Psychological Forum
A Forum for ISTDP Practitioners
A professional community for licensed ISTDP and EDT therapists interested in deepening their clinical work through discussion, reflection, and current research.
Inside Psychological Forum
✓ Weekly clinical articles
✓ Monthly live webinars
✓ Clinical discussions with colleagues
✓ New resources on therapeutic communication, emotional processing, supervision, and professional development
✓ Events and workshops added throughout the year
✓ Free membership
→ Register for free
Welcome!
Psychological Forum was created as a place where ISTDP practitioners can continue learning together through discussion, research, and shared clinical reflection.
Whether you wish to participate actively or simply follow the conversations, you are warmly welcome.
INSIDE PSYCHOLOGICAL FORUM
Psychological Forum is an evolving learning community for licensed healthcare professionals working with ISTDP/EDT.
Members have access to:
• a regularly updated clinical blog
• a discussion forum where questions and ideas can be shared
• monthly webinars
• workshops and courses
• resources on current research and clinical practice
New articles are published every week, and new events are added throughout the year.
Welcome to register!
Next intake of new members is September 14.
CURRENT COURSES AND EVENTS
A place for contemporary research, clinical reflection, and the therapist’s professional and personal development.
Upcoming Webinar
Every month we meet online to explore one clinically relevant topic in ISTDP.
Each webinar combines
• a focused presentation
• clinical reflection
• discussion
Participation is free.
More information later ....
Traversing the Emotional Distance
Traversing the Emotional Distance in Therapeutic Communication is a 6-week online course for licensed healthcare professionals working with ISTDP/EDT.
The ability to chose type and timing of pressure in ISTDP/EDT is of central importance. Small shifts in how we listen and formulate ourselves can have a significant impact on how closeness and distance develop in the therapeutic encounter. This course offers a solid framework, in theory and practice, of what constitutes verbal interventions as pressure.
This course provides a structured way to deepen clinical precision through two practical frameworks: the psychology of language and interoception.
The psychology of language highlights how the choice of words and phrasing influences the degree of emotional closeness in the conversation, and how shifts between more abstract and more concrete communication can either open up or limit access to emotional content. We also focus on how better perceiving and interpreting bodily signals – a central foundation for emotional awareness in clinical work.
Course Start: Fall 2026
The course provides a concrete framework for better understanding how conversations can support movement from more distanced reasoning toward a more direct contact with emotional experiences. The aim is increased clarity, precision, and clinical confidence in therapeutic work. The course is fully online and designed to run in parallel with clinical practice.
The course runs over 6 weeks and you will receive:
weekly live online sessions focused on reflection and clinical application
course materials available via a personal digital account
the opportunity to work flexibly between sessions
access to the materials for 6 months
The structure is designed to support continuous deepening experience rather than isolated insights, making it possible to integrate the content directly into clinical practice throughout the 6-month access period.
For a more detailed course description, please see here.
Upcoming Courses
Theme: CARING
The ISTDP Therapist and Sustainability
This course stands out for its focused expertise on the daily realities of ISTPD therapists — an in-depth exploration of how the nature of your work (others’ suffering and change processes, short- and long-term therapeutic relationships, ethical dilemmas) shapes meaning, motivation, and professional sustainability.
This course takes a deep dive into the ISTDP therapist’s professional role and work conditions.
The Core of the Heart of Therapeutic Work
This courses takes broadened perspective as being an individual (also therapist) in organizational & societal systems and focuses of the many facets of caring. Based on research on relations, work processes, societal challenges and progress, we will learn about how caring and the act of caring is describe and researched in therapy, private relations, worklife, society and better understand the underlying motivations and the challenges to remain at equilibrium.
Theme: EMOTIONS
Beyond Core Affect: A Contemporary Perspective for ISTDP Therapists
This course offers an updated and broadened perspective on emotions, grounded in contemporary psychological research and relevant for Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy clinical practice.
While ISTDP has a strong focus on core affect, this course explores a wider range of emotional processes—including belonging, trust, and well-being—and their role in therapeutic change.
The course examines how emotions are shaped within relational, bodily, and contextual systems, and how these perspectives can deepen clinical understanding and intervention.
Participants will gain a more differentiated framework for working with emotional experience in therapy, supporting greater precision, flexibility, and depth in clinical work.
The Concept of Care
The many faces of care
Care is one of the recurring themes in Psychological Forum. It is fundamental to therapeutic work, yet often taken for granted rather than explored in its own right.
Care concerns our patients, but also ourselves as therapists—how we remain responsive to another person's suffering while attending to our own emotional and professional resources.
The theme also reaches beyond psychotherapy, raising questions about relationships, trust, responsibility, vulnerability, and the values that shape how we relate to one another.
Through clinical reflections, research, psychology, philosophy, and ethics, The Concept of Care explores care as both a professional practice and a human experience.
THE NEWSLETTER
You will be receiving 1–2 newsletters each month with new articles, webinar invitations, current research and upcoming events.
Forum Organizer
About Maria Sandgren
Licensed psychologist and PhD in psychology
Certified ISTDP therapist
Private practice since 1997
Former assistant professor and senior lecturer
Core and advanced ISTDP training with Allan Abbass, Jon Frederickson, and Joel Town
My work combines psychotherapy, teaching, and research, with a particular interest in communication, emotion, attention, and professional development.
Psychological Forum grew from a wish to create a place where experienced therapists can continue learning together.
Links
Homepage (therapy): Psychological Forum
Blog (not active): Psychology & ISTDP
Google Scholar: Scientific articles
(C) Maria Sandgren Psychological Forum Sweden 2026