For all those engaged in psychotherapy practice, regardless of modality or approach, the goal of this book is to provide a framework and method for thinking about their work that allows for critical reflection on their own successes and disappointments, and on the similarities and differences among their own and other practitioners’ work with different clients. The authors use a novel "common factors" approach, based on the idea that some form of development is the outcome of all effective psychotherapy, despite other differences that may exist. While most existing psychotherapy research focuses on treatment outcomes, primarily in terms of symptom reduction, this book offers an alternative research approach that systematically tracks the psychotherapy process itself, and describes each case’s unique developmental outcome. In particular, Basseches & Mascolo focus on the questions of what kinds of therapeutic resources therapists are offering to their clients and whether and how clients are able to make use of these resources in the service of their own development. The goal is to provide a descriptive framework that can be used to appreciate the highly varied ways in which particular therapists tailor their work to unique clients’ developmental needs, while at the same time offering a prescription of a more rigorous method for recognizing and correcting the problem when a particular therapist’s way of working is not serving the client well. Ideally, this type of process-focused research will complement existing outcome research, and be more likely than further symptom-reduction studies to result in the improvement of overall psychotherapy success rates.

For all those engaged in psychotherapy practice, regardless of modality or approach, the goal of this book is to provide a framework and method for thinking about their work that allows for critical reflection on their own successes and disappointments, and on the similarities and differences among their own and other practitioners’ work with different clients. The authors use a novel "common factors" approach, based on the idea that some form of development is the outcome of all effective psychotherapy, despite other differences that may exist. While most existing psychotherapy research focuses on treatment outcomes, primarily in terms of symptom reduction, this book offers an alternative research approach that systematically tracks the psychotherapy process itself, and describes each case’s unique developmental outcome. In particular, Basseches & Mascolo focus on the questions of what kinds of therapeutic resources therapists are offering to their clients and whether and how clients are able to make use of these resources in the service of their own development. The goal is to provide a descriptive framework that can be used to appreciate the highly varied ways in which particular therapists tailor their work to unique clients’ developmental needs, while at the same time offering a prescription of a more rigorous method for recognizing and correcting the problem when a particular therapist’s way of working is not serving the client well. Ideally, this type of process-focused research will complement existing outcome research, and be more likely than further symptom-reduction studies to result in the improvement of overall psychotherapy success rates.

and knowledge, and as a possible way to illuminate change processes in psychotherapy. Today, developmental researchers and neuroscientists increasingly locate keys to psychological health and development in the earliest interactions between mother and infant." "This book, which consists of significant papers by the BCPSG, traces the group's contributions to psychoanalytic topics of note, including; the location of the implicit, the creation of meaning, the moment-by-moment clinical process, and the subjective experience of the therapist. The book also includes new introductions to selected chapters, which provide background on the original intent and reception of each article." --Book Jacket.

`This is an impressive work... and will provide the advanced reader with a rich source of theory and evidence. There is a huge amount to be got from the book and I suspect it will become a key work' - J Gavin Bremner, Department of Psychology, Lancaster University The Handbook of Developmental Psychology is a comprehensive, authoritative yet frontier-pushing overview of the study of human development presented in a single-volume format. It is ideal for experienced individuals wishing for an up-to-date survey of the central themes prevalent to developmental psychology, both past and present, and for those seeking a reference work to help appreciate the subject for the first time. The insightful contributions from world-leading developmental psychologists successfully and usefully integrate different perspectives to studying the subject, following a systematic life-span structure, from pre-natal development through to old age in human beings. The Handbook then concludes with a substantive section on the methodological approaches to the study of development, focusing on both qualitative and quantitative techniques. This unique reference work will be hugely influential for anyone needing or wishing for a broad, yet enriched understanding of this fascinating subject. It will be a particularly invaluable resource for academics and researchers in the fields of developmental psychology, education, parenting, cultural and biological psychology and anthropology.

The development in recent years of the intersections between the family and literary study continues to emerge as one of the most productive and illuminating arenas of contemporary critique. In addition to addressing the family dynamic through which a given literary character develops a fully realized sense of self, family systems therapy allows readers to examine the patterns by which characters function in their larger intimate systems, whether those systems be social, institutional, or even global. As the intellectual foundation for the forms of therapy practiced by the majority of contemporary American and European psychotherapists, the study of family systems theory and its intersections with literary works affords readers with an illuminating glimpse into the terminology and processes involved in this dynamic form of critique. Perhaps most significantly, family systems therapy allows critics to consider the distinctly social interactions that characterise our pathways to interpersonal development and selfhood. John V. Knapp is Professor of English, with a joint appointment in modern literature and in teacher education, at Northern Illinois University. Kenneth Womack is Assist

All psychological processes—like biological and social ones—are dynamic. Phenomena of nature, society, and the human psyche are context bound, constantly changing, and variable. This feature of reality is often not recognized in the social sciences where we operate with averaged data and with homogeneous stereotypes, and consider our consistency to be the cornerstone of rational being. Yet we are all inconsistent in our actions within a day, or from, one day to the next, and much of such inconsistency is of positive value for our survival and development. Our inconsistent behaviors and thoughts may appear chaotic, yet there is generality within this highly variable dynamic. The task of scientific methodologies—qualitative and quantitative—is to find out what that generality is. It is the aim of this handbook to bring into one framework various directions of construction of methodology of the dynamic processes that exist in the social sciences at the beginning of the 21st century. This handbook is set up to bring together pertinent methodological scholarship from all over the world, and equally from the quantitative and qualitative orientations to methodology. In addition to consolidating the pertinent knowledge base for the purposes of its further growth, this book serves the major educational role of bringing practitioners—students, researchers, and professionals interested in applications—the state of the art know-how about how to think about extracting evidence from single cases, and about the formal mathematical-statistical tools to use for these purposes.