Leigh McCullough

Leigh McCullough was a psychotherapist, researcher and pioneer of short-term dynamic psychotherapy (STDP). Her treatment model focused on the learned fears of experiencing certain emotions, or what she called affect phobias. This is an exceptionally clear and useful reformulation of psychodynamic conflicts in behavioral terms: In case of a psychodynamic conflict between anger (or sexual desire, or grief, or closeness) and anxiety (or guilt, or shame); McCullough framed anger as an (internal) object having learned (phobically) to activate anxiety. In McCulloughs reformulation, anger and anxiety do not stand against each other, as in interpersonal conflicts, but rather: anger activates anxiety, which then activates the defence mechanisms, against the activation of anger. Respectively in terms of Freud's Id, ego and super-ego: the Id (anger) activates the super-ego (anxiety), which then activates the ego defences agains the id.

McCullough's reformulation of psychodynamic conflict in behavioral terms both clarifies the therapeutic focus and suggests the intrapsychical change mechanism: Treatment of affect phobias progresses similarly to the exposure technique of behavioral therapies, with the difference that affects could be viewed as an internal phobia instead of external phobias such as fear of spiders or heights. In the above example, the patient must be exposed to the activation of his anger; or sexual desire, or grief, or closeness.

McCullough was an associate clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, director of the Psychotherapy Research Program at Harvard's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a visiting professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim, Norway). She was the 1996 Voorhees Distinguished Professor at the Menninger Clinic and received the 1996 Michael Franz Basch Award from the Silvan Tomkins Institute for her contributions to the exploration of affect in psychotherapy. Dr. McCullough was on the editorial board of the journal Psychotherapy Research and of the Journal of Brief Therapy, and conducted training seminars in the Affect Phobia model worldwide.

Leigh McCullough was diagnosed with ALS in 2010 and died on June 7th 2012

Bibliography

• McCullough Vaillant, Leigh (1997). Changing Character: Short-Term Anxiety-Regulating Psychotherapy for Restructuring Defenses, Affects, and Attachment. BasicBooks.
• McCullough, Leigh et. al. (2003). Treating Affect Phobia: A Manual for Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy.

See also

• David Malan
• Intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy.
• Silvan Tomkins