Dr. Patricia Coughlin has over four decades of clinical experience and began training in Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) in 1988, including with the approach’s founder, Dr. Habib Davanloo. Her writing and teaching explore how clinicians can recognize and work with the anxiety and defenses that arise when clients approach underlying emotions.

Dr. Coughlin is the author of several books on dynamic psychotherapy. Her first book, Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy: Theory and Technique, was published in a revised second edition in 2026. She also collaborated with Dr. David Malan on Lives Transformed: A Revolutionary Method of Dynamic Psychotherapy and is the author of Maximizing Effectiveness in Dynamic Psychotherapy and Facilitating the Process of Working Through in Psychotherapy: Mastering the Middle Game. Several of her books use detailed clinical examples and verbatim session transcripts to illustrate the theory and practice of dynamic psychotherapy.

Dr. Coughlin has held faculty positions at Northwestern University Medical School, Albany Medical College, Thomas Jefferson School of Medicine, and the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Alongside her private practice, she provides training and supervision to mental health professionals internationally. Her teaching addresses assessment, resistance, defenses, anxiety, and the direct experience and integration of emotion in psychotherapy.