Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) is an aptly named evidence-based intervention that does exactly as it’s name suggests: it is intense, for both the administering therapist and the client; it is generally short-term; it is dynamic in that it ranges from emotion to emotion and setting to setting, changing constantly depending on the client’s present state; and it is an intervention rooted in psychotherapy with classic psychoanalytical elements (Abbass, 2016). ISTDP shares the same primary goal of psychoanalysis, which, stated as simply as possible, is to access the unconscious mind, but has one key difference – time. Whereas traditional psychoanalysis requires between 250 and 600 hours of therapy, ISTDP can comprehensively treat
