Jeffrey Young, PhD

Jeffrey E. Young, Ph.D., is the founder of schema therapy. Born in 1950, he started at Yale University before earning his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed postdoctoral training with Aaron Beck, the father of cognitive therapy. Working alongside Beck revealed something crucial. Traditional cognitive therapy wasn’t reaching patients with personality disorders, complex trauma, and chronic emotional struggles. Jeff refused to accept that these patients were untreatable. Over the next decade, he studied everything he could find: psychoanalysis, attachment theory, Gestalt techniques, experiential work, family systems, object relations, and humanistic approaches. He integrated elements from all of these into one comprehensive model. The result was schema therapy—an approach that addresses not just thoughts and behaviors but the core developmental and attachment wounds formed in childhood. Jeff founded the Schema Therapy Institute in 1986 and has been its director for nearly 40 years. He’s on Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry faculty and directs the Cognitive Therapy Center of New York. As Honorary President of the International Society for Schema Therapy since 2006, he has guided the global expansion of schema therapy across more than 50 countries. His teaching has shaped thousands of clinicians worldwide. For over 25 years, Jeff has presented workshops internationally, consistently receiving outstanding evaluations. In 2003, he received the NEEI Mental Health Educator of the Year award. Jeff authored Schema Therapy: A Practitioner’s Guide, the definitive manual for therapists, and co-authored Reinventing Your Life, a bestselling self-help book that has brought schema therapy concepts to millions of readers. He’s a founding fellow of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy and has consulted on numerous research grants, including the NIMH Collaborative Study of Depression. His work on editorial boards for journals like Cognitive Therapy and Research and Cognitive & Behavioral Practice has helped advance the scientific rigor of the field. In a 2021 interview, Jeff emphasized that culture affects schemas and modes—a reminder that effective therapy must adapt to each individual’s unique context. Research has now extensively validated schema therapy’s effectiveness for typically treatment-resistant conditions. When Jeff presents, you learn from the person who created the model.

6.15 PM - 7.15 PM

Friday Dec 5th

Closing Address by Jeffrey Young

For more than three decades, Dr. Jeffrey Young has transformed the landscape of psychotherapy. By integrating cognitive, experiential, attachment, and psychodynamic traditions, he created Schema Therapy—a model that reaches where traditional insight and short-term interventions could not.

In this special closing session, Dr. Young reflects on the origins of Schema Therapy, its global evolution, and the principles that have sustained its integrity and effectiveness across generations. He shares his hopes for the model’s future, its ongoing research, and the next frontiers in healing deep emotional wounds.

This intimate conversation is a rare opportunity to hear directly from the founder of Schema Therapy—whose vision continues to shape how therapists worldwide help clients rebuild trust, connection, and meaning in their lives.