statement to the patient which explains the consequences of continuing to resist: This complex intervention is simultaneously aimed at the patient's will, is a reminder of the task, and is a wake-up call to the therapeutic alliance to exert maximal effort against the resistance. It is a reminder, in stark terms, that the therapeutic task is in jeopardy and may well fail. Finally, it is a reminder to the patient of the consequences of failure, as well as an implied reminder that success is also possible. The interventions of Pressure, Challenge, and Head-on Collision, all aimed at helping the patient experience true feelings in relation to the present and past, allowed Davanloo to expand the scope of patients who can be helped by short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. A model which initially worked only with highly motivated patients able to describe a clearly problematic area can now be applied to patients whose difficulties are diffuse and whose motivation is also initially quite diffuse. The results are deep, lasting changes in areas of both symptomatic and interpersonal disturbances. It is also worth stressing that ISTDP, unlike traditional psychodynamic therapies, assiduously avoids interpretation until such time as the unconscious is open. The use of trial interpretations is explicitly avoided. The phase of interpretation only commences once it is clear to both therapist and patient that there has been a passage of previously unconscious emotion. Quite often, it is then the patient who takes the lead in interpreting: "The incredible rage I felt toward you when you refused to let me off the hook regarding my feelings is exactly the same rage that I felt toward my father when I was five years old and found out he had been killed in the war and wasn't coming home. I buried the rage that day because I felt so guilty about it. That's the day I became depressed." Evidence base Davanloo's initial research was published in the form of a qualitative case series of approximately 200 patients. He maintains a large video library of treated cases which he uses for teaching conferences, though this has not yet been made available for other psychotherapy researchers to independently verify and quantify Davanloo's claims. Recent studies however, support the efficacy of the ISTDP technique, as described below. He claims efficacy with psychological symptoms, medically unexplained symptoms (so-called functional or somatoform disorders), and characterological disturbances (referred to as Personality Disorders