Multi-Modal Psychotherapy Research
Katie Aafjes-van Doorn, DClinPsy
Assistant Professor at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology
Associate Editor for Clinical Psychology; Science & Practice
MSc in Clinical Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL
MSc in Psychological Research, University of Oxford, UK
DClinPsy in Clinical Psychology, University of Oxford, UK
What I love to do... Translating:
• Between real-life practice into research questions.
• Between research findings into clinical practice.
• Between PDT and other models.
• Between psychoanalytic theory and contemporary PDT practice.
• Between unconscious dyadic processes and measurable variables.
Throughout my career as a Clinical Psychologist I have stayed involved in clinical practice, teaching and research. After receiving my MSc in Clinical Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2005, I moved to the United Kingdom. I earned a MSc in Psychological Research, followed by a doctorate in Clinical Psychology at University of Oxford, and gained licensure in the UK. Joining my husband in his move from the Netherlands to the UK and later from the UK to California has required me to focus on (re) gaining clinical licensure. I completed accruing all clinical hours for California licensure at Access Institute, a well renowned psychoanalytic therapy clinic in San Francisco. In September 2016 I started work as a postdoctoral research fellow with Dr. Jacques Barber and his lab at Adelphi University, New York. Here, I continued to develop my research program on psychotherapy process-outcome research. In 2017 I became a full-time faculty at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University, New York. Where I teach courses on evidence-based psychodynamic psychotherapy, psychotherapy process, interpersonal psychotherapy and research design. I hope to contribute to the "evidence-base" of psychodynamic psychotherapies by operationalizing psychoanalytic concepts such as defenses, affect experiencing, (counter) transference and reflective functioning, and to inspire the new generation of clinicians to continue to engage in psychotherapy research.
During my training years in the Netherlands and the UK I worked in a variety of clinical settings, with different modalities (CBT, CAT, DBT, EDT) and patient groups (i.e. adults, older adults, children) and developed a strong interest in psychodynamic therapy in particular. At Oxford, I, for example, sought out a one-year specialist internship in Experiential Dynamic Therapy and conducted my dissertation research on the effect of this approach in NHS community outpatient services. I gained further postdoctoral psychoanalytic training at the Access Institute in San Francisco. Alongside my clinical work, I have always maintained a strong involvement in clinical-research projects and have set up practice-based studies in my spare time. Where possible, my research endeavors have been collaborative efforts with students, clinicians and researchers. Learning from international collaborations (Sweden, Norway, Canada, Argentina, The Netherlands, UK & USA) has been especially inspiring to me and no doubt will continue to broaden my view of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Research. I have co-authored an introductory book on clinical psychology, chapters on process-outcome research, have been Associate Editor of the prestigious journal Clinical Psychology: Science & Practice since July 2018, and will become the new Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) starting Jan 2022.
Learn more about Professor Aafjes-van Doorn in a recent interview:
https://blogs.yu.edu/news/meet-our-faculty-dr-katie-aafjes-van-doorn/
