For most of his professional life, Dan Hughes has been a clinician specializing in the treatment of children and youth with severe emotional and behavioral problems. His treatment is family-centered, with the parents actively involved in their child’s treatment, while also deepening their caregiving abilities and addressing their own attachment histories. Many of the children he treated had histories of abuse, neglect, and multiple losses and were extremely unwilling and unable to form a relationship with a therapist or with a caregiver. Working primarily with foster and adopted children and their parents, Dan borrowed heavily from attachment, intersubjectivity, and trauma theories and research to develop a model of treatment that he calls Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. DDP gradually became applied to less severe problems between parent and child as well as to marital and family relationships. Dan is the author of a number of books and articles. These include: Building the Bonds of Attachment, 2nd. Ed.(2006), Attachment-Focused Family Therapy, (2007), Attachment-Focused Parenting (2009) and Attachment-Focused Family Therapy Workbook, (2011). The last three were published by Norton.
Dan’s current passion is the training of therapists in his treatment model. He has provided therapist training throughout the US, UK, and Canada for the past 15 years. He also provides ongoing supervision and consultation to various clinicians and agencies. Dan has initiated a certification program for therapists interested in become proficient in his model of treatment.
