Prescriptive Psychotherapies

Book excerpt: Prescriptive Psychotherapies describes a prescriptive approach to psychotherapeutic treatment. At the heart of this prescriptive model is the patient X therapist X treatment interactionist view of the question ""Which type of patient, meeting with which type of therapist, for which type of treatment will yield which outcomes?"" The diagnostic, research, and therapeutic implications of this viewpoint are examined. Attention is also devoted to the question of how prescriptive psychotherapy research might be most advantageously conducted to yield prescriptive information leading to increasingly successful treatment outcomes. This book is comprised of 15 chapters and begins by explaining the value and development of prescriptive psychotherapies and suggesting a schema for both conceptualizing and generating investigations that may yield progressively more useful psychotherapeutic prescriptions. The next chapter considers the views of others regarding issues bearing upon the prescriptive process, particularly the role of diagnosis. The treatment and research implications of psychological testing are then explored, along with the role of assessment in behavior modification. Several of the key issues in the process of achieving effective application of the integrated insight-behavioral approach to psychobehavioral counseling and therapy are also examined. Examples of clinical prescriptions of prescriptive psychotherapies are given, including psychoneuroses, psychophysiological disorders, and sexual deviations. This monograph is addressed to both clinicians and researchers concerned with the conduct and effectiveness of psychotherapy.