Hamed Aliaghaii
Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP)
Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
Why ISTDP?
ISTDP is an emotion-focused, experiential form of psychodynamic psychotherapy that aims to help individuals access and experience deeply-rooted feelings beneath anxiety, defenses, and somatic tension. By working directly with unconscious patterns in real time, ISTDP helps reduce symptoms, undo entrenched relational habits, and expand a person’s capacity to feel, think, and connect more freely.
What makes ISTDP unique?
- Works directly with unconscious processes in real time
- Targets defenses and anxiety pathways with precision
- Integrates emotional experience with somatic tension release
- Helps undo long-standing relational patterns
- Focused, experiential, and highly individualized
At its core, ISTDP is about helping people feel more deeply, relate more openly, and live with greater emotional freedom.
Clinical Focus Areas
Anxiety & Somatic Tension Patterns
Work focused on identifying anxiety pathways, reducing somatic tension, and unlocking the emotional experiences hidden beneath habitual defensive patterns.
Emotional Experience & Affect Integration
Helping clients access, feel, and integrate complex emotions in a regulated and grounded way, expanding emotional capacity and flexibility.
Relationship & Interpersonal Patterns
Exploring unconscious relational templates, attachment-driven defenses, and patterns that limit connection, intimacy, and secure functioning.
These areas often overlap, and therapy works by bringing unconscious emotional and relational patterns into clear, felt experience.
Services
Psychotherapy (ISTDP)
Individual experiential dynamic psychotherapy for adults suffering from emotional, psychosomatic, interpersonal issues, including anxiety, mood (depression), and personality problems.
ISTDP Training and Supervision
Pre-core training courses: ISTDP Theory and Technic, Advanced ISTDP training: Role-play, skill-building workshops, Core-training and Supervision groups and Advanced group/individual Supervision: Audio-visual case-based training for Clinicians
About me
I am an experiential–dynamic psychotherapist with a primary focus on Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP). My clinical work centers on helping individuals access and experience complex emotions, unravel entrenched defensive patterns—especially those expressed somatically—and develop a more integrated relationship with their internal world.
In therapy, I value the authenticity of emotion, the therapeutic relationship, and the moment-to-moment processes that shape how people relate, protect, and adapt. My approach draws on both classical and contemporary dynamic traditions, with an emphasis on working directly with bodily tension, anxiety pathways, and the unconscious signaling that appears in the session.
Alongside clinical practice, I am actively involved in advanced ISTDP training, supervision, and research. I am particularly interested in making deep psychodynamic work accessible, grounded, and relevant to the emotional realities of modern life. My aim is to help clients feel, tolerate, and integrate emotions in a way that expands freedom, capacity, and connection.
Professional Background
Education
- PhD in Clinical Psychology, Roudehen Azad University (2021–2025)
- MA in Psychology, University of Tehran (2003–2005)
- BA in Philosophy, Shahid Beheshti University (1999–2003)
Post-degree Clinical Training in ISTDP
- Advanced post-degree training in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP)
- IEDTA Certified Core Training (2014–2016), supervision with Nima Ghorbani, Tehran
- Participation in IEDTA Conferences (2016 Amsterdam, others)
- Advanced Core-Training with Josette ten-Have de Labije (2021–2023), Berlin/Zoom
- Teacher/Supervisor-in-Training assisting Josette ten-Have de Labije (2022–2025), Berlin/Zoom
- Halifax ISTDP Immersion (2022): ISTDP for Personality Disorders, Allan Abbass & Joel Town
- Multiple ISTDP masterclasses and monthly supervision workshops (2023–2025)
Selected Workshops & Specialist Courses
- Short-term Therapy for Long-term Change — Jon Frederickson, Dubai (2014)
- Treatment of Fragile and Highly Resistant Patients — Jon Frederickson, Dubai (2015)
- Bringing Structural Change in the Fragile Patient — Allan Abbass (2022)
- ISTDP Masterclass — Josette ten-Have de Labije (2023, Portugal)
- Monthly online ISTDP workshops with John Rathauser (2023)
- ISTDP Masterclass — John Rathauser (20-hour course, 2023)
- ISTDP for Functional Neurological Disorders — Allan Abbass (2024)
- Seminar Series on The Initial Phase — Steve Shapiro (2025)
- Transference, HoC, and Psychosomatics in ISTDP — Rudolf Bleuler (2025)
- Treating Ego Fragility and Trauma with AB-ISTDP — Robert Neborsky (2025)
- Emphasizing Transference in ISTDP — Judy Clarke (2025)
Certifications
- IEDTA Core Training Graduate (since 2019)
- IEDTA Certified Teacher (since 2023)
Get in Touch
If you’re interested in scheduling a session or learning more about my work, feel free to contact me using the information below.