Changing Character: Short-term Anxiety-regulating Psychotherapy For Restructuring Defenses, Affects, And Attachment [Hardcover]

Leigh Mccullough Vaillant (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0465077927 | ISBN-13: 978-0465077922 | Publication Date: January 31, 1997 | Edition: 1

The mechanism of emotional change is central to the field of mental health. Emotional change is necessary for healing the long-standing pain of character pathology, yet is the least studied and most misunderstood area in psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. Changing Character at its heart is about emotion—how to draw it out, recognize it and make it conscious, follow its lead and, equally important, use cognition to guide, control, and direct our emotional lives. This treatment manual teaches therapists time-efficient techniques for changing character and helping their patients live mindfully with themselves and others through adaptive responses to conflictual experiences.Leigh McCullough Vaillant, a nationally recognized expert on short-term dynamic psychotherapy, shows therapists how to identify and remove obstacles in one’s character (ego defenses) that block emotional experience. She then illustrates how the therapist can delve into that experience and harness the tremendous adaptive power provided by emotions. The result? She shows us how to have emotions without emotions “having” their way with us. Vaillant’s integrative psychodynamic model holds that the source of psychopathology is the impairment of human emotional experience and expression, which includes impairment in drives and beliefs but is seen fundamentally as the impairment of affects.In this short-term approach, psychotherapists are shown how to combine behavioral, cognitive, and relational theories to make psychodynamic treatment briefer and more effective. Vaillant illustrates how affect bridges the gap between intrapsychic and interpersonal approaches to psychotherapy. Affect, she argues, has the power to make or break relational bonds. Through the regulation of anxieties associated with affects in relation to self and others, therapists can help their patients undergo meaningful character change. A holistic focus on affects and attachment has not been adequately addressed in either traditional psychodynamic theory or cognitive theory. Clearly and masterfully, Vaillant shows therapists how to integrate the powers of cognition and emotion within a dynamic short-term therapy approach.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Leigh McCullough Vaillant, Ph.D., is clinical assistant professor and director of the Short-Term Psychotherapy Research Program at Harvard Medical School. She has published extensively on therapy, training, and research in short-term dynamic psychotherapy and gives training seminars worldwide. She has served as research director of Beth Israel Medical Center’s Short-Term Psychotherapy Research Program, is a visiting professor at the University of Trondheim in Norway, and has a clinical practice in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (January 31, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465077927
• ISBN-13: 978-0465077922
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #930,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Practical, Integrative Approach for all Psychotherapists, November 23, 1999

By 

Beth K. (Brooklyn NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Changing Character: Short-term Anxiety-regulating Psychotherapy For Restructuring Defenses, Affects, And Attachment (Hardcover)

I teach and supervise graduate student trainees and interns in clinical/counseling psychology (MA and PsyD Level). All of my students have found that "Changing Character" has been very valuable and immediately useful to their work with clients. In this book, Valliant nicely integrates short-term psychodynamic treatment approaches with both object-relational and cognitive-behavioral research and theory. She also includes an easily understandable application of Sylvan Tomkins affect theory to this type work. Valliant offers practical examples of how to apply these concepts to real-life therapy situations. A must-have for all therapists at any level of experience who are interested in fine-tuning their technique to achieve better results for their clients who are in pain.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will be useful to all psychotherapists, January 5, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Changing Character: Short-term Anxiety-regulating Psychotherapy For Restructuring Defenses, Affects, And Attachment (Hardcover)

In this book, Leigh McCullough Valliant shares her psychotherapy techniques for rapidly getting past defenses to feelings. Her methods will be useful both to beginning and experienced therapists, and are illustrated with dialogue from actual sessions (she routinely videotapes sessions). In these days of managed care, ways to help patients (clients) achieve deep change fast are especially needed. Although the book is full of pearls and interesting to read, my one criticism is that it is overlong. However, you can always skim any parts you find repetitious.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Doing psychotherapy has never been easier!, October 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Changing Character: Short-term Anxiety-regulating Psychotherapy For Restructuring Defenses, Affects, And Attachment (Hardcover)

Using cognitive-behavioral techniques to understand psychodynamic concepts such as defenses/defensive behaviors, and self and other representations, and their restructuring, is such an innovative and non-psychodynamic-psychotherapist-friendly approach. Fascinated by object-relations theories, McCullough Vaillant's book is the first book that convinces me those theories are not just for reading but also for easy application in the healing process.