How good a therapist are you? Tony Rousmaniere shares some sobering statistics and a few tools to address caseload deterioration.
Eysenck, Rogers and Psychotherapy Effectiveness
In the 1970s I worked as a psychology lecturer in Hans Eysenck’s department at the Institute of Psychiatry, London. He was a controversial figure, quiet and introverted when met face to face, but on the academic stage a formidable and ruthless opponent. Rod Buchanan’s recent biography, Playing with Fire. The Controversial Career of Hans J Eysenck, nicely captures the complexity of the man, part prolific scientist, and part inveterate showman. Whether it was race and IQ, cancer and smoking…
Psychotherapy outcomes: The best therapy or the best therapist?
How can our clients pick the most effective therapist? They can’t. There is no industry standard for tracking and reporting psychotherapy outcomes. This won’t last. Regulators and consumers are going to demand public accounting of treatment effectiveness. If I have the right to ask my surgeon for their success rate, then why can’t my clients ask for mine?
Preventing Psychotherapy Dropouts with Client Feedback
One beginning therapist shares his success with the Session Rating Scale in improving his practice.
Stan Tatkin on a Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy
Dr. Tatkin discusses the goals and methods of a psychobiological approach to couples therapy, including its foundations in attachment theory and developmental neurobiology, and its emphasis on arousal regulation as a dyadic interaction.
Psychotherapy Training on Steroids: Remote Live Supervision
Note to readers: This blog is dedicated to exploring new training tools and techniques to help us become better therapists. May we all become “supershrinks”!
Learning a psychotherapy technique can be like a romantic tragedy. You go to the workshop, fall in love with the technique (and occasionally the presenter), and go home with fantasies of all your therapy cases getting unstuck. On Monday morning in your office, however, everything falls apart: …
Rules for a Good Relationship
1. Never go to bed angry.
Stay up all night yelling and screaming. After the way your partner behaved, he doesn’t deserve to sleep.
2. Don’t jump in to help when your partner is telling a joke
–unless, of course, you can tell it much better.
3. When fighting, take a time out.
That will give you a chance to come up with more devastating putdowns.
4. Don’t interrupt your partner.
You need to have all the facts in order to show her how totally wrong she is.
Alan Marlatt on Harm Reduction Therapy
The founder of Harm Reduction Therapy talks about meditation, college drinking, 12-step programs, and the limitations of abstinence-only interventions.
Trusting the Client as the Agent of Change
Reflections on the client's capacity for change, including a case study of a successful single-session therapeutic intervention.
Suicide During the Holidays . . . Not So Much!
We’ve all heard it on a local or national television or radio station, “And when we return after the weather, we’ll examine the tremendous increase in suicide during the winter holiday season.”
Well that’s great, except for one small thing: It doesn’t exist. In fact, the direct opposite is true. The suicide rate generally hits a peak during April and May. The National Center for Health Statistics placed November and December as the months with the lowest daily rates of…