Countertransference and the Therapist’s Inner Experience explores the inner world of the psychotherapist and its influences on the relationship between psychotherapist and patient. This relationship is a major element determining the success of psychotherapy, in addition to determining how and to what extent psychotherapy works with each individual patient. Authors Charles J. Gelso and Jeffrey A. Hayes present the history and current status of countertransference, offer a theoretically integrative conception, and focus on how psychotherapists can manage countertransference in a way that benefits the therapeutic process. The book contains completely up-to-date data from existing research findings, and illuminates the universality of countertransference across all psychotherapies and psychotherapists. Contents include: *the operation of countertransference across three predominant theory clusters in psychotherapy; *leading factors involved in the management of countertransference; and *valuable recommendations for psychotherapy practitioners and researchers. Professionals in clinical and counseling psychology, psychiatry, social work, and counseling will benefit from this volume. The book is also appropriate for graduate students in these fields.

Countertransference and the Therapist's Inner Experience explores the inner world of the psychotherapist and its influences on the relationship between psychotherapist and patient. Gelso and Hayes present the history and current status of countertransference, offer a theoretically integrative conception, and focus on how psychotherapists can manage countertransference in a way that benefits the therapeutic process.

Lessons from the personal experience and reflections of a therapist. The difficulty and cost of training psychotherapists properly is well known. It is far easier to provide a series of classes while ignoring the more challenging personal components of training. Despite the fact that the therapist's self-insight, emotional maturity, and calm centeredness are critical for successful psychotherapy, rote knowledge and technical skills are the focus of most training programs. As a result, the therapist's personal growth is either marginalized or ignored. The Making of a Therapist counters this trend by offering graduate students and beginning therapists a personal account of this important inner journey. Cozolino provides a unique look inside the mind and heart of an experienced therapist. Readers will find an exciting and privileged window into the experience of the therapist who, like themselves, is just starting out. In addition, The Making of a Therapist contains the practical advice, common-sense wisdom, and self-disclosure that practicing professionals have found to be the most helpful during their own training.The first part of the book, 'Getting Through Your First Sessions,' takes readers through the often-perilous days and weeks of conducting initial sessions with real clients. Cozolino addresses such basic concerns as: Do I need to be completely healthy myself before I can help others? What do I do if someone comes to me with an issue or problem I can't handle? What should I do if I have trouble listening to my clients? What if a client scares me?The second section of the book, 'Getting to Know Your Clients,' delves into the routine of therapy and the subsequent stages in which you continue to work with clients and help them. In this context, Cozolino presents the notion of the 'good enough' therapist, one who can surrender to his or her own imperfections while still guiding the therapeutic relationship to a positive outcome. The final section, 'Getting to Know Yourself,' goes to the core of the therapist's relation to him- or herself, addressing such issues as: How to turn your weaknesses into strengths, and how to deal with the complicated issues of pathological caretaking, countertransference, and self-care.Both an excellent introduction to the field as well as a valuable refresher for the experienced clinician, The Making of a Therapist offers readers the tools and insight that make the journey of becoming a therapist a rich and rewarding experience.

This book identifies which characteristics make therapists more or less effective in their work and proposes guidelines to improve their effectiveness.

This book presents a classic examination of transference phenomena and focuses on the development of psychoanalytic technique and theory. It addresses a perceived gap between psychoanalytic knowledge and its capacity to effect psychological transformation in a patient.

Management of Countertransference with Borderline Patients is an open and detailed discussion of the emotional reactions that clinicians experience when treating borderline patients. This book provides a systematic approach to managing countertransference that legitimizes the therapist's reactions and shows ways to use them therapeutically with the patient.

This work explores the psychoanalytic constructs of transference and countertransference and explains how structures and activities in the human brain account for them. It identifies major transferential and countertransferential themes and ways in which displaced material is most likely to manifest. Written in non-analytic language for non-analysts, this work outlines a five-step approach to allow displaced material to reveal its basic meaning. It provides clinicians with several management strategies, including formulating and using interpretations in a way that does not threaten clients. The focus is on transference and countertransference as they relate to major phases of non-analytic therapy. Through this approach, the book useful provides templates for identifying transference and countertransference phenomena and guidelines for interpreting them to clients. By summarizing key research findings, it will allow readers from various theoretical orientations to make their own judgments about how to deal with the potentially harmful and potentially beneficial phenomena of transference and countertransference.

Patients that have significant narcissistic personality pathology are challenging to most therapists. Student therapists often find that treating such patients is particularly difficult. Not only do such patients challenge the therapist's conceptualization and empathic skills, but they also evoke strong feelings toward the patient, a phenomenon known as countertransference, which can be personally unnerving. However, countertransference can be used as a tool in better understanding one's patient and how to best intervene with him or her. This book sets out to accomplish three major objectives. First, it describes narcissistic pathology from a psychoanalytic and psychodynamic perspective, which allows therapists to have a meaningful framework from which to think about their patients' problems and work with them. Second, it discusses how countertransference can be understood as a useful therapeutic tool. Third, it presents four case studies from doctoral students in various stages of their clinical training and how they came to understand and work with their patients in therapeutically effective ways by managing and understanding their countertransference reactions. In the end, it is hoped that the reader will see that, while they may be challenging at times, narcissistic patients can be effectively treated if therapists have a meaningful theoretical framework from which to think about their patients and can become comfortable with their own inner lives as they relate to their patients.

"On Learning from the Patient is concerned with the potential for psychoanalytic thinking to become self-perpetuating. Patrick Casement explores the dynamics of the helping relationship - learning to recognize how patients offer cues to the therapeutic experience that they are unconsciously in search of. Using many telling clinical examples, he illustrates how, through trial identification, he has learned to monitor the implications of his own contributions to a session from the viewpoint of the patient. He shows how, with the aid of this internal supervision, many initial failures to respond appropriately can be remedied and even used to the benefit of the therapeutic work. By learning to better distinguish what helps the therapeutic process from what hinders it, ways are discovered to avoid the circularity of pre-conception by analysts who aim to understand the unconscious of others. From this lively examination of key clinical issues, the author comes to see psychoanalytic therapy as a process of re-discovering theory - and developing a technique that is more specifically related to the individual patient. The dynamics illustrated here, particularly the processes of interactive communication and containment, occur in any helping relationship and are applicable throughout the caring professions. Patrick Casement's unusually frank presentation of his own work, aided by his lucid and non-technical language, allows wide scope for readers to form their own ideas about the approach to technique he describes. This Classic Edition includes a new introduction to the work by Andrew Samuels and, together with its sequel Further Learning from the Patient, will be an invaluable training resource for trainee and practising analysts or therapists."--

Designed for psychotherapists and counsellors in training, An Introduction to the Therapeutic Frame clarifies the concept of the frame - the way of working set out in the first meeting between therapist and client. This Classic Edition of the book includes a brand new introduction by the author. Anne Gray, an experienced psychotherapist and teacher, uses lively and extensive case material to show how the frame can both contain feelings and further understanding within the therapeutic relationship. She takes the reader through each stage of therapeutic work, from the first meeting to the final contact, and looks at those aspects of management that beginners often find difficult, such as fee payment, letters and telephone calls, supervision and evaluation. Her practical advice on how to handle these situations will be invaluable to trainees as well as to those involved in their training.