Handbook of Contemporary Psychotherapy : Toward an Improved Understanding of Effective Psychotherapy

Describes in detail the key constructs and key skills involved in the craft of psychotherapy.

Handbook of Contemporary Psychotherapy explores a wide range of constructs not captured in the DSM or traditional research but that play important roles in psychotherapy cases. To provide readers with a tool bag of practical techniques they can use in these cases, editors William O′Donohue and Steven R. Graybar present chapters written by leading clinical authorities on such topics as the process of change in psychotherapy, attachment and terror management, projective identification, terminating psychotherapy therapeutically, shame and its many ramifications for clients, dream work, boundaries, forgiveness, the repressed and recovered memory debate, and many others. Each chapter includes a definition of the construct, along with sections on theory, the construct′s possible roles in pathology and treatment, measurement, intervention strategies, case illustrations, and future research.

Features

• Addresses in a practical manner complex patients who do not fall under empirically supported treatments or diagnostic categories
• Covers in a scholarly and clinically useful way critically important constructs often neglected in academic discourse
• Explores issues with measurement limitations in an intellectually honest manner
• Offers a tool bag of practical techniques

Of interest to both experienced psychotherapists and to beginning students who wish to better orient to the complexities of psychotherapy, the book is appropriate for all the major disciplines of psychotherapy, including psychiatry, psychology, social work, psychiatric nursing, marital and family therapists.