Therapeutic Action: A Guide to Psychoanalytic Therapy [Hardcover]

Enrico E. Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2000

This book advances a new understanding of producing change in psychotherapy. It proposes the concept of interaction structure, repeated mutually influencing interactions between therapist and patient that are a fundamental aspect of therapeutic action. Interaction structures allow consideration of both the intrapsychic and the interpersonal by recognizing the intrapsychic as an important basis for what occurs in clinical interaction. This book clarifies the process of therapy, and is a guide to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Using transcripts of clinical sessions, Dr. Enrico E. Jones offers an unusual window on the interactive structures that actually occur between patient and therapist and identifies specific interventions that successfully promote change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Enrico Jones is a first-rank researcher and a wise clinician. Therapeutic Action: A Guide to Psychoanalytic Therapy tells how to select patients who will benefit from psychodynamic therapy, how to characterize what happens in the treatment, and how to assess the outcome. It proposes a new and integrative concept of therapeutic action—interaction structures—and provides lively verbatim exchanges between patient and therapist. The book is a psychodynamic treatment primer for clinicians at all levels of experience. It should find a place on the shelf of every mental health professional. (Arnold D. Richards, M.D. )

A masterful achievement! A genuine integration of systematic observation with the art of clinical practice, this is an invaluable book to guide all therapists, the experienced and the novice, through the troubled waters of psychodynamic treatment. I cannot imagine anyone who reads this book not becoming a more effective therapist as a consequence. The rich and comprehensive examples also make it an extraordinary teaching aid, providing countless opportunities for group discussion to highlight technical and theoretical differences. It is a wonderful, thoughtful, mature contribution from a clinician who has also mastered the highest levels of research sophistication. (Peter Fongay, Ph.D. )

About the Author

Enrico E. Jones, Ph.D. is professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and former head of its Psychology Clinic and Director of its Clinical Psychology Training Program. He also founded the Berkeley Psychotherapy Research Project, which for the past two decades has generated psychoanalytically informed empirical research.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 381 pages
• Publisher: Jason Aronson, Inc.; 1 edition (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765702436
• ISBN-13: 978-0765702432
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,155,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Finest Book Yet Written On Psychoanalytic Therapy, August 16, 2000

By 

Charles A. Garfield (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Therapeutic Action: A Guide to Psychoanalytic Therapy (Hardcover)

THERAPEUTIC ACTION by Enrico Jones is the one book I most wished I'd had at my side during my graduate training and formative years as a practicing clinician. It would have helped me more than countless hours of reading, reflection, and instruction.

Simply put, THERAPEUTIC ACTION is a masterpiece which far exceeds in scholarship, usefulness, and clarity of insight any work available for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, clinical social workers, pastoral or marriage, family, and child counselors, graduate students or trainees hoping to enter any of these fields and those who instruct them.

Professor Jones brings superb clarity to such vital subjects as bringing defenses and unconscious mental content into awareness; creating opportunities for self-reflection; intervention as assessment; how to identify patients likely to benefit from psychoanalytic therapy; and the uses and limitations of supportive approaches. He offers an innovative concept of therapeutic action called "interaction structures" which along with compelling verbatim exchanges between therapist and patient shed substantial light on what actually occurs in the session itself.

This superb book is based on the author's painstaking research and longterm clinical experience and is written in a wonderfully clear way. It is a must-read for any clinician interested in perfecting the core competencies and comprehending the key concepts of psychodynamic therapy.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, a clear explanation of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, August 20, 2000

By 

Cheryl Y Goodrich (Oakland, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Therapeutic Action: A Guide to Psychoanalytic Therapy (Hardcover)

As a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist, I want to highly recommend this book to those who feel they want to become even more effective in their therapeutic work. First, this book is clearly written and full of illustrations of more and less effective therapeutic interventions. Second, it is based on current emperical research as well as the vast clinical basis of technique. And perhaps most importantly it introduces a new refinement in understanding what makes for helpful change!

I have found this book has already influenced how I work---adding to my repetoire of interventions, expanding my understanding of certain interactions that I have repeatedly with various patients, and augmenting my confidence in my analytic approach to longer term work with patients hoping to make more characterologic changes.

It is a book I expect I will return to over and over as it contains very pragmatic sections on technique as well as summaries of a number of long term psychotherapies, how they went and what the emperical analysis showed about their outcomes. A very reader friendly book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must reading for any psychoanalytic psychotherapist, December 14, 2000

By 

Jonathan (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Therapeutic Action: A Guide to Psychoanalytic Therapy (Hardcover)

This book should be required reading for anyone who practices psychoanalytic psychotherapy, from students to senior practitioners. Professor Jones writes clearly and eloquently, elucidating the central principles of contemporary psychoanalytic technique. These principles are illustrated throughout with vivid case examples-- not the contrived examples provided by other analytic writers, but verbatim transcripts from actual psychotherapy sessions, obtained from video and audio tapes of real therapists at work. This is the book that FINALLY gives us a window into what really goes on behind the closed doors of the therapy office. Jones provides case examples illustrating not only successful interventions, but also therapeutic mistakes and failures.

The book is based on the author's years of painstaking research into the psychoanalytic process, and reflects the distilled wisdom of thousands of hours of psychoanalytic investigation. It is wide ranging in scope, scholarly, authoritative, but never pedantic. It belongs on every clinician's bookshelf.