Clinical Strategies for Becoming a Master Psychotherapist

High profile, expert, "master" therapists discuss the art psychotherapy!

William O'Donohue (Edited by), Nicholas A. Cummings (Edited by)

9780120884162

Paperback / softback, published 1 April 2006

368 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 2.4 cm, 0.59 kg

The best health practices are a synthesis of science and art. Surgery is a case in point. Although all competent surgeons follow scientific protocols, the best surgeons are masters of the art of surgery and produce better outcomes: e.g., smaller incisions; lower mortality rates. Psychotherapists are in exactly the same position. Psychotherapy is both a science and an art. There are excellent resources that convey information about empirically supported practices — the science of psychotherapy. However, this scientific information is incomplete in two important ways. It does not cover key matters that come up in psychotherapy (e.g., building a therapeutic relationship, resistance, termination), and it often does not fully cover the "art" of implementing these techniques, the nuances, the creative ways, the problem solving strategies when difficulties arise. This book is an attempt to have high profile, expert, "master" therapists discuss the art of handling these key issues.

1. The Art and Science of Psychotherapy
2. Enhancing Client Motivation to Change
3. The Therapeutic Alliance: Cultivating and Negotiating the Therapeutic Relationship
4. Narrative Psychotherapy as Effective Story-Making: An Introduction
5. Recognizing and Dealing with Cultural Influences in Psychotherapy
6. Effective Understanding and Dealing with Manipulation
7. Recognizing and Dealing with Transference
8. The Temporal Structure of Therapy: Key Questions often Associated with Different Phases of Sessions and Treatments (Plus Twenty-one Helpful Hints)
9. Resistance as an Ally in Psychotherapy
10. Enhancing Psychotherapy through Appropriate Entry Points
11. Dealing with Feelings of Depression
12. Designing and Assigning Effective Homework
13. Skills Training: How the Master Clinician Understands and Teaches Competencies
14. Using Tasks in Ericksonian Psychotherapy
15. Using Acceptance in Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy
16. Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy Goes to Hollywood: The Treatment of Performance Anxiety in Cinema
17. The Importance of Novelty in Psychotherapy
18. Interruption Replaces Termination in Focused, Intermittent Psychoterapy throughout the Life Cycle
19. Suicidal Patients: The Ultimate Challenge for Master Psychotherapists

Subject Areas: Psychotherapy [MMJT], Clinical psychology [MMJ], Psychology [JM]