Customer Reviews

Making Psychotherapy Work: Collaborating Effectively with Your Patient

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In this the third monograph by Dr. Frankel, we are given a practical and systematic guide to addressing the largely non-verbal, relational aspects of psychotherapy. A guide useful both to beginning and experienced therapists, Making Psychotherapy Works describes the conjunctive process that Dr. Frankel maintains is critical to creative change. The beauty of his method is that it is consistent with a range of theoretical orientations. It gives emphasis to the central importance of the striving for genuine intimacy in every successful therapy.
Rather than emphasize any one particular school of psychotherapy, Dr. Frankel underscores the collaborative nature of all successful therapies. Mutuality and respect are critical in his view. However, transitional failures (disjunctions) are inevitable and the therapist's real efforts to correct them (not limited to interpreting errors) are illustrated with numerous case examples. Dr. Frankel's method is applicable to dynamically-informed therapies conducted at different frequencies over varying periods of time.

Dr. Frankel provides a clear and innovative approach to psychotherapy, a viewpoint to which I could immediately relate. Throughout the book, Dr. Frankel proposes, and validates through detailed case examples, a new and courageous approach to treatment. He suggests a shift in thinking in how psychotherapy works, emphasizing the degree to which collaboration between the therapist and patient contributes to its success. Indeed, through his "conjunctive model" two human beings join in the most refreshing way to achieve their common goal of helping the patient. I believe anyone interested in psychotherapy will benefit by reading remarkably accessible book.

3. I would like to recommend a new book to you and your readers, one I believe all psychotherapists should know about, Making Psychotherapy Work: Collaborating Effectively with Your Patient (2007, International Universities Press). In this thoughtful and yet astonishingly candid book, Steve Frankel seeks to answer the basic question, how does fundamental change occur? In his honest, courageous, and straightforward discussion Frankel is willing to ask the hard questions and step well outside of the theoretical and clinical box. In my opinion, this book is a landmark in psychotherapy literature. It will be thought-provoking and useful, in fact indispensable, for therapists at all levels of experience and training.