie Russell, EdD, MPH, MSW
5.25 CEs/CMEs
The place where we age plays a critical role in shaping the experience of aging for older adults. Often overlooked as an issue, this conference will ask many pertinent questions about the impact of place on the aging process: Where are older adults living as they move along their life course? How are they making decisions about aging in the ‘right place’? What is the impact of place on health, mental health and overall wellbeing for older adults? What are the essential supports that ensure their social, emotional, and physical needs are met? What are the pros and cons of the living situation options that are available to older adults in our nation today? How can we help people make timely, safe, and informed decisions about where they will live and age? And how can we support individuals and families as they navigate through the changes and challenges that this process inevitably creates? Our conference will explore these and other often undervalued issues of the impact of place on aging. We will review the landscape of living situation options, address specific clinical dilemmas and client case examples with our faculty panel, and engage in personal reflections in small and large group discussions.
Schedule:
10:00 - 10:15 – Welcome: Summary of conference protocols and interview with keynote speaker (Rob Bamberger, MSW and Annemarie Russell, EdD, MPH, MSW)
10:15 - 11:20 – Keynote – Where Are Older Adults Choosing to Live? The Concept of Place (Russell)
11:20 - 11:30 – Break
11:30 - 12:00 – Clinical Dilemmas in Decisions about Place (Jane Brewster, MSW)
12:00 - 12:45 – Faculty presentations and discussion of cases addressing clinical dilemmas (Judy Peres, MSW and George Saiger, MD, facilitated by Brewster)
12:45 - 1:20 – Large group discussion of issues and concepts raised during the morning (Brewster)
1:20 – 2:00 – Lunch
2:00 – 2 :20 - Images of Aging and the Aged in American Popular Culture: “If I Had a Million” (1932) and “Make Way for Tomorrow” (1937) (Bamberger)
2:20 – 3:15 – Small group I - Envisioning Space and Place (Bamberger)
3:15 – 3:30 – Large group discussion of small group experience
3:30 – 3:45 – Break
3:45 – 4:00 – Large group - Choosing Place - Brewster
4:00 – 4:40 - Small group II – Choosing Place
4:40 – 5:00 – Large group discussion of small group experience/Closing Plenary
Learning Objectives:
Click here for Accreditation Statement and AMEDCO Continuing Education Certification.
Click here for Cancellation and Refund Policy.
Registration closes October 17, 2025 at noon ET.
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.
Registration closes October 22, 2025 at noon ET.
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.
Click here for the Collective Trauma Payment Plan, Cancellation & Refund Policy.
Registration closes November 14, 2025 at noon ET.
