Customer Reviews

A Primer on Working with Resistance

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Dr. Stark weaves together the viewpoints of many different schools of theraputic thought while bringing her own facinating insights to bear in this wonderful book. Other authors in this field could take a lesson from the clarity of her prose. The best book I have ever read on the subject. Anyone seeking to better understand the theraputic relationship should read this book.

As others have aptly noted, Dr. Stark's writing is exemplary for its clarity. Her prose style is lucid and user-friendly. Her own brilliance notwithstanding, her explanations are couched in direct, plain language. Her authorial tone is unfailingly unpretentious and respectful- to the reader, and also to the patient- about whom and for whose benefit she has written.

The book consists of three logically delineated parts. In Part One, Dr. Stark explains that resistance, in its many forms, always boils down to a failure to grieve. With exquisite parsimony, she equates the failure to grieve with avoidance of reality. Succinctly, she defines mental health as not needing the facts- about others, or oneself, or the world- to be other than they are. Part Two is devoted to explaining, first, how to listen well in relation to resistance, and second, how specifically to respond to the patient's particular need at any given moment in the therapeutic dialogue. Her masterful and enlightening discussion of the clinical transferences in Part Three culminates in her contention that the patient's "attainment of mature hope" is the "raison d'etre" of the psychotherapeutic endeavor.

Most compelling and invaluable of all, however, is her thorough, logically impeccable, and eminently practical enumeration of the kinds of statements needed to work expertly with a patient's resistance. The clinician who "reads, marks, learns and inwardly digests" Dr. Stark's uniquely designed "toolkit" of carefully calibrated therapeutic statements will have a credible claim to confidence and competence.

A better guide to working with resistance is hard to imagine. Any clinician who would learn, from a true master, what to say, and when, and why, and how, need look no further. Dr. Stark's "Primer" is the clinician's "pearl of great price."

(Review by Samuel Miller, M. A., Th.D., LMHC, NCC)-[...]

08-07-09.