THERAPIST TRAINING RESEARCH WEBINAR: An Interview with Stephen Parker and Gideon Diamond
In 2025, Dr. Gideon Diamond and his colleagues published a much-needed systematic review that addresses a long-standing challenge in psychotherapy research: how to define and measure deliberate practice. Their review clarifies how deliberate practice has been operationalized across studies and examines preliminary outcomes of its application in psychotherapy training. This topic has sparked growing interest—and confusion—given the divergence between how deliberate practice is conceptualized in training and research and how it was originally defined in the extensive research by K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues. In this webinar, Dr. Diamond and Dr. Parker will join us to unpack the review’s findings and implications for clinicians and researchers alike. The conversation will be hosted by the International Deliberate Practice Society´s Inês Amaro and Vidar Husby.
This webinar is part of a series where you can meet researchers exploring the effectiveness of therapist training methods. Their research may provide valuable insights that contribute to a deeper understanding of deliberate practice in psychotherapy. The webinars are hosted by Clinical Psychologists Vidar Husby (Norway) and Inês Amaro (Portugal) from the International Deliberate Practice Society (IDPS).
This webinar´s registration fee is at a greatly reduced cost for IDPS members. Support the important work of the IDPS by becoming a member today!
Place: Online
Time: This event connects colleagues and participants located in 17 time zones.
The times will be:
CET (i.e. Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy): November 27, 08:00-09:00 AM
AEDT (regions in Australia): November 27, 06:00-07:00 PM
PST (i.e. California): November 26, 11:00 PM – November 27,12:00 AM
Price:
IDPS members, students and faculty at Institutional members: Free (become member here)
Non-members: 15 €.
If you want to have a look at the article we will focus on in this episode, this is the reference: Diamond, G., Wlodek, B., Arthey, S., & Parker, S. (2025). A systematic review of deliberate practice in psychotherapy: Definitions, operationalization, and preliminary outcomes. Psychotherapy.
Register Now
About the Guests
Dr Gideon Diamond
Dr Gideon Diamond is a psychiatrist with advanced training in psychotherapy, including Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) and approaches informed by neuroscience, prediction models, and memory reconsolidation. His research interests centre on how therapists can most effectively learn and refine their skills. As part of his fellowship, he and colleagues, conducted a systematic review of deliberate practice in psychotherapy, clarifying its evidence base and addressing competing theories. His work reflects a commitment to grounding clinical innovation in robust science and guiding trainees toward methods that truly improve therapeutic effectiveness.
Dr Stephen Parker
Dr Stephen Parker is a psychiatrist who works as the Director, Research and Clinical Lead Psychiatrist – Early Psychosis at Metro North Mental Health in Brisbane, Australia. He has completed advanced certifications in Psychotherapies and Adult Psychiatry (RANZCP), and the predominant foci of his research has been in the areas of mental health services and medical education. He completed a PhD in 2020, and holds adjunct academic titles as an Associate Professor with The University of Queensland and Griffith University. Additionally, he is the Trial Psychiatrist for Queensland’s first trial of psilocybin assisted therapy, which was conducted at the QIMR-B focusing on people experiencing prolonged grief disorder following a cancer related death.
About the Hosts
Inês Amaro
Inês Amaro is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in Portugal and the president of the IDPS. As an integrative therapist, she seeks to combine several psychotherapeutic influences with an experiential and relational focus. Inês is also a faculty lecturer who’s been integrating Deliberate Practice into graduate and post-graduate education at Sentio University (Los Angeles, USA) and ISPA-IU (Lisbon, Portugal).
Vidar Husby
Vidar Husby is committed to psychotherapy, as well as the training of therapists and Deliberate Practice (DP) supervisors. He is a Clinical Psychologist, founding board member of the IDPS, lecturer at Sentio University, and an IDPS-certified Deliberate Practice Supervisor based in Oslo, Norway. Vidar provides supervision in multiple countries and is dedicated to integrating practice as a core component of supervision and therapist training.