Psychodynamic Therapy Skills

In Psychodynamic Therapy Skills, Dr. Hanna Levenson identifies, discusses, and demonstrates specific therapy skills with video examples of each.

This video provides examples of specific skills such as Engaging in a Therapeutic Inquiry, Deepening Emotional Experience, and Making Process Comments so that viewers may model and practice these skills. The session and outtakes included in the program are taken from a previously published, six-session with Dr. Hanna Levenson called Brief Dynamic Therapy Over Time.

This demonstration is bookended by a lively interview with the guest therapist conducted by host, Dr. Myrna Friedlander.

Psychodynamic Therapy uses self-reflection, self-examination, and the use of the relationship between therapist and patient as a window into problematic relationship patterns in the patient’s life. This approach can be complex, daunting to student therapists, and can require ongoing deliberate practice even for more advanced therapists.

The professional career of Hanna Levenson, PhD, reflects a 30-year dialectic between intrapsychic and relational perspectives, insight and experiential learning, and clinical practice and scientific inquiry. Originally trained in personality theory and social psychology at Claremont University in California, she later retrained in clinical psychology at the University of Florida, Coral Gables, then interned at Langley Porter Institute (University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine) in 1976.

She has been specializing in the areas of brief psychotherapy and clinical supervision for over 25 years. She is professor of psychology at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California, and director of the brief psychotherapy program at California Medical Center in San Francisco.

For the past 20 years, she was clinical professor in the department of psychiatry of the University of California School of Medicine and director of the brief psychotherapy program at the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

Dr. Levenson is the author of over 75 papers and two books, the Concise Guide to Brief Dynamic and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (2002), and Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy: A Guide to Clinical Practice (1995; Spanish edition, 1997), selected by the Behavioral Science Book Service as a “book-of-the-month.”

In 2000, she founded the Levenson Institute for Training (LIFT), a center where mental health practitioners can receive in-depth training and certification in integrative, focused therapy. She also maintains a private practice in San Francisco and Oakland, California.

Dr. Levenson is a member of APA, the California Psychological Association, the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration.

APA Videos

Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy
Hanna Levenson, PhD

Brief Dynamic Therapy Over Time
Hanna Levenson, PhD

Relational Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Supervision
Joan E. Sarnat, PhD, ABPP

Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy
Donald K. Freedheim, PhD

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) With a Male Client
Diana Fosha, PhD

The Therapy Relationship
Charles J. Gelso, PhD

APA Books

Deliberate Practice in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy
Hanna Levenson, PhD, Volney Gay, PhD and Jeffrey L. Binder, PhD

Brief Dynamic Therapy, Second Edition
Hanna Levenson, PhD

Group Psychodynamic-Interpersonal Psychotherapy
Giorgio A. Tasca, PhD, Samuel F. Mikail, PhD and Paul L. Hewitt, PhD

Supervision Essentials for Psychodynamic Psychotherapies
Joan E. Sarnat, PhD

Working With Emotion in Psychodynamic, Cognitive Behavior, and Emotion-Focused Psychotherapy
Leslie S. Greenberg, PhD, Norka T. Malberg, PsyD, and Michael A. Tompkins, PhD

Transformation in Psychotherapy: Corrective Experiences Across Cognitive Behavioral, Humanistic, and Psychodynamic Approaches
Louis G. Castonguay, PhD, and Clara E. Hill, PhD