Psychotherapy and Counselling in Practice
A Narrative Framework

This book gives a model for best practice and consistently good outcome across the range of psychotherapeutic systems.

Digby Tantam (Author)

9780521479639, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 11 July 2002

334 pages, 10 tables
22.7 x 15.1 x 2.6 cm, 0.53 kg

'Digby Tantam [] is ideally qualified to produce this book, which aims to 'describe the process of psychotherapy and identify the fundamental elements that lead to good outcome across all schools' … I would recommend this book if you are interested in a framework that adapts what works from evidence into a structured and practical approach. It achieves what it sets out to do, praise indeed given its scope and ambition.' Journal of Psychosomatic Research

The many different therapeutic models in use today can lead to blind spots in clinical practice. This important and timely book gives a balanced synthesis, based on actual cases, evidence, practice and experience, to describe the process of psychotherapy and identify the fundamental elements that lead to good outcome across all its schools. In the course of developing a consistently reliable, effective, practical psychotherapy, Digby Tantam pinpoints four essential principles: addressing the person's concerns; taking into account their values and personal morality; recognizing the role of emotions; and binding it all into a narrative treatment for symptom relief, resolution of predicaments, release from addiction or sexual problems, and finding happiness through intimacy. This book is essential reading for psychiatrists or clinical psychologists looking for a straightforward framework for short-term psychotherapy and anyone working long-term with patients using a psychotherapy model.

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
1. Establishing the concerns
2. Values
3. What life means: emotional flavour
4. Narrating the treatment: the formulation, reformulation and therapeutic contract
5. Narrating the self
6. Procedures for gaining relief
7. Resolution: finding out what's doing this to me
8. Universal technique for resolving predicaments
9. Relinquishment and releasement: changing something about me
10. Renarration: finding happiness
11. Crises and how to surmount them
References
Appendix I: confidential record
Appendix II
Index.

Subject Areas: Psychotherapy [MMJT], Psychology [JM]