Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How to Be Brief When You Were Trained to Be Deep and Vice Versa (Jossey-Bass Social & Behavioral Science) [Hardcover]

Bruce Ecker (Author), Laurel Hulley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1995 | ISBN-10: 0787901520 | ISBN-13: 978-0787901523 | Edition: 1

Reach a new stage in brief therapy

Is it possible for clinicians to provide in-depth therapy in the cost-conscious, time-limited world of managed care?

This groundbreaking book offers clinicians new hope of maintaining professional satisfaction in time-effective practice. Authors Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley provide a practical guide for clinicians on how to work deeply and briefly with individuals, couples, and families, and shows how to meet the challenge of managed care without losing the deeper levels of change traditionally associated with long-term or existential work.

By using Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy, you'll work directly and immediately with the emotional and unconscious meanings that structure the very existence of the presenting problem.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A challenging, precise, and exciting approach to therapy that will delight those therapists who celebrate the complexity of clients. Ecker and Hulley combine a thoughtful attention to the unconscious with a commitment to making every session count. Gutsy, convincing, and powerful!" (David B. Waters, Ph.D., professor family practice and psychiatry, University of Virginia, author of Competence, Courage and Change)

From the Inside Flap

As the demand for time-limited, demonstrably effective psychotherapy increasingly dominates the mental health professions, many therapists are caught between this demand and their aversion to brief therapy, which they see as sacrificing vital qualities of the work—the depth and durability of resolution reached, the thoroughness of change in the emotional and unconscious basis of the problem, the trust-based client-therapist relationship. These therapists are asking: Is it possible for clinicians to provide in-depth therapy in the cost-conscious, time-limited world of managed care? In this groundbreaking book, authors Bruce Ecker and Laurel Hulley show how to work directly and immediately with the emotional and unconscious meanings that structure the very existence of the presenting problem, making in-depth therapy so effective as to be brief. This book represents a new stage in brief therapy and offers clinicians new hope of maintaining professional satisfaction in time-effective practice.From start to finish, this book is a practical guide to working deeply and briefly with individuals, couples, and families and includes:

• a clear and complete methodology and conceptual framework for producing lasting change beyond symptom relief
• a compAndium of specific techniques for depth-oriented brief therapy
• how to work time-effectively with clients whose presenting symptoms are driven by unresolved, lifelong emotional wounds
• abundant case examples with clients who suffer from a wide range of presenting symptoms, such as low self-esteem, chronic depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, agoraphobia, symbiotic attachment, dissociation, psychogenic pain, and sequelae of sexual abuse.

Depth-Oriented Brief Therapy is written for therapists, psychologists, counselors, social workers, psychiatrists, and other helping professionals who want to meet the challenge of managed care without losing the deeper levels of change traditionally associated with long-term

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (October 20, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787901520
• ISBN-13: 978-0787901523
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #585,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expands brief therapy paradigm to include "emotional truth.", February 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How to Be Brief When You Were Trained to Be Deep and Vice Versa (Jossey-Bass Social & Behavioral Science) (Hardcover)

This is a thoughtful and intelligent book. The premise is challenging but not unrelated to so much of the work (systems, family therapy, cognitive, body, etc.) that has gone before. The writing is not just careful...the authors seem to have a love of ideas (and people) to such an extent that credit is constantly given for the source and inspiration of each part of their argument. All this would be of little import if the book didn't chart a way through the theraputic encounter that is far reaching and provocative. I was touched by the breadth of their knowledge and the generosity of their spirit.

51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best psychotherapy book ever read, July 4, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (philadelphia, pa area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Depth Oriented Brief Therapy: How to Be Brief When You Were Trained to Be Deep and Vice Versa (Jossey-Bass Social & Behavioral Science) (Hardcover)

This is a true, full-bodied integration of constructivist cognitive work with experiential work for the practicing psychotherapist. In short, this work takes the meat from all the modern innovations in theory and practice of psychotherapy. In my opinion, the book should have been entitled "constructivist-experiential psychotherapy," as the "brief" part of the title is irrelevant to the model (except in that good and effective psychotherapy should be oriented to relieve the suffering of clients as quickly as possible); and the term "depth" brings to the theoretically sophisticated mind a brand of psychodynamic therapy, which this model is not. But it is deep in another fashion: the transcripts in this book demonstrate very powerful therapy experiences. This book is for the practicing therapist and is not essentially a theoretical tract, but in my mind, the criticism of the constructivist-narrative model as being too cognitive/linguistically based -- and the authors' supplementation of that model with one that emphasizes non-linguistic, experiental (including soma/kinesthetic, emotional, sensory, and other) elements of problem construction -- is a major innovation that allows for a huge advance in understanding and practice of therapy. The transcripts are technically clear and are excellent exemplars of what the authors are attempting to present; they are also deeply moving. Furthermore, one of the great strengths of the book is the great clarity of its organization and of the writing. I am a committed therapist of 25 years with a wide knowledge and experience of different forms and models of therapy. I am considering whether or not this is the best book of psychotherapy that I have ever read, an attribution that I, for one, do not take lightly.