Articles & Interviews

Barry Duncan and Scott Miller provide a comprehensive summary of the Outcome-Informed, Client-Directed approach and a detailed, practical overview of its application in clinical practice.

Dr. Rabin shares lessons culled from 40 years of psychotherapy teaching and practice.

After suffering from a stroke herself, a therapist recounts her journey from patient to professional, culminating in her leading  groups for other stroke survivors.

If we could learn from all of our less-than-optimal therapy outcomes, we'd really acquire some true clinical wisdom.  Here are some practical tips to increase your odds of success.

A therapist explores the complex feelings that arise when a client terminates abruptly.

Encountering resistance is likely evidence that therapy is taking place. In fact, successful psychotherapy is highly related to increases in resistance, and low resistance corresponds with negative outcomes.

A psychologist's skeptical look at the science (or lack thereof) behind much of the self-help industry,

A therapist poetically chronicles an underreported occupational hazard.

Clients of the best therapists improve at a rate at least 50-percent higher and drop out at a rate at least 50-percent lower than those of average clinicians. What is the key to superior performance?

Existential psychotherapist Irv Yalom offers insights into the therapist's role as an obstacle remover and fellow traveler. Excerpted from his book The Gift of Therapy.

Lillian Rubin's moving account of her challenging psychotherapy with a man struggling with his disability. Reprinted from the book of the same title.

Psychiatrist Ron Leifer gives a compelling account of the historical context of Thomas Szasz's career as the leading critic of the medical model of psychiatry, along with its implications for the profession of psychiatry and for free thought and speech in the United States.

The main elements of successful therapy include a positive therapeutic alliance, a clear focus, a coherent problem formulation, and improvised techniques—not a particular theoretical orientation.

Reflections on the client's capacity for change, including a case study of a successful single-session therapeutic intervention.

Dr. Sommers discusses the prevalent problem of cultural silencing called "niceness," and offers case studies and advice for addressing associated client issues of anxiety and helplessness.

We all know that clients may withhold critical information, but what do we do when they deliberately lie? Jeffrey Kottler explores this in an excerpt from his latest book, The Assassin and the Therapist: An Exploration of Truth in Psychotherapy and in Life.

Richard Halgin shares the story of a long-term client's unexpected death, and how he managed his professional boundaries around this tragic event.

A psychotherapist explores client-therapist boundaries and termination issues in a particularly intensive course of therapy.

In a discussion of the growing problem of work-life balance in American culture, Dr. Philipson shares the stories of clients whose overidentification with work ended in disaster.

Working in the here-and-now of the therapeutic relationship requires therapists to be fully engaged, and take risks in revealing themselves. But utilizing the transference and counter-transference makes for rewarding and powerful therapy.

Larry Beutler discusses how to incorporate scientific findings into psychotherapy practice and teaching, and what horse training has to do with any of this.

Mardi Horowitz discusses his research on psychotherapy for stress and trauma, his recent book on happiness, and what therapists can teach their clients about attaining it.

The founder of the first professional school of psychology, visionary, and gadfly Nick Cummings reflects on the history and predicts the future of psychotherapy.

Renegade psychoanalyst Owen Renegade argues that psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy can and must be practical.

The foremost psychiatric critic of our times, Thomas Szasz, engages in an in-depth dialogue of his life's work including freedom and liberty, the myth of mental illness, drug laws, the fragile state of psychotherapy, and his passion for humanistic values and social justice.