David Scharff, MD and Jill Savege Scharff, MD, 2021
/The award-winning work of Drs. David Scharff and Jill Savege Scharff adapts psychoanalysis for those far from a psychoanalytic center and educating analysts to address remote treatment needs. Embracing teaching at the heart of their work, the Scharffs’ remote teaching and treatment work was accomplished in large part through the International Psychotherapy Institute (IPI) they co-founded. The Scharffs developed an innovative, analytic training methodology and paved a non-traditional path to deliver analysis remotely. The new training methodology allowed the application of psychoanalytic approaches to family and couple psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, while their early adoption of technology expanded access to psychoanalytic psychotherapy in areas and countries previously beyond reach.
Long before the pandemic forced psychoanalytic clinicians to endorse remote learning and service delivery, the Scharffs’ work employed videoconference technology in certificate programs that have reached psychoanalytically oriented trainees in the United States, China, Russia, and Latin America, with additional programming that enabled them to reach trainees and colleagues in such locations as Greece, Austria, South Africa, New Zealand, and Israel. Their books and articles have reached a worldwide audience through translations into eight languages, while their contribution to the dissemination of free e-books expanded access to psychoanalytic literature for readers in 200 countries and territories.
David Scharff, M.D., FABP and Jill Savege Scharff, M.D., FABP, MRC. Psych, Maryland-based partners, co-founded IPI, are Supervising Analysts at the International Institute for Psychoanalytic Training (IIPT at IPI) and Teaching Analysts at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute.