Core Processes in Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

Many students enter graduate programs with little or no experience of psychodynamic psychotherapy. Efforts to impart clinical skills have often been less than systematic and beginning psychotherapists have not always been encouraged to think about what they are doing and why they are doing it from a scientific standpoint. Thoughtfully building on current debates over efficacy and effectiveness, this book outlines a promising approach to training in which the work of therapy is divided into tasks patterned after Luborsky’s influential delineation of “curative factors”–significant developments in the course of the therapy that are crucial for effective change. Each task step for the therapist-cognitive, behavioral, affective, or a combination–is analyzed, taught separately, and then put in sequence with the other task steps. Curative factors have been extensively studied in recent years and the approach rests on a solid empirical base. In a climate of increased accountability, clinicians must demonstrate that they are responding to providers’ requests to conduct evidence-based practices. Core Processes in Brief Psychodynamic Psychotherapy will be an invaluable resource not only for students and trainees, but for established therapists who find themselves asked to justify their work.