Adult Personality Growth in Psychotherapy

Book excerpt: This book will expand your therapeutic repertoire. Once crises have been resolved, the clinician and patient explore what can change in order to increase the patient's capacities for balance, harmony and satisfaction. Adult personality growth increases self-awareness, amplifies capacities for realistic social cognition and reduces avoidances. The outcome is the achievement of a wider range of safe emotional expression and mastery of previous traumas and losses. The three parts of this book are on identity, relationships and control of emotion. The chapters illustrate how observation, formulation and technique are linked in a continuing process of deepening understanding. Vignettes give examples of what the therapist can say to help a patient, especially at difficult times in treatment. This is a cutting-edge work integrating elements from various schools of psychotherapy and studies of adult development. It links theories to pragmatic techniques and will appeal to both trainees and experienced clinicians.