Polster summarizes his approach: “Obvious therapeutic techniques will alienate him. Instead I’ll try to stay in close contact with him, more like a savvy uncle than a therapist, meeting and matching him with sarcasm, humor, confrontation, and common sense. Everything I say will be as close to the truth and responsive to our interchanges as possible.”
In numerous vignettes over the course of treatment, we watch Polster continuously engage Gerald in here-and-now interactions, matching wits, joining him with humor, and challenging his defenses with a delicate balance of confrontation and empathy. Erving and Miriam Polster provide illuminating commentary, sharing with the viewers mature wisdom garnered from a lifetime of practicing therapy and training thousands of therapists. It is hard to imagine any therapist who will not benefit from the viewing of this video.
