Psychotherapy is a $2.5 billion business in the United States, but no one can answer the basic question of how therapy works. No watchdog groups rank therapists for potential consumers; no one school of thought has proven to be superior to another. And no method has emerged for determining what makes therapy successful for some but not for others. Doing Psychotherapy Effectively proposes much-needed answers to the puzzling questions of what therapists actually do when they are effective. Mona Sue Weissmark and Daniel A. Giacomo offer a unique mode of evaluation that focuses not on a particular school of therapy but on the relationship between therapist and patient. Their approach, the "Harvard Psychotherapy Coding Method," begins with the assumption that good therapeutic relationships are far from intuitive. Successful relationships follow a pattern of behaviors that can be identified and quantified, as the authors demonstrate through clinical research and videotaped sessions of expert therapists. Likewise, positive changes in the patient, observed through client feedback and case studies, can be described operationally; they involve the process of overcoming feelings of detachment, helplessness, and rigidity and becoming more involved, effective, and adaptable. Weissmark and Giacomo explain and ground these principles in the practice of psychotherapy, making Doing Psychotherapy Effectively an accessible and pragmatic work which will give readers a tool for measuring therapeutic effectiveness and further understanding human transformation. For the first time, successful therapy is described in a way that can be practiced and communicated.

What is it that makes some therapists so much more effective than others, even when they are delivering the same evidence-based treatment? This instructive book identifies specific interpersonal skills and attitudes--often overlooked in clinical training--that facilitate better client outcomes across a broad range of treatment methods and contexts. Reviewing 70 years of psychotherapy research, the preeminent authors show that empathy, acceptance, warmth, focus, and other characteristics of effective therapists are both measurable and teachable. Richly illustrated with annotated sample dialogues, the book gives practitioners and students a blueprint for learning, practicing, and self-monitoring these crucial clinical skills.

An in-depth look at a much misunderstood practice, offering a fresh viewpoint on how this science can be a universally effective route to our better selves.

The best therapists embody the changes they attempt to facilitate in their patients. In other words, they practice what they preach and are an authentic and engaged, as well as highly skilled, presence. Maximizing Effectiveness in Dynamic Psychotherapy demonstrates how and why therapists can and must develop the specific skills and personal qualities required to produce consistently effective results. The six factors now associated with brain change and positive outcome in psychotherapy are front and center in this volume. Each factor is elucidated and illustrated with detailed, verbatim case transcripts. In addition, intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy, a method of treatment that incorporates all these key factors, is introduced to the reader. Therapists of every stripe will learn to develop and integrate the clinical skills presented in this book to improve their interventions, enhance effectiveness and, ultimately, help more patients in a deeper and more lasting fashion.

Foreword / K. Anders Ericsson -- Preface: Better results are within reach -- What therapists will say, won't say, and can't say -- What do we really know about psychotherapy, after all? -- Learning from the experts on expertise -- What is (and is not) deliberate practice? -- Baseline matters -- How to find your baseline -- Making sense of your baseline -- Mining your data for better results -- How average leads to better results -- How being bad can make you better -- What matters most for better results -- A study in deliberate practice -- "Yeah, but what am I supposed to do?" -- Designing a system of deliberate practice.

The initial conceptualization of this book was much more narrow than the final product that has emerged. I started out believing that it would be enlightening to have a group of acknowledged rational-emotive therapy (RET) expert practitioners with well-established literary credentials write about how they approach the problem of modifying dient irrationality. Many RET practitioners of all levels of experience are, on the one hand, enamored of the economy, the precision, and the accuracy of psychological insight that RET theory offers, but they are, on the other hand, equally frustrated by their own inability to "persuade" or otherwise change some of the dients they work with more quickly or even at all. Indeed, dients themselves frequently express the view that RET is illuminating, yet they find themselves at the same time puzzled and perplexed by their inability to make the substantial changes that RET invites. It became dearer as I discussed the project with many of the contrib utors that to practice RET effectively requires more than just innovative and persistent assessment and intervention techniques. For example, Rus sell Grieger expressed the view that more prerequisite work needs to be done on the value and philosophical systems of dients-induding person al responsibility and the philosophy of happiness-before many dients can show significant shifts in their thinking. Susan Walen raised the gener al issues of how effective RET can be in the treatment of biologically driven affective disorders.

"The author of Doing Supportive Psychotherapy set out to address a paradox: although conducting psychotherapy is one of the most intimate and exciting things a mental health professional can do, many textbooks on the subject are dull, with formal, stilted dialogue between patient and therapist which prompts the question,'Does anyone really talk like that?'This text was designed to be different. In a dynamic, informal style, the book draws the reader in, providing the essential building blocks that are both applicable to any mental health discipline and compatible with any type of psychotherapy. The dozens of case examples presented were taken from actual cases and illustrate a full range of interactions from the excellent to the seemingly ineffective: all have instructional value. Likewise, the dialogue between therapist and patient is conversational in a realistic way, sometimes eloquent, sometimes not. This approach gives the reader a true sense of the scope of the therapeutic interaction. In addition, the underlying structure of the book is logical and easy to grasp, beginning with the evolution of supportive psychotherapy and ending with a chapter on termination. • The principles of learning to do a psychodynamic formulation are outlined in a step-by-step fashion, making it easy to learn, progress, and practice. The concepts and techniques explored throughout the book are grounded in the psychotherapy literature, and evidence-based research is cited where relevant. The book emphasizes that psychotherapy is an inexact science, therapists are human, and the process of therapy is a journey that is constantly changing rather than static. This approach reassures the reader, who feels supported in a 'holding environment' while learning psychotherapy. The text is short and sweet, designed to teach essentials and include just enough to get clinicians started in supportive psychotherapy. Although the text is targeted at readers on the path toward becoming psychotherapists (social workers, family counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists), those who don't conduct psychotherapy will find it an essential tool for learning how to understand patients as well as for learning strategies and techniques for keeping a good therapeutic alliance (which inevitably translates into good medication compliance). Doing Supportive Psychotherapy is a brief, spirited book, which functions as both instructional text and paean to psychotherapy. In vigorous, personal prose, the author leaves readers with the message that they are not alone as they venture into the overwhelmingly complex, perplexing, and yet totally wonderful endeavor of the talking cure.".