Deliberate Practice in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

A free training from Sentio University, co-authored by Hanna Levenson, Volney Gay, Tony Rousmaniere, and Alexandre Vaz.

Psychodynamic psychotherapy asks the clinician to do things that are hard to teach from a manual. Tracking the transference in real time, working with affect rather than around it, formulating an unconscious conflict on the fly, deciding when to interpret and when to wait. Reading about these moves is one thing. Performing them under the pressure of a live session is another. Deliberate practice closes that gap by isolating each skill, rehearsing it under feedback, and building it into reflex. This webinar, led by senior psychodynamic clinicians Hanna Levenson and Volney Gay alongside series co-editors Tony Rousmaniere and Alexandre Vaz, walks through the structured exercises that make these foundational moves trainable.

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What you will learn

The webinar demonstrates core psychodynamic skills broken down into rehearsable units:

  • Identifying and naming the patient's central interpersonal pattern in session
  • Tracking affect shifts and using them as a guide for intervention
  • Formulating a brief dynamic case conceptualization that links past, present, and the therapy relationship
  • Recognizing transference cues and choosing whether to acknowledge, interpret, or hold
  • Working with rupture and repair in the therapeutic alliance

Watch the webinar

Deliberate Practice in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, with Hanna Levenson, Volney Gay, Tony Rousmaniere, and Alexandre Vaz. Free to share.

This webinar accompanies the APA book Deliberate Practice in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy by Hanna Levenson, Volney Gay, and Jeffrey L. Binder, part of The Essentials of Deliberate Practice series. The book contains the full set of exercises that the webinar above demonstrates. Buy on Amazon.

How to use this with peers or supervisors

The webinar is most useful when paired with structured practice afterward. We recommend a two-session model. In the first session, watch the recording with a peer or supervision group and pause at each demonstrated exercise to discuss how it would fit your current caseload. In the second session, run one of the exercises live. One person plays the therapist, one plays the client, and a third observes and offers structured feedback against a specific behavioral target, such as "name the patient's central interpersonal pattern in one sentence" or "deliver a transference interpretation within two minutes of the cue." Five to ten minutes of focused rehearsal followed by feedback tends to produce more growth than longer unstructured roleplay. Licensed clinicians who want to take this further can join Sentio's ongoing deliberate practice consultation group, which meets regularly and is open to clinicians worldwide.

Going deeper: Deliberate Practice Supervision

The webinar above demonstrates what deliberate practice looks like inside psychodynamic psychotherapy. Doing deliberate practice supervision well is a separate skill, and one that is hard to acquire from didactic content alone. The method has to be practiced under feedback, the same way the clinical skill itself does. A single weekend workshop tends not to give supervisors enough repetitions to develop the experiential muscle they need. Sentio runs an intensive year-long clinical supervisor training built around this principle. For the longer rationale for that format, see Why One Weekend Supervisor Trainings Fall Short.

About the authors

Hanna Levenson, PhD is a clinical psychologist and professor at the Wright Institute, where she directs the Levenson Institute for Training in Brief Dynamic Therapy. She is a leading authority on time-limited dynamic psychotherapy and the author of multiple books on brief dynamic therapy training.

Volney Gay, PhD is Professor of Religious Studies, Psychiatry, and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University and a training and supervising analyst affiliated with the psychoanalytic community. He has written extensively on psychoanalytic technique, brief therapy, and the integration of psychodynamic theory with clinical practice.

Jeffrey L. Binder, PhD is a major contributor to the empirical literature on brief dynamic therapy and therapist training, and a long-standing author in the time-limited dynamic psychotherapy tradition. His work focuses on what therapist skills actually need to be trained, and how.

Tony Rousmaniere, PsyD is the President of Sentio University and Executive Director of the Sentio Counseling Center. He is past-president of the psychotherapy division of the American Psychological Association and the author of over 20 books on deliberate practice and psychotherapy training, including The Essentials of Deliberate Practice book series (APA Books).

Alexandre Vaz, PhD is the Chief Academic Officer of Sentio University and co-founder of the Deliberate Practice Institute. He is co-editor of The Essentials of Deliberate Practice book series (APA Books) and host of Psychotherapy Expert Talks.

Related Sentio resources

Frequently asked questions

What is deliberate practice in psychodynamic psychotherapy? Deliberate practice in psychodynamic psychotherapy is the structured rehearsal of specific, high-leverage clinical skills under feedback, rather than general experience-on-the-job. It isolates moves like naming a central interpersonal pattern, tracking affect shifts, or delivering a transference interpretation, and rehearses them in short repetitive cycles until they become reliable in live sessions.

Who is this training for? The webinar and exercises are designed for licensed psychodynamic clinicians, postdocs, predoctoral interns, and advanced trainees in any psychodynamic or psychoanalytic program. Supervisors, training directors, and faculty who teach dynamic therapy will also find the framework directly applicable to their teaching.

Do I need to be a psychoanalyst to use these exercises? No. The exercises are designed to be useful across the full spectrum of psychodynamic practice, from brief dynamic therapy and time-limited models through long-term psychoanalytic work. The core skills (formulation, affect tracking, transference work, alliance repair) are foundational to any psychodynamic orientation.

Is the webinar really free? Yes. The full webinar is free to watch, free to share with peers and trainees, and free to use inside a supervision group. The companion book by Levenson, Gay, and Binder is sold separately by APA Books and contains the complete set of exercises.

How is this different from a standard psychodynamic training? Most psychodynamic training is built around case discussion, reading, and clinical immersion over years. Deliberate practice is a complement, not a replacement. It targets specific skill bottlenecks with focused, behaviorally-defined rehearsal so that the principles you read about and discuss actually show up in your live work faster.