Customer Reviews

How Psychotherapy Works: Process and Technique

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Truly a master work by Weiss. This book is a must-read for any practicing clinician or student of psychotherapy. It adds an entire dimension to the psychotherapeutic process, one in which the therapist plays a significant role in changing the patient's beliefs through his or her interaction with the patient. The perplexities of therapy become understandable with the help of this essential text.

This is a great book for those in therapy too. It explains transference, dream interpretation, testing your therapist ... and it explains the best way for the therapist to react to all that. So far it is the best book I have read on the subject. It really helped me to understand myself better.

The beauty of this book is that it provides a cogent understanding of working dynamically with psychotherapy patients in a coherent, thoughtful manner, which is not dominated by psycho-babble, nor entirely determined by diagnostic labels, and that give one evidence that their sessions are "Working" or not so successful.

The ideas in How Psychotherapy Works, developed by Joe Weiss and Hal Sampson, at the San Francisco Psychotherapy Group, are empirically based and applicable to clinical work, whatever one's particular theoretical orientation. They are not technique oriented and provide for a highly individualized approach.

This theory as nicely detailed and discussed in How Psychotherapy Works, and puts the onus for progress on the therapist, especially for patient's who really want and need help. As with all therapies this empirically based model, known as Control Mastery theory is not simplistic, though it is very understandable, and sometimes maligned as being too "common sense oriented."

Best to understand the usefulness of your interventions and the nature of your individual patient's problems, than to regard problems and pathology as nearly "pre-determined" and motivated simly by drive reduction.

I highly recommend this book to students, beginning psychotherapists and the seasoned clinician. It will help your patients.