Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

I was in a forum where I was asked to read this book first before Jon’s co creating safety book. I wish this was a requirement for all schools. It is exactly the type of learning that can add confidence for learning and especially newly licensed therapists. I am so glad to have found this and it is so rich of examples I sometimes have to re read the page to make sure I’m getting it. I am not done yet and feel like I am going to want to re read it again later. Definitely cannot go wrong at all!

This book is not an easy read, especially for someone who is new to the field of psychology. After reading this book several times though, I have found that my perspective when listening has deepened and I now have 4 new ways of listening to a conversation. The whole book is structured around the author providing exercises to develop listening skills in four areas; Reflection, Conflict (a patients Wish, Fear of what would happen if he / she were to indulge in the Wish, and Defense to protect against the Fear), Transference, and Defense (how a patient shifts away from speaking about a wish). I found the authors distinction of focusing on content vs. process to be very useful. Though I have not mastered the listening skills the author is promoting, I have gained much. I think an area for improvement for this book would be more coherency. In reading the vignettes provided by the author for the purpose of practice listening from these new perspectives, I found that information had been left out and yet in order to decode the defense or wish, etc... this information is critical. What comes to mind is a vignette when the client is being vague about a relationship with a man. I empathies with her in one way yet when I read the authors interpretation, he had the information that she was previously raped. I found this type of incoherency as an obstacle when reading this book.

Excellent and helpful book, that actually makes you think for yourself, so it's more a case of learning-by-doing, which makes the lessons and points contained within stick in your mind all the better. Take the time and consider each case presented, and you'll gain much more than if you just read through this quickly.Even though the author's book "Co-Creating Change" contains more advanced and useful techniques, this book is, in my opinion, much more well-written.

Very good for beginning therapists to learn how to listen, understand underlying causes of behavior, transference, countertransference, and How & when to make interpretations.

Regardless of a therapist's theoretical orientation, this is a very useful book, especially for the beginning clinician. I wish had known about it when I was a supervisor.

An excellent text to learn the basics of psychodynamic therapy. Provides detailed explanations with clinical examples. One of the better books on practical application of psychodynamic therapy.

For all the reading I have to do, this is a very easy text to breeze through. This was a good choice on my instructor's part.

This is not a how-to manual for psychodynamic therapy. There is no color-by-numbers when it comes to psychoanalysis, so if you want to understand the basics of what psychoanalysis is all about, go to Freud's Introductory Lectures. But if what you want is a primer on how to LISTEN therapeutically, this is the right place to start. What is shown here are the basic listening competences that therapy requires. It's a good first step on the path to learning the setting for a psychodynamic healing process -just a beginning, but a just beginning.

A very impressive and focused book designed to help devolop basic skills of psychodynamic therapy focusing on area s of reflection, conflict, transfreance, defence mechanism with indepth vignette's demonstrating how the skills are applied in my opinion a must for any person intresting in expanding there knowledge in a psychodynamic orientation