Integrating 12-Steps and Psychotherapy

Book excerpt: Integrating 12 Steps and Psychotherapy: Helping Clients Find Sobriety and Recovery presents a practical and applied approach to working with substance dependent clients. Designed to be accessible to a wide and multidisciplinary audience of helpers at all skill levels, this text helps future practitioners fully understand the clinical challenges with substance dependence, adjust their thinking and technique in order to match their client's phase of recovery, and optimize client retention and treatment outcomes. Utilizing educator, training, and practice perspectives, authors Kevin A. Osten and Robert Switzer explore relevant theory and techniques in integrating 12-Steps across a broad range of clinical issues including: the assessment and treatment of resistant and ambivalent pre-recovery clients; boundary setting, undoing antisocial adaption; processing counter transference reactions; and the intersection between biological functioning and ability in early recovery.