Changes in the Therapist: a Casebook

Modern therapy has shifted its emphasis to focus on the interpersonal field and on "mutuality of influence." The therapist and the patient are now seen as participating in an ongoing feedback loop, with each influencing the other. This interpersonal focus has brought the therapists and their reactions more into the foreground. Experiences with patients can, in fact, have strong reverberations in practitioners' own lives and can be the cause or source of essential changes in the psyche of the therapist. This book is the first to explore how efforts to work through issues in therapeutic relationships may permanently affect therapists' beliefs, feelings, and/or actions. The authors, all highly regarded senior clinicians, describe their own reactions and the types of changes that they went through as a consequence of their treatment of a particular patient. They do not make the therapeutic process seem artificially smooth and seamless. In probing their own struggles and difficulties, they illuminate the in-depth workings of the therapeutic relationship. The editors' introduction constructs a systematic framework within which to think about the changes the authors recount. Changes in the Therapist will be of compelling interest to all those involved in therapy.

Book Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction -- I CHANGES IN ATTITUDE ABOUT DEATH -- 1 From an Artist's Palette -- 2 A Matter of Life and Death: The Case of Jan -- 3 Where Angels Fear to Tread -- 4 Hearing the Unspoken: From Hypnotherapist to Comatherapist -- II CHANGES IN ABILITY TO MOURN PARENTS -- 5 Finding a Fatherly Self -- 6 The Nike Boy and I -- III CHANGES IN PERSPECTIVES OF THE SELF -- 7 Pain: A Story -- 8 Gently Wiping Her Tears Away -- 9 Empathic Interactive Therapy: Feeling and Learning With the Patient -- 10 Death, Bereavement, and the Therapist -- 11 The Little Engine That Could -- IV CHANGES IN TECHNIQUE -- 12 Myths in Collision -- 13 Changing the Use of Hypnosis in My Practice -- V CHANGES IN TOLERANCE FOR UNCERTAINTY -- 14 Countertransference and the Torture Survivor -- 15 Living With Uncertainty -- 16 In Harm's Way: Thoughts and Reflections on an Unwelcome Struggle -- About the Contributors -- AUTHOR INDEX -- SUBJECT INDEX.