Both early-career and experienced psychologists will find this textbook an essential guide to practising psychotherapy in Australia.
Psychotherapy research has identified a bewildering array of factors that are important to client outcome. These include client factors, therapist factors, the alliance, and specific forms of intervention, each with its associated rationale and techniques. On what is required for effective psychotherapy, the authors make their stance clear:
'Psychotherapy is effective in bringing about psychological change for most clients. There has been debate between proponents of evidence-based treatments that focus on techniques and those who focus on process issues, such as the therapeutic relationship. Our position is that a range of factors is critical to effective outcome, and that an effective practitioner will attend to all mechanisms that may contribute to client change.’
In this book the authors present a model that integrates these factors and enables practitioners to incorporate them, in a flexible manner, in to their clinical practice.
Adopting a scientist-practitioner framework, the authors guide readers through the successive stages of working with clients, demonstrating how their integrative model can be applied to enhance assessment, conceptualisation, treatment, risk management, and outcome evaluation, irrespective of a practitioner’s theoretical orientation or a client’s presenting problem. The text ends with consideration of professional practice and development issues, including supervision, and therapist well-being and self-care.
Case studies and clinical anecdotes enliven the text. A set of video vignettes, available for download from the internet, illustrate many of the skills, techniques, process issues, and situations mentioned in the text.
Although targeted to psychologists, practitioners from other disciplines are likely to find the text a useful guide to the practice of psychotherapy in Australia.
Analise O’Donovan, Leanne Casey, Marchiene van der Veen, and Mark Boschen are practising clinical psychologists and teach in the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University. |
