David Mars, Ph.D. has developed the TCT method so therapists can help couple members relate to each other from their self-at-best, often beginning in the first session. This method cultivates healthy patterns of love and respect-based awareness to create positive changes in everyday living within the marriage. With Dr. Mars’ unique process, therapists evoke in couples bodily-felt awareness of specifically what they long for. And then couples receive the guidance to grow the necessary capacities to experience growing peace, love-based inspiration and stabile safety to love and be loved in a balanced way in their lives.
In the 1980 and 1990’s he developed an innovative treatment process that utilized highly sensitive computerized biofeedback with couples to reveal their unconscious bodily responses. This created a high capacity to track moment-to-moment psychophysiology and a heightened awareness of how valuable this skills are to effectively treat couples. In addition, as an Authentic Movement group leader and practitioner for over 30 years, he developed and teaches therapists and couples mindful alternatives to negative judgment. He has developed methods to transfer the above-named skills of attunement to therapists in all of the TCT training programs.
David Mars, Ph.D., MFT has presented workshops, courses, webinars, and online supervision worldwide for over thirty years. He was a Faculty member of the AEDP Institute for eleven of those years and is the developer of AEDP for Couples (AEDPfC). All of his offerings of training, supervision, writing and innovation are now based at the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute of which he is the director and founder.
Lisa Gardner, LCSW is defined by her curiosity, dedication, and over 20 years of experience as a therapist helping individuals and couples find connection and growth. She approaches therapy as a continuous path of learning, believing that being open and curious allows her to be her best self for her clients, students, and colleagues.
Lisa views wholeness, satisfaction, and authentic connection as a deeply normal human need, and often distressing when that need is unmet. Her approach is rooted in experiential therapies that embody a fundamental stance of kindness toward this normal human struggling. She aims to create a grounded space where clients can feel safe enough to discover their most authentic, spontaneous selves.
Lisa has a passion for working with couples, serving as faculty in the Transformative Couples Therapy® Institute. Lisa began her journey in TCT with the AEDP (Immersion 2013) and AEDP for Couples/TCT in 2016 as a pupil of David Mars and Karen Pando-Mars Essential Skills Course. She continued with TCT Core Training, while deepening her skills with group and individual supervision. From 2017 through the present, she has been an Experiential Assistant at numerous trainings, teaching and supporting other therapists learning the TCT and AEDP models. Since 2022, Lisa has co-helmed the TCT Research Project as a clinical researcher and investigator. In 2025 Lisa joined David Mars as Faculty of the TCT Institute.
Described by colleagues as curious, open-minded, and devoted, Lisa also supports the therapeutic community by supervising, teaching and mentoring clinicians helping them grow in their own learning process. She holds an MSW from Fordham University (2002) and a BS from Georgetown University (1980).