About AEDP
Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy, or AEDP, is an affective model of change developed by Dr. Diana Fosha, author of the The transforming power of affect:  A model for accelerated change(Basic Books, 2000).   AEDP is rooted in attachment theory, affective neuroscience, body-focused approaches and transformational studies.  As an experiential,  healing centered model, AEDP fosters the emergence of new and healing experiences through the in-depth processing of difficult emotional and relational experiences.  Key to this experiential enterprise is the establishment of the therapeutic relationship as secure base, which we seek to do from the beginning of the relationship.

AEDP is Healing-Oriented
​(Not Psychopathology-Based)
Shaped by a deep desire to be seen, known, and recognized by others, all human beings share a fundamental human need to connect. When we feel safe, we let down defensive barriers and when those barriers are down, our innate ability to grow and expand also helps us heal.

Meaningful change involves the activation of naturally occurring, affective change processes. The aim of AEDP is to release these innate healing tendencies, to follow the positive markers that identify naturally occurring adaptive changes and to harness their potential for healing, all in the context of the therapeutic relationship.

AEDP Builds on Transformation and Positive Core Affects
The visceral experience of core affects in the here-and-now of the patient-therapist relationship is the central agent of change in AEDP. Core affects are wired-in adaptive experiences. When activated, tracked moment-to-moment and worked through to completion, they access inner resources and activate healing resilience. The experience of transformation of self—particularly in the context of a healing relationship—informs the affective change process.

AEDP Therapists Create the Conditions Necessary for Transformance
The AEDP therapist facilitates and co-constructs a patient-therapist relationship characterized by secure attachment. Such a relationship is dyadic, explicitly empathic, affirming, affect-regulating, mutually enjoyable, and emotionally engaged.

What Is Transformance?
Transformance is AEDP’s term for the overarching motivational force that strives for maximum healing, vitality, authenticity and genuine connectedness in every human being.

AEDP Heals Unbearable Aloneness
Dyadic affect regulation is key to undoing unbearable aloneness. The therapeutic relationship provides the secure base from which fear, shame, and distress can be shared, and therefore dyadically regulated and where the explorations of deep, painful emotional experiences can be risked.
A fundamental tenet of AEDP is
that the patient is never alone
with overwhelming emotional experiences.
—Diana Fosha
AEDP therapy provides opportunities for new corrective emotional experiences. This experiential method involves facilitating the patient’s having an experience in which the body must be involved through tracking moment-to-moment fluctuations in the emotional experience of patient, therapist, and dyad.

The Experience of Change for the Better Feels Good
Positive, resonant, attuned, dyadic interactions have been shown to be the constituents of healthy, secure attachments and they correlate with neurochemical environments conducive to optimal brain growth. Positive core affects and interactions are both the constituents and hard-wired markers of healing. AEDP is guided by these moment-to-moment signals and markers and facilitating their occurrence is its aim.

Metaprocessing is Central to AEDP
Focusing on the experience of change is transforming in and of itself. Affirming and exploring these changes releases a cascade of transformations with characteristic somatic affective markers which are invariably positive.

AEDP: An Emergent Model in Ongoing Dialogue
As an integrative framework, AEDP shares various basic assumptions and deep resonances with neighboring disciplines and the bodies of work of many different authors. These are some of the approaches that AEDP dialogues with
- Emotion theory
- Affective neuroscience
- Attachment theory
- Developmental studies of dyadic interaction
- Trauma studies
- Body-focused treatments
- Other experiential therapies
- Other attachment- and emotion-focused therapies
- Existential integrative therapies
- Relational and developmentally informed analytic traditions, especially those with either a trauma and/or a transformation focus
- Short-term dynamic therapies
Transformational studies, broadly defined to include different traditions of wisdom, east and west.

Diana Fosha, Ph.D.
Diana Fosha, Ph.D. is the developer of AEDP  (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy), and founder and current director of the AEDP Institute.  The AEDP Institute is an internationally recognized organization that specializes in training therapists in a healing-oriented transformational approach to the treatment of attachment trauma. A leader in the field of transformational studies in trauma treatment, Diana's work on healing transformational processes focuses on integrating neuroplasticity, recognition science and developmental dyadic research into experiential clinical process work with patients.  In addition to her book, she is senior editor, with Daniel Siegel and Marion Solomon, of  The healing power of emotion: Affective neuroscience, development & clinical practice (Norton, 2009). 2 DVDs of her live AEDP clinical work has been issued by the American Psychological Association (APA). With an interest in the phenomenology of experience, Diana is on the cutting edge of transformational theory and practice.  Her books, DVDs and many of her papers are available through the AEDP website:
https://www.aedpinstitute.org/publications/