The gift of therapy : an open letter to a new generation of therapists and their patients
Irvin D. Yalom (Author)
At once startlingly profound and irrestibly practical, the author's insights-let the patient matter to you; create a new kind of therapy for each patient; how and how not to use self-disclosure-help enrich the therapeutic process for both patient and counselor
Print Book, English, 2009
First Harper Perennial edition View all formats and editions
Harper Perennial, New York, 2009
xxi, 263, 32 pages : illustrations, portrait ; 21 cm
9780061719615, 0061719617
232977629
1. Remove the obstacles to growth
2. Avoid diagnosis (except for insurance companies)
3. Therapist and patient as "fellow travelers,"
4. Engage the patient
5. Be supportive
6. Empathy: looking out the patient's window
7. Teach empathy
8. Let the patient matter to you
9. Acknowledge your errors
10. Create a new therapy for each patient
11. The therapeutic act, not the therapeutic word
12. Engage in personal therapy
13. The therapist has many patients; the patient, one therapist
14. The here-and-now, use it, use it, use it
15. Why use the here-and-now?
16. Using the here-and-now; grow rabbit ears
17. Search for here-and-now equivalents
18. Working through issues in the here-and-now
19. The here-and-now energizes therapy
20. Use your own feelings as data
21. Frame here-and-now comments carefully
22. All is grist for the here-and-now mill
23. Check into the here-and-now each hour
24. What lies have you told me?
25. Blank screen? Forget it! Be real
26. Three kinds of therapist self-disclosure
27. The mechanism of therapy; be transparent
28. Revealing here-and-now feelings; use discretion
29. Revealing the therapist's personal life; use caution
30. Revealing your personal life; caveats
31. Therapist transparency and universality
32. Patients will resist your disclosure
33. Avoid the crooked cure
34. On taking patients further than you have gone
35. On being helped by your patient
36. Encourage patient self-disclosure
37. Feedback in psychotherapy
38. Provide feedback effectively and gently
39. Increase receptiveness to feedback by using "parts,"
40. Feedback: strike when the iron is cold
41. Talk about death
42. Death and life enhancement
43. How to talk about death 44. Talk about life meaning
45. Freedom
46. Helping patients assume responsibility
47. Never (almost never) make decisions for the patient
48. Decisions: A via regia into existential bedrock
49. Focus on resistance to decision
50. Facilitating awareness by advice giving
51. Facilitating decisions; other devices
52. Conduct therapy as a continuous session
53. Take notes of each session
54. Encourage self-monitoring
55. When your patient weeps
56. Give yourself time between patients
57. Express your dilemmas openly
58. Do home visits
59. Don't take explanation too seriously
60. Therapy-accelerating devices
61. Therapy as a dress rehearsal for life
62. Use the initial complaint as leverage
63. Don't be afraid of touching your patient
64. Never be sexual with patients
65. Look for anniversary and life-stage issues
66. Never ignore "therapy anxiety,"
67. Doctor, take away my anxiety
68. On being love's executioner
69. Taking a history
70. A history of the patient's daily schedule
71. How is the patient's life peopled?
72. Interview the significant other
73. Explore previous therapy
74. Sharing the shade of the shadow
75. Freud was not always wrong
76. CBT is not what it's cracked up to be ... Or, don't be afraid of the EVT boogeyman
77. Dreams; use them, use them, use them
78. Full interpretation of a dream? Forget it!
79. Use dreams pragmatically: pillage and loot
80. Master some dream navigational skills
81. Learn about the patients's life from dreams
82. Pay attention to the first dream
83. Attend carefully to dreams about the therapist
84. Beware the occupational hazards
85. Cherish the occupational privileges
P.S. Insights, interviews & more. About the author
About the book
Have you read?
"Includes more than twenty additional pages of new therapy tips by the author"--Cover