Brief but Comprehensive Psychotherapy

This book employs and transcends the customary methods of diagnosis and treatment by providing several unique assessment procedures, as well as many distinctive therapeutic recommendations. Major factors that have made brevity possible in psychotherapy are the learning-based, problem-focused, and solution-oriented approaches, and the evolution of sophisticated and effective techniques for biological assessment and intervention. Whereas many clinicians derided behavior therapists for their emphasis on being active, giving homework assignments, and maintaining specific foci, procedures of this kind have now become standard fare across a diverse range of brief therapies. Specific boundaries have been proposed to protect patients from exploitation and any form of harassment and discrimination, and to emphasize the significance of respect, integrity, confidentiality, and informed consent. In many circles these well-intentioned guidelines have reached a point of absurdity and are transformed into rigid straitjackets that force clinicians into a remote and cold posture. In addition to the psychotherapy literature, the author modernizes his eclectic and goal-oriented approach to psychotherapy. Using traditional acronym--BASIC I. D.--the author stresses the assessment of seven dimensions of a client’s personality: Behavior, affect, sensation, imagery, cognition, interpersonal relationships, and drugs/biology. In multimodal assessment, the BASIC I. D. serves as a template to remind people to examine each of the seven modalities and their interactive effects. The book demonstrates how brief multimodal therapy can be adapted and applied to specific disorders. When individual agendas, hidden or other, undermine a relationship, individual therapy is often essential before the couple can benefit from conjoint therapy. When distressed couples are relatively stable and are genuinely interested in achieving a harmonious relationship, salubrious outcomes can usually be achieved in six or seven sessions of “didactic instruction”.