Benjamin Lipton, MSW, LCSW, ACWS

Benjamin Lipton, LCSW, is a founding faculty member of the AEDP Institute. He is based in New York City and travels nationally and internationally to teach and present AEDP to a broad range of professional audiences. Mr. Lipton pioneered the first AEDP Advanced Core Training programs (Bay Area and Seattle) and currently co-leads the AEDP Retreat Style Essential Skills course. His open and engaging teaching style and skill in translating complex ideas into clear and accessible learning points receives consistent praise from his audiences. Mr. Lipton is the editor of From Crisis to Crossroads: Gay Men Living with Chronic Illnesses and Disabilities (Haworth Press) and has published many clinical articles and book chapters in psychology and social service journals over the past two decades. His most recent article, co-authored with Diana Fosha, is on working with attachment in AEDP; Attachment as a Transformative Process in AEDP: Operationalizing the Intersection of Attachment Theory and Affective Neuroscience. Mr. Lipton has held adjunct faculty appointments at Columbia Presbyterian Department of Psychiatry and New York University School of Social Work and he serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services. Previously, he was the Director of Clinical Services at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the world’s first and largest HIV/AIDS service organization. In addition to his expertise in AEDP, Mr. Lipton has training in EMDR, Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, Solution-Focused therapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Mr. Lipton is committed to the foundational principle of human development that change for the better, at every level of civilization, flourishes when people feel safe enough to be curious and take necessary risks. He is passionately dedicated to bringing this alive in both his practice and teaching.

Ronald J. Frederick, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist, co-founder of the Center for Courageous Living in Los Angeles, California and author of the award winning book Living Like You Mean It (Jossey-Bass, 2009) and the forthcoming book Loving Like You Mean It (Central Recovery Press, 2019). Since 1994, Dr. Frederick has been training in, practicing, and teaching AEDP, and has received extensive training and supervision from Dr. Fosha. Past experience includes fourteen years as a Clinical Supervisor at Abbott Northwestern Hospital’s Park House Day Treatment Program, a post-doctoral fellowship in Medical Psychology and HIV in the AIDS Center Program at Roosevelt Hospital, NYC, where he later worked as a staff psychologist, and a year-long training rotation in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy at Beth Israel Medical Center, NYC. Dr. Frederick supervises trainees in AEDP, and has co-facilitated, with Dr. Fosha, AEDP Immersion Courses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Big Sur, and San Diego. Noted for his warmth, humor, and engaging presentation style, Dr. Frederick is a popular speaker and trainer for both general and professional audiences worldwide. He regularly leads workshops at the Esalen Institute, the Kripalu Center, and the Cape Cod Institute, has provided professional trainings for the Lifespan Learning Institute, Professional Psych Seminars (PPS), and Premier Education Solutions (PESI), and frequently speaks to national, state, and local organizations. Dr. Frederick now teaches and has a private practice in Los Angeles, California.

Diana Fosha, PhD

Diana Fosha, PhD, is the developer of AEDP™ psychotherapy, a healing-based, transformation-oriented treatment model. And she is Founder and Director of the AEDP Institute. For the last 20 years, Diana has been active in promoting a scientific basis for a healing-oriented, attachment-emotion-transformation focused trauma treatment model. Fosha’s work focuses on integrating positive neuroplasticity, recognition science and developmental dyadic research into experiential and transformational clinical work with patients. Her most recent work focuses on promoting flourishing as a seamless part of the AEDP therapeutic process of transforming emotional suffering. Drawing on affective neuroscience, attachment theory, mother-infant developmental research, and research documenting the undreamed-of plasticity in the adult brain, AEDP is an experiential clinical practice which reflects the integration of science, research and practice in psychotherapy.

Based in New York City, where she lives and practices, Fosha has been on the faculties of the Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology of NYU and St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Medical Centers (now Mount Sinai) in NYC, and of the doctoral programs in clinical psychology at the Derner Institute for Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University and at The City University of New York.

She is the author of The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change (Basic Books, 2000); co-author, with Natasha Prenn, of Supervision Essentials for Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (APA, 2016); 1st editor, with Dan Siegel and Marion Solomon, of  The Healing Power of Emotion: Affective Neuroscience, Development & Clinical Practice (Norton, 2009), and editor of the newest book on AEDP, Undoing Aloneness and the Transformation of Suffering into Flourishing: AEDP 2.0 (APA, 2021). Diana is the author of numerous articles on AEDP’s attachment-emotion-transformation focused experiential treatment model. She has contributed chapters to, among others, Clinical Pearls of Wisdom: 21 Leading Therapists Offer their Key Insights, edited by M. Kerman (Norton, 2009); Complex Traumatic Stress Disorders: An Evidence-Based Clinician’s Guide, edited by C. Courtois & J. D. Ford (Guilford, 2009);  Healing Moments in Psychotherapy, edited by Dan Siegel and Marion Solomon (Norton, 2013); Advances in Contemplative Psychotherapy: Accelerating Transformation, edited by Loizzo, Neale & Wolf (Norton, 2017), Moments of Meeting in Psychoanalysis: Interaction and Change in the Therapeutic Encounter, edited by Lord (Routledge: 2017) and The Comprehensive Handbook of Psychotherapy, Volume 1: Psychodynamic and Object Relations Therapies, edited by J. J. Magnavita (Wiley, 2002). Four DVDs of her live AEDP clinical work, including one documenting a complete 6-session treatment, and one on clinical supervision, have been issued by the American Psychological Association (APA). Learn more and purchase here.

Described by psychoanalyst James Grotstein as a “prizefighter of intimacy,” and by David Malan as “the Winnicott of [experiential] psychotherapy,” Diana Fosha is known for her powerful, precise yet simultaneously poetic and evocative affective writing and presenting style. Diana’s phrases — “undoing aloneness,” “existing in the heart and mind of the other,” “True Other,” “make the implicit explicit and the explicit experiential,” “stay with it and stay with me,” “rigor without shame” and “judicious self-disclosure” — capture the ethos of AEDP.