Professional Counseling in English Lisbon & Mafra · Portugal
Professional Counseling in English Lisbon & Mafra · Portugal
Research & Innovation
Where Relationships & Physiology Meet
Steven Kassel began working with biofeedback in 1984, providing clinical care to patients in medical settings, prior to becoming a California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in 1992.
As those two areas of his work came together, he became curious about an intriguing question: "What could we learn if we could directly observe data about what was happening physiologically 'under the surface' between two people while they were interacting — and could learning to regulate those responses improve their relationship?"
That question eventually led Steven to develop a model for Interpersonal Biofeedback, which he later wrote about with colleague John LeMay in The California Therapist and other professional publications.
Developing Interpersonal Biofeedback
Observing two people simultaneously, not one at a time.
Traditional biofeedback equipment was designed primarily for use with one person at a time. Steven wanted to observe two people simultaneously during couples sessions — how each person's physiology changed during an interaction and how their responses affected one another.
In 2009, Steven began working with colleagues at Thought Technology, a Canadian biofeedback technology company, to develop specialized screens that allowed physiological information and video from two people to be captured and replayed together.
Steven has presented the work at professional conferences in the US and internationally. The Biofeedback Federation of Europe has described Steven as "a pioneer of Interpersonal Biofeedback."
The Work Continues
From a BFE webinar to an international research collaboration.
In 2017, Steven presented the BFE webinar Interpersonal Biofeedback: A Hybrid of Couples Counseling and Biofeedback. In 2025, he was invited to help facilitate a live demonstration with couples during Inna Khazan and Santiago Brand's Biofeedback Federation of Europe (BFE) workshop, Harmonizing Connections: Mastering Interpersonal Biofeedback, in Brescia, Italy.
It was there that Steven met University of Parma doctoral researcher Alice Fiduccia. Their work together developed into an international scientific collaboration applying Interpersonal Biofeedback to workplace relationships. Initial research was presented at the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback's 56th Annual Scientific Meeting in May 2026 and continues as part of an innovative app-development project addressing work-related stress in Italy.
A complimentary consultation
A complimentary consultation gives you an opportunity to share a little about what's going on, get your questions answered and get a feel for whether the fit is right.