Developmentally Based Psychotherapy

Book excerpt: In Developmentally Based Psychotherapy, Dr. Greenspan enlarges both our understanding of human development and the therapeutic processes that promote emotional growth. Dr. Greenspan formulates practical therapeutic strategies based on our most recent discoveries of early presymbolic levels of adaptive and disturbed personality functioning, observations of the biological aspects of symptom and character formation, and emerging understanding of the phases of development throughout the course of life. Developmentally Based Psychotherapy formulates therapeutic processes that enable patients to build psychological capacities formerly thought to be beyond the reach of psychotherapy such as altering basic expectations, mood, and temperament; transforming impulses and behaviors into affects and mental representations; and forming new internalized object relationships, organizations of self, and capacities for self observation. In addition, Dr. Greenspan provides a new framework for research by defining developmentally based, clinically relevant categories of behavior and observable intervention strategies.