Changing Emotions with Emotions

isEFT Advisory Board


Les Greenberg, Ph.D.
Dr. Greenberg is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology at York University in Toronto, Ontario. Dr. Greenberg is actively involved in the training, research, and development of Emotion-Focused Therapy at the Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic, and he travels throughout North America and internationally doing presentations and workshops in Emotion-Focused Therapy. He has co-authored a number of major texts on emotion-focused approaches to treatment, including Emotion in Psychotherapy (1986), Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (1988), Facilitating Emotional Change (1993), Emotion-Focused Therapy: Coaching Clients to Work Through Emotions (2002). His more recent works include Emotion-Focused Therapy of Depression (2006), Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy: The Dynamics of Emotion, Love and Power (2008), and Emotion-Focused Therapy: Theory and Practice (2010). 

Robert Elliott, Ph.D.

 Dr. Elliott is Professor of Counselling in the Counselling Unit at the University of Strathclyde, where he directs its research clinic and  teaches      emotion-focused therapy and psychotherapy research.  A professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Toledo (Ohio), he is co-  author  of Facilitating emotional change (1993), Learning process-experiential psychotherapy (2004), Research methods in clinical  psychology(2002),  and Developing and Enhancing Research Capacity in Counselling and Psychotherapy (2010), as well as more than 120  journal articles and book  chapters. He is past president of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and previously co-edited the  journals Psychotherapy Research,  and Person-Centered Counseling and Psychotherapies.  He is a Fellow in the Divisions of Humanistic  Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Clinical  Psychology of the American Psychological Association.  He has received the Distinguished Research Career Award of the Society for Psychotherapy Research, and the Carl Rogers Award from the Division of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association.  He regularly teaches EFT in Scotland, the Netherlands, and Belgium and is currently doing research on EFT for social anxiety.research on EFT for social anxiety.


/ isEFT Board Members /


Jeanne Watson, Ph.D.

Dr. Watson is Professor at OISE, the University of Toronto, Canada.  A major exponent of humanistic-experiential psychotherapy, she has contributed to the development of emotion focused psychotherapy, the process experiential approach. Dr. Watson teaches in the Counselling and Clinical Psychology Program and is an active researcher investigating the process and outcome of psychotherapy. She has conducted and collaborated on clinical trials comparing emotion focused psychotherapy with client centered psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral psychotherapy in the treatment of depression.  Her research into identifying processes of change has yielded a number of observer measures to rate therapists’ expressed empathy as well as clients’ affect regulation in session.  She has co-authored and co-edited a total of 7 books and has written over 60 articles and chapters, and delivered over 100 presentations including workshops and invited addresses on the theory and practice of Emotion Focused Therapy with an emphasis on empathy, the working alliance, emotional expression, and emotion focused therapy in the treatment of depression.  Dr. Watson received the “Outstanding Early Career Award” from the International Society for Psychotherapy Research in 2002 and is currently General Vice-President of the Society.  In 2013 she was appointed a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Division 29 in recognition of her contributions to the discipline of psychology. She has a part-time practice in Toronto.


Rhonda N. Goldman, Ph.D.

Dr. Goldman is an associate professor of Clinical Psychology at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University, Schaumburg Campus. She is also an affiliate therapist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where she works with both couples and individuals. She has co-authored three texts on Emotion-Focused Therapy including Leaning Emotion-Focused TherapyCase Studies in Emotion-Focused Treatment of Depression, and Emotion-Focused Couples Therapy: The Dynamics of Emotion, Love, and Power. She is currently writing a book on a new text entitled Case formulation in Emotion-Focused Therapy. She  practices, teaches, and conducts research on emotional processes and outcomes in emotion-focused therapy and has written journal articles and book chapters on empathy, vulnerability, depression, and emotion. She currently sits on the editorial review board of the journals ofPsychotherapy Research and Person-centered and Experiential Psychotherapies. She is the recent recipient (2011) of the Carmi Harari Early Career Award from Division 32, the Society of Humanistic Psychology of the American Psychological Association. Most recently, she is co-founder of the Emotion-Focused Therapy Institute of Chicago.

Juliette Becking

Juliette Becking is a clinical psychologist / psychotherapist and the founder of EFTiN, the Emotion Focused Therapy institute Netherlands. She started  this institute in September 2019, because she felt this was the next step to disseminate Emotion Focused Therapy in the Netherlands. Before, the EFT courses were housed by the Apanta-academy. EFTiN still works closely together with the Apanta-academy because the Apanta-academy still houses the course Personal Experiential Psychotherapy, which is the basis of EFT.

EFTiN is officially recognized as a training institute by the International Society for Emotion Focused Therapy (isEFT). Juliette was nominated as Board Member and she joined the Board of isEFT in 2017.

Lars Auszra

Dr. Lars Auszra co-founded the German Institute for Emotion-focused Therapy (IEFT) in Munich. He is also founding chairman of the German Society for Emotion-focused Therapy (DeGEFT). He has played a major role in establishing EFT in the German-speaking countries. To date, he has written several articles and book chapters in German and English about Emotion-focused Therapy and emotional processing. In addition, he is co-author of a book in German (Emotional Focused Therapy: A Practice Manual) and two educational videos on EFT. Lars runs his own practice in Munich and offers individual therapy, couple therapy and supervision in EFT. He teaches EFT in several European countries.


Serine Warwar, Ph.D., C.Psych.

Dr. Serine Warwar is a Clinical Psychologist and the Director of the York University Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic in Toronto, Ontario. She is also the Founder and Director of the Centre for Psychology and Emotional Health (www.cpeh.ca) which is a satellite training site for the EFT Clinic at York University.  This Centre also houses the Greenberg Institute for Emotion-Focused Therapy. She also provides EFT supervision, training, and consultation to graduate students and therapists and conducts international trainings, workshops and master classes on emotion regulation, EFT for individuals and couples, as well as workshops in resolving emotional injuries and forgiveness in couples.  In addition, she has been an EFT skills trainer for 29 years.  She has been a therapist and researcher for several EFT randomized control trials, for the treatment of depression, and emotional injuries in individuals and couples.  As the research and treatment co-ordinator for a Forgiveness Treatment Study for individuals and couples, she co-developed an EFT psychotherapy treatment and research program for forgiveness to help couples and individuals resolve emotional injuries. She has published in the areas of: emotional processing; emotion regulation; homework; experiential teaching; therapist experiential teaching/consolidation tools; suicide and borderline personality disorder; and resolving emotional injuries and forgiveness in individuals and couples. She has adapted and applied EFT to working with vulnerable clinical populations such as: chronically suicidal individuals, domestically violent men in prison, borderline personality disorder, and psychological and physical trauma. She finds great beauty and joy in the work that she does with both clients, and in training students and therapists.




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