About the Institute
The Israeli Institute for Schema Therapy was founded in 2013 by Prof. Eshkol Rafaeli and Dr. Offer Maurer as a home for training and supervision in Schema Therapy. Its aim is to build a professional, skilled community of therapists working in the approach.
The Institute offers training toward certification in Schema Therapy through its own study tracks, under the auspices of the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST).
What is Schema Therapy?
All human beings have core needs: for connection and belonging, for understanding and validation, for growth and autonomy, for the freedom to define who they are and to seek meaning in their lives. Psychological distress and disorders arise from, or at least involve, difficulty in getting these needs adequately met, often because of a life history in which they went unseen, unacknowledged and unanswered.
Schema Therapy was developed by Dr. Jeffrey Young in the 1980s. It began as an offshoot of Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy and grew into an integrative approach that brings together insights from attachment theory and developmental psychology, tools from emotion-focused and experiential therapies, and many principles of cognitive-behavioural therapy.
Schema therapists work with adults, couples, adolescents, children and groups. Together with the client they formulate both the goals of therapy and the client's current situation in terms of healthy emotional needs; of schemas, the patterns of beliefs, expectations and ways of acting that developed around needs that were not met; and of modes, the self-states or "sides" of a person that may carry distress, disconnection or a sense of being stuck, or that may be expressed too little.
Many clients come to Schema Therapy after earlier therapies, some of them helpful, left them feeling that progress was only partial. A growing body of research suggests that Schema Therapy can be particularly useful for such persistent difficulties, including problems with emotion regulation, chronic depression, anxiety and interpersonal difficulties.
The Founders
Prof. Eshkol Rafaeli, Ph.D.
Eshkol Rafaeli is a faculty member of the adult clinical psychology programme at Bar-Ilan University and a co-founder of the Israeli Institute for Schema Therapy. After a B.A. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he completed a Ph.D. in clinical and personality psychology at Northwestern University near Chicago, where he trained in research and in cognitive-behavioural treatment. Following an internship at McLean Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston, he moved to New York, where he completed a post-doctorate in social psychology at New York University (NYU) and trained in family-systems therapy at the Minuchin Center.
In 2003 he joined the Department of Psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University. During his years in New York he was part of the Schema Therapy Institute led by Jeffrey Young, working there as a therapist and supervisor. On returning to Israel in 2009 he established a research laboratory in the Department of Psychology and the Gonda Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan. The lab conducts basic research on affect and social cognition in people with anxiety or personality disorders and on day-to-day processes in couples, alongside clinical research and studies of therapeutic processes.
He is a co-author, with Jeffrey Young and David Bernstein, of Schema Therapy: Distinctive Features (Routledge, 2010).
Dr. Offer Maurer, Ph.D.
Offer Maurer is a clinical psychologist, the founder and director of the "New Wave in Psychotherapy" programme at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, and a co-founder of the Israeli Institute for Schema Therapy. He is a former chair of the Israeli Forum for Psychoanalysis and Relational Psychotherapy. Building on long-standing volunteer work in the LGBT community, he founded the "Gay-Friendly Therapists Team" some fifteen years ago: a nationwide psychotherapy institute serving LGBTQ clients, with treatment provided by specialists in sexual orientation and gender.
He is a graduate of the international training programme at Dr. Jeffrey Young's Schema Therapy Institute in New York and a supervisor certified by the International Society of Schema Therapy (ISST). He teaches as a guest lecturer in training programmes in Israel and abroad, and supervises and practises in a private clinic and online.
His publications include a chapter on experiential work in Schema Therapy in Working with Emotion in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Guilford, 2014), a chapter in The Self in Understanding and Treating Psychological Disorders (Cambridge University Press, 2016), and a chapter in Creative Methods in Schema Therapy (Routledge, 2020).
Training
The founders lead study and training programmes in Schema Therapy in two tracks:
- The New School for Psychotherapy (directed by Dr. Offer Maurer)
- Schema in the Field (directed by Atara Barak-Shram and Prof. Eshkol Rafaeli)
In addition, the founders and members of the Institute's team offer training and supervision in Schema Therapy as an approach to working with adults, adolescents and children, and in couple and group therapy.
Selected Publications in English
- Rafaeli, E., Bernstein, D., & Young, J. (2010). Schema Therapy: Distinctive Features. London: Routledge.
- Rafaeli, E., Maurer, O., & Thoma, N. (2014). Working with modes in schema therapy. In N. Thoma & D. McKay (Eds.), Working with Emotion in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Techniques for Clinical Practice. New York: Guilford.
- Rafaeli, E., Maurer, O., Lazarus, G., & Thoma, N. C. (2016). The self in schema therapy. In M. Kyrios et al. (Eds.), The Self in Understanding and Treating Psychological Disorders. Cambridge University Press.
- Rafaeli, E. (in press). Schema Therapy. In V. Zeigler-Hill & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. New York: Springer.
- Rafaeli, E. (2009). Cognitive-behavioral therapies for personality disorders. Israel Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences.
Contact
For enquiries about training, workshops, lectures or supervision, write to SchemaTherapyIsrael@gmail.com or use the contact form (in Hebrew).
