"Showing how and why contemporary personality science matters in the clinical context, this book offers eminently practical tools for psychotherapists from any disciplinary background, and will also be of interest to personality and social psychologists. It is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate courses and for graduate seminars taught within clinical training programs."--BOOK JACKET.
Written for therapists working with people in distress, this book describes the links between crisis and personality style, and offers a plan for approaching cases with these connections in mind. The authors discuss ways to help patients learn new coping strategies, modify enduring attitudes, and improve their relational patterns. The chapters outline the history of brief dynamic psychotherapy, describe an approach focused on current stressors, apply configurational analysis to case formulation and review, and detail five personality types.
The last two decades have seen unprecedented increases in health care costs and, at the same time, encouraging progress in psychotherapy research. On the one hand, accountability, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency have now become commonplace terms for providers of mental health services whereas, on the other hand, an increasingly voluminous literature has emerged supporting the effectiveness of a number of types of psychotherapies. There now exists the possibility for the design and delivery of mental health services that-drawing upon this literature-more closely approximate empirically established data concerning the appropriateness and effectiveness of psychotherapy. The Handbook of the Brief Psychotherapies is intended to capture one major thrust of this movement: the development of a group of empirically grounded, time-limited therapies all sharing a common interest in the clinical utilization of a structured focus and an emphasis on time and action. For many years, professional self-interest, competing theoretical para digms, and the vagaries of practice, wisdom, and clinical myth have influenced the practice of psychotherapy. A critical questioning of the resulting, predomi nantly nondirective, open-ended, and global therapies has led to a growing emphasis on action-oriented, problem-focused, time-limited therapies. Yet, ironically, this interest in the brief psychotherapies has not so much involved a radical departure from traditional therapeutic modalities as it has emphasized a new pragmatism about how time, action, and structure operate in life as well as in therapy.
This acclaimed clinical guide and widely adopted text has filled a key need in the field since its original publication. Nancy McWilliams makes psychoanalytic personality theory and its implications for practice accessible to practitioners of all levels of experience. She explains major character types and demonstrates specific ways that understanding the patient's individual personality structure can influence the therapist's focus and style of intervention. Guidelines are provided for developing a systematic yet flexible diagnostic formulation and using it to inform treatment. Highly readable, the book features a wealth of illustrative clinical examples. New to This Edition *Reflects the ongoing development of the author's approach over nearly two decades. *Incorporates important advances in attachment theory, neuroscience, and the study of trauma. *Coverage of the contemporary relational movement in psychoanalysis. Winner--Canadian Psychological Association's Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Scholarship
Gary Trosclair explores the power of the driven personality and the positive outcomes those with obsessive compulsive personality disorder can achieve through a mindful program of harnessing the skills that can work, and altering those that serve no one. If you were born with a compulsive personality you may become rigid, controlling, and self-righteous. But you also may become productive, energetic, and conscientious. Same disposition, but very different ways of expressing it. What determines the difference? Some of the most successful and happy people in the world are compelled by powerful inner urges that are almost impossible to resist. They’re compulsive. They’re driven. But some people with a driven personality feel compelled by shame or insecurity to use their compulsive energy to prove their worth, and they lose control of the wheel of their own life. They become inflexible and critical perfectionists who need to wield control, and they lose the point of everything they do in the process. A healthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement are used consciously in the service of passion, love and purpose. An unhealthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement have been hijacked by fear and its henchman, anger. Both are driven: one by meaning, the other by dread. The Healthy Compulsive: Healing Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Taking the Wheel of the Driven Personality, will serve as the ultimate user’s guide for those with a driven personality, including those who have slid into obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Unlike OCD, which results in specific symptoms such as repetitive hand-washing and intrusive thoughts, OCPD permeates the entire personality and dramatically affects relationships. It also requires a different approach to healing. Both scientifically informed and practical, The Healthy Compulsive describes how compulsives get off track and outlines a four-step program to help them consciously cultivate the talents and passions that are the truly compelling sources of the driven personality. Drawing from his 25 years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist and Jungian psychoanalyst, and his own personal experience as someone with a driven personality, Trosclair offers understanding, inspiring stories of change, and hope to compulsives and their partners about how to move to the healthy end of the compulsive spectrum.
Offering a sophisticated introduction to a contemporary psychodynamic model of the mind and treatment, this book provides an approach to understanding and treating higher level personality pathology. It describes a specific form of treatment called "dynamic psychotherapy for higher level personality pathology" (DPHP), which was designed specifically to treat the rigidity that characterizes that condition. Based on psychodynamic object relations theory, DPHP is an outgrowth of transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) and is part of an integrated approach to psychodynamic treatment of personality pathology across the spectrum of severity -- from higher level personality pathology, described in this volume, to severe personality pathology, described in a companion volume, Psychotherapy for Borderline Personality: Focusing on Object Relations. Together, they provide a comprehensive description of an object relations theory-based approach to treatment of personality disorders, embedded in an integrated model of personality. As a guide to treatment, Handbook of Dynamic Psychotherapy for Higher Level Personality Pathology provides a clear, specific, and comprehensive description of how to practice DPHP from beginning to end, presented in jargon-free exposition using extensive clinical illustrations. The authors offer a comprehensive description of psychodynamic consultation that includes sharing the diagnostic impression, establishing treatment goals, discussing treatment options, obtaining informed consent, and establishing treatment frame. Throughout, the book emphasizes fundamental clinical principles that enable the clinician to think through clinical decisions moment-to-moment and also to develop an overall sense of the trajectory and goals of the treatment. Among the book's benefits: Takes a diagnosis-driven approach, presenting a clear model of both the psychopathology and its treatment; Explains underlying theory and basic elements of DPHP for those first learning dynamic therapy; Offers an integrated, innovative synthesis of contemporary psychodynamic approaches to personality pathology and psychodynamic psychotherapy; Describes goals, strategies, tactics, and techniques of the treatment to demonstrate its flexibility over a relatively long course of treatment; Provides sophisticated discussion of integrating dynamic psychotherapy with medication management and other forms of treatment. DPHP offers a broad range of patients the opportunity to modify maladaptive personality functioning in ways that can permanently enhance their quality of life. Handbook of Dynamic Psychotherapy for Higher Level Personality Pathology provides experienced clinicians with a hands-on approach to that method, and is also useful as a primary textbook in courses focusing on the technique of dynamic psychotherapy or in courses on psychodynamics.
"Describes a promising new approach to treating individuals with complicated depression for whom progress is painfully slow, elusive, or followed by relapse. The causes and experience of depression are influenced by personality style: Depression experienced by a person with a dependent style, for example, differs markedly from that experienced by someone with an antisocial personality. This volume, drawing insights from major theoretical orientations, demonstrates how psychotherapy can be tailored to patients' varying needs and communication styles. Because treating personality disorders alleviates depression and vice versa, this approach offers new hope for progress in both realms. Using Theodore Millon's personality-guided psychology as a framework, author Neil R. Bockian illuminates how taking personality into account enables psychologists to tailor their interventions and thus improve the prospects for long-term recovery. For each personality type, the author explores how prevalent depression is; what promotes and maintains it; how psychological, biological, and social factors contribute to it; and the role of medications and of therapist reactions to the patient. This groundbreaking book offers practitioners, researchers, and students a framework for understanding how personality factors increase vulnerability to depression or help buffer against it"--Jacket. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)
This book details the first comparative study under controlled conditions of the three major schools of psychotherapy-client-centered therapy, behavioral or systematic desensitization therapy, and rational-emotive therapy. The study was organized to compare the effectiveness of these distinct forms of counseling with two distinct personality types-introverts and extroverts-in the treatment of two specific homogeneous problems-interpersonal anxiety and general anxiety. The study was reviewed by experts representing each of the schools of thought, and critiques are included as part of the total book. Each school of therapy was evaluated to determine which was most effective with what type of subject. In this study, client-centered therapy proved to have the best results in reducing anxiety with extroverts, while the rational-emotive approach worked best with introverts. The therapy that had the greatest breadth, in terms of effectiveness for both kinds of clients, was systematic desensitization. This remarkable study should have far-reaching influence in the practical use of psychotherapy, and is essential reading for all professionals and psychology students who plan to enter the area of counseling. Instructors can use this book as a basic text or as a supplement to all introductory courses in clinical or counseling psychology offered at the senior/graduate level.
