Psychotherapy Integration from the Bottom Up: How Words, Nonverbal Communication, and Relationship Work to Bring About Change



Featured speaker:  Jeffery Smith, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, New York Medical College
Leader of the National APA Therapy Caucus
President of the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI)

Type: On-Demand Webinar.  This enduring material was released on August 10, 2026, and will expire on August 10, 2029.

Description: Where the best innovations in medicine arise from detailed understanding of pathology and change mechanisms, training and practice in psychotherapy typically fail to explain the scientific basis of therapist words, nonverbal communication and relationship resulting in enduring improvements in patient functioning. In this presentation, Jeffery Smith, M.D., proposes three upgrades to the basic science of psychotherapy, which together provide support and explanation for the action of all psychotherapies. By giving trainees and practitioners a powerful and science-based understanding of psychotherapy's active ingredients, it is hoped that training can be made more efficient, matching to patient needs can be optimized, and incremental improvement can be achieved in psychotherapy practice, regardless of the style or technique used.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify the universal target and examine the infrastructure underlying all psychotherapies.
  • Discuss three change mechanisms responsible for the action of psychotherapy and how existing therapies incorporate the requirements for those change mechanisms. 
  • Illustrate how understanding psychotherapy’s infrastructure can help us improve technique. 
  • Demonstrate how the art of psychotherapy is about speaking the nonverbal language of the subcortical brain.


Disclosures: 
All of the planners, reviewers, staff, and others involved with the content of this educational activity have reported no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. 

Jeffery Smith, the presenter for this activity, has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose.

Accreditation statement:  
The Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Association (PCFA) is accredited by the California Medical Association (CMA) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. 

PCFA designates this enduring material activity for a maximum of 1.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™.  Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

CME:  Credit cannot be earned for this online activity if credit had already been earned for attending the live event in 2025.