On August 21, 2026, Moshe Talmon passed away.
We learned the news only a few days ago from his colleague and friend Michael F. Hoyt.
Dr. Talmon was born on an Israeli kibbutz in 1950. After earning a degree in psychology, he received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982. He completed his internship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia under the supervision of Salvador Minuchin, and later worked at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group from 1985 to 1991. It was there that he began his studies on Single Session Therapy (SST).
After realizing that many people attended therapy for just one session, and after exploring the phenomenon in the professional literature, he conducted the first study on the subject together with Robert Rosenbaum and Michael F. Hoyt. In 1990, he published the first book devoted to the topic, Single Session Therapy (Jossey-Bass; Italian ed., Psicoterapia a seduta singola, Erickson, 1996), followed in 1993 by Single Session Solutions.
Through these works, as well as through the training and dissemination efforts of Talmon and his colleagues, SST began to spread throughout the world—slowly at first, and then dramatically from the second decade of the twenty-first century onward.
Talmon’s importance to the field of psychotherapy is probably still underestimated. Yet we hope that, in time, history will give him the place he deserves.
Today, the idea that a single session may be all that is needed is not only increasingly accepted by both mental health professionals and the general public; it has also been extensively supported by research conducted around the world and published in prestigious scientific journals.
The recognition that a single session may be sufficient represents a paradigm shift whose full significance may not yet have been grasped. To paraphrase a comment Jay Haley once made about SST, for many years the prevailing belief was that psychotherapy necessarily had to be a lengthy process. Brief therapies later challenged that belief, demonstrating that just a few sessions are often enough. Today, we know that, not infrequently, the touch of a single encounter may be sufficient.
In fact, however, we believe that SST, thanks to Talmon, has given us much more than this. It has offered us a new way of delivering our services, fostering a one-at-a-time approach: one session at a time. We are convinced that the idea that “therapy must be either long or brief” is destined to disappear. In the future, all therapists will be trained to provide long-term, brief, and single-session therapies, depending on the needs of the individual.
We owe much of this legacy to Talmon—not only because of what he accomplished, but also because of the person he was.
We never had the pleasure of shaking his hand. In 2023, on the occasion of the 4th International Symposium on Single Session Therapy, Talmon, Rosenbaum, and Hoyt were due to appear together on the same stage. However, the events of October 7, 2023, just 34 days before the symposium was due to begin, prevented Talmon from attending in person. Nevertheless, despite those circumstances and despite the illness he was already battling at the time, he joined us live from Tel Aviv, honoring the entire audience with his contribution. That contribution was subsequently included in the volume edited by Cannistrà and Hoyt, Single Session Therapies, under the title “The Golden Hour.”
We did, however, have the good fortune and pleasure of speaking with Talmon on more than one occasion. He generously gave us an interview, which is available online; wrote, together with Michael Hoyt, the foreword to Terapia a seduta singola. Principi e pratiche (Single Session Therapy: Principles and Practices); and contributed the afterword to our forthcoming book on SST for anxiety-related problems. But perhaps more than anything else, we were surprised—and deeply grateful—for the many words of praise and encouragement he offered us.
Let us be clear: we do not wish to make a display of that praise. Talmon, in fact, was generous with his encouragement toward many people. He strongly supported Jessica Schleider’s work, for example, and greatly appreciated her definition of Single Session Intervention. On several occasions, he also introduced us to colleagues from around the world, praising their work and expertise. And it is precisely this side of Talmon—a quality that may not fully emerge from his writings and interviews—that we would like to convey.
Talmon never set himself up as the leader of a school of thought. He never trademarked “Single Session Therapy,” nor did he build a business around it. While this may have meant that there was no central authority capable of systematizing training, dissemination, and research in the field, it also allowed people all over the world to develop their own thinking and their own work around SST.
Forty years after its “discovery,” at a time when many therapeutic models begin to decline, if they have not already faded into obscurity, SST has instead experienced a genuine renaissance, helping to improve the future of psychotherapy and the lives of those who turn to it.
Across the world, and here in Italy as well.
Those who had the pleasure of knowing him personally, and of speaking with him more extensively and more often than we did, will certainly be able to offer a fuller and more personal account of the man he was, as well as a more detailed record of his work. For our part, we simply wish to thank him and remember him once again, knowing that without him, we would not be here.
Forever grateful,
Flavio Cannistrà
Federico Piccirilli
Pier Paolo D’Alia
Angelica Giannetti
Francesca Moccia
Valeria Campinoti
Beatrice Pavoni
Vanessa Pergher
Italian Center for Single Session Therapy