AEDP Certification: Requirements And Process

Clinical Video SelectionClinical Paper GuidelinesSubmissionReview Policy

Selection of Clinical Videos

The final step in the certification process focuses on your showing the integration of AEDP theory with your clinical practice. We ask that you submit video of clinical sessions from two different patients. Each videotape (DVD) should be 30 to 40 minutes in length. One video should be of a new patient. It should be from an early session with that patient, constituting the initial evaluation utilizing AEDP techniques.  The second tape should be from either the middle or the termination phase of the treatment process with a different patient.  Clinical skills using the AEDP interventions should be in evidence.

Videos Should Demonstrate Your Understanding of
and Proficiency in Applying the Following Four Principles of AEDP

1. Attachment: Establish Safety and Undo Aloneness

An AEDP therapist seeks to co-create a safe and secure base from which a patient’s painful and previously overwhelming relational experiences can be explored and cognitively and emotionally integrated into a coherent narrative. Guided by interventions that are affirming, explicitly empathic, affect regulating, and emotionally engaged, your videotapes should demonstrate the ability to facilitate and co-construct a secure patient therapist relationship from early on.

2. Experience: Facilitate and Process Emotional Experience
AEDP is fundamentally an experiential model of psychotherapy that fosters the provision and facilitation of new healing experiences involving state transformations of both mind and body. At the core of AEDP is a theoretical model of “The Four States and Three State Transformations” outlining a process of therapeutic movement from Defense to Core Affect to Core State. These sessions should illustrate your theoretical understanding of these phenomena and clinical proficiency in facilitating the process of state transformation through stage-appropriate strategies of intervention. Interventions include:

  • Moment-to-moment tracking of bodily-rooted emotional experience   and interpersonal relatedness
  • Dyadic regulation of affective states
  • Somatic focusing
  • Facilitating core affective experiences to completion, until adaptive action tendencies are released.

3. Transformation and Integration: Affirm Transformation and Process Healing.
In both theory and practice, AEDP is a synthetic, integrative model of change for the better. AEDP therapists seek to facilitate positive transformation and to process emotional experiences to completion as indicated by 
1) the release of adaptive action tendencies in the wake of deep emotional experiencing
 and 2) a patient’s integration of these actions with coherent cognitions about her/his autobiographical narrative and current state. 
Effective AEDP treatment fosters a patient’s emergent and deep understanding of his/her own dynamics, tendencies and processes of healing. Moreover, the process of transformation of the self in the context of a healing relationship is, in itself, a positive affective change process. Therefore, we are looking for you to demonstrate clinical competency in working through the meta-therapeutic processes of transformation to deepen and solidify your patient’s self-reflective capacities, positive self-regard, and relational competence. Interventions include.

  • Meta-therapeutic processing of the experience of transformation of the Self
  • Meta-therapeutic processing of the experience of receiving help (feeling seen, understood, and helped by another)
  • Meta-therapeutic processing of the experience of transformation as an experiential phenomenon
  • Facilitating, affirming and processing the experience of healing affects and demonstrating emotional competency as the recipient of deep love and gratitude.

Though the obvious goal of the model is the positive outcome of our patients, for certification purposes the emphasis in the video should be on the therapist demonstrating AEDP principles.

It is not sufficient to demonstrate the patient’s  transition between the four-state and three-state transformations. We specifically want to see the interventions of the therapist including how the therapist is guiding the process.

Guidelines for Clinical Integrative Paper

In recognition of the fundamental value of coherency, integration and meta-processing, we ask that an integrative clinical paper accompany your videotapes. The goals of this paper are:

  • To provide theoretical support for the specific intervention strategies demonstrated in your clinical work
  • To provide a successful and satisfying learning experience for you that affirms and enhances your own self-reflective function.

Please Organize Your Paper Into the Following Sections

  • Case discussions outlining the salient psychosocial history and treatment  process for each of the two patients you submit on videotape. (Approximately 3-5 pages for each case)
  • A theoretical discussion of AEDP principles, utilizing specific clinical examples from your two videotapes to illustrate your understanding of the application of these principles to clinical practice. (Approximately 10-15 pages)

Specifically, You Should Demonstrate Theoretical and Clinical Integration in the Following Areas

  • Attachment theory and dyadic coordination of affective states
  • Affective change processes and affective neuroscience
  • Triangle of emotion, triangle of experience, and triangle of relational comparisons
  • Four states and three state transformations of AEDP
  • True self/True Other phenomena
  • Meta-therapeutic processes

Faculty supervisors will be available to you for ongoing guidance and support in the development and preparation of this paper. A transcript of the sessions can be incorporated into the paper in discussing the work and explaining your interventions. However, the transcript is not to replace a more detailed formulation of the work demonstrating an integration of theory into clinical practice.

Submit TWO Copies of Videos and Integrative Clinical Paper for Review

Candidates seeking certification must submit to their supervisor TWO copies of the following materials:

  • Videotape of an initial evaluation with a new patient
  • Videotape of a session in the middle or the termination phase of treatment
  • Integrative Clinical Paper

Once your supervisor has received your certification materials, she or he will forward these materials to the Certification Committee.

Review Process Policy

Upon receipt of your certification application, the Certification Committee will distribute the materials to two faculty members for review. Faculty members will complete the review process and candidates will then receive written feedback and notification of acceptance for certification. 
We at the AEDP Institute have a vested interest in the success of our students. It is our express intention that all candidates who are deemed ready to apply for the certification process will demonstrate sufficient proficiency in AEDP to warrant certification. However, in the event that an applicant’s clinical work does not yet meet the standards necessary for certification, we will provide specific reasons for the denial of certification and we will commit to helping you to develop an action plan for successful re-application and completion of the process.