Letter to the Editor

I am responding to Jon Frederickson's letter published in Volume 44(1), 2016. His letter was written in response my article (Hickey, 2015). For simplicity, I will use the term “IS-TDP” to refer to the entire body of Davanloo's discoveries and techniques (even though his students know that he now focuses more heavily on Major Mobilization of the Unconscious).

Practitioners who are not in active training with Davanloo should not claim to be practicing IS-TDP. While many practitioners claim to practice IS-TDP, Dr. Davanloo was the first to use this term and meant it to indicate a type of treatment associated with his discoveries. It has specific characteristics which he has pioneered and developed. Through numerous international symposia and publications over the past four decades, this term and the discoveries associated with it have been attributed to Davanloo.

Unlike other forms of psychotherapy (for example, CBT or DBT), there is no formal manual for IS-TDP. In addition, there is no validated therapist adherence rating scale. It is difficult to determine the fidelity with which it is precisely practiced in many settings. Davanloo may not formally own legal copyright of the term. But few would argue that when viewed as intellectual property, IS-TDP belongs to Davanloo. In the absence of any formal and legal copyright, some practitioners who are not in active training with Davanloo may not be adhering to the IS-TDP paradigm as initially described by him.

Should some practitioners wish to practice techniques which do not comply with Davanloo's current understanding of the unconscious (which has evolved at a great pace over the last decade), then I would argue that they remain ethically obliged to re-label their technique as something other than IS-TDP. This is for clarity and fidelity in both teaching and research.

Frederickson points out the large body of work to support the efficacy of IS-TDP. This research is not without its limitations.