deftinstitute.com

What It Is

DEFT Institute is a professional training organization built around Dynamic Emotion Focused Therapy (DEFT). Founded in 2012, it primarily serves psychotherapists and mental health clinicians. Its core philosophy is to help therapists identify clients’ unconscious emotions, inner conflicts, defenses, anxiety, guilt, and shame through a “shame-sensitive” and “compassion-centered” approach, while fostering self-compassion and willingness to change within the therapeutic relationship.

Core Focus and Course Format

Based on the collected text, DEFT training includes new lectures, recorded therapy sessions, shame-sensitive exercises, on-demand webinars, supervision, and ongoing monthly training. Its approach emphasizes tracking bodily experience, empathic attunement through verbal and nonverbal cues, therapist self-regulation, the therapeutic alliance, and sensitivity to cultural, racial, gender, and spiritual factors. Compared with general psychology courses, it is more focused on clinical skills training and is especially suitable for therapists with backgrounds in psychodynamic therapy, ISTDP, emotion-focused therapy, and somatic approaches.

Instructors and Background

The institute’s founder, Susan Warren Warshow, is the developer of DEFT and holds LCSW and LMFT credentials. She is also a Certified IEDTA Teacher/Supervisor and a faculty member at the ISTDP Institute. She has published the Routledge book A Therapist's Handbook to Dissolve Shame and Defense: Master the Moment and has presented numerous recorded therapy sessions at international conferences, workshops, and trainings. The teaching team also includes psychologists, marriage and family therapists, clinical social workers, and others, with backgrounds concentrated in trauma, addiction, couples relationships, ADHD, EMDR, ISTDP, complex trauma, and related areas.

Pricing and Certificates

The text does not disclose specific pricing, payment methods, course duration, or enrollment requirements, nor does it clearly state whether completion certificates, continuing education credits, or formal certification are provided. Therefore, anyone considering it for career advancement or license-related continuing education should confirm these details directly with the organization.

Pros and Cons

The strengths are its professional positioning, rich clinical context, strong founder and instructor credentials, and emphasis on shame sensitivity and cultural factors, giving the method a distinctive profile. The drawbacks are that the publicly available information is not sufficiently productized, and pricing and certification transparency are limited. The courses are primarily in English, which creates a language barrier for Chinese learners. The content is also clearly not suitable for people without a clinical background who are looking for a general self-help psychology course.

Who It’s For and Access from China

It is better suited to professionals with backgrounds in psychological counseling, psychotherapy, social work, mental health, or supervision, especially clinicians who want to improve their ability to work with defenses, shame, emotional resistance, and the therapeutic relationship. Access from mainland China cannot be determined based on the text alone and is therefore marked as unknown.