Forms Of Brief Therapy

With "accountability" fast becoming the byword of the age, psychotherapists are challenged to demonstrate both the therapeutic and cost effectiveness of their interventions. While traditionally these two goals have been considered mutually exclusive, new research on the briefer therapies appears to show that less can sometimes be more. Fewer sessions of a carefully planned, focused and well-executed short-term intervention may contribute more to positive change that protracted analysis. Forms of Brief Therapy is the first volume to comprehensively and critically address the issue of how the element of time can be used as a therapeutic tool in psychodynamic and behavioral systems, and across individual, couple, family and group interventions. The authors put to rest the pervasive myth that there is an ideal, specific duration for most therapy. Instead, they offer a variety of approaches that combine careful examination and integration of presenting problems and patient characteristics. At times, evaluation may indicate as many as fifty sessions. In other cases, as evidenced with special force in Bloom's provocative presentation, just a single focused session may suffice. As Weiss and Jacobson put it in their marital therapy contribution, the purpose of this book is to structure therapy that is brief by design rather than by default. The contributors to Forms of Brief Therapy are among the most renowned practitioners and thinkers in their respective fields. Their critical overviews of research, and pragmatic analyses of therapy design, will prove highly instructive to clinical researchers and teachers who wish to better understand the relationship of therapeutic structure to underlying mechanisms of change. Mental health practitioners will find this volume eminently useful in their daily work. It provides explicit recommendations for patient selection, evaluation, and choice of therapeutic techniques which are richly illustrated by case materials. Unexcelled as clinical guide and reference, Forms of Brief Therapy is also ideally suited as a textbook for psychotherapy courses.

About the Author :
Simon H. Budman, PhD, a leader in the development of new models for behavioral health care, is the president and founder of Innovative Training Systems (ITS) in Newton, Massachusetts. ITS provides training, consulting and new product development services to managed care companies, group practices, hospitals, community mental health centers and HMOs around the country. A faculty member of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Budman is past Director of Mental Health Training and Mental Health Research at the Harvard Community Health Plan. He is coauthor (with Alan S. Gurman) of the widely acclaimed Theory and Practice of Brief Therapy.

Review :
"Brought together here are accounts of most types of brief treatments, ranging from a truncated psychoanalysis through streamlined forms of behavior, group, family, and marital therapies to a radically experimental single-session treatment. Many chapters are written with the clinician in mind who might want to employ the form of therapy described: they offer a point-by-point how-to-do-it....Anyone who wants to know about where psychotherapy is tending, under pressure from an inflationary economy, would do well to get this book." --Daniel Goleman in Psychology Today "Well written...contains much valuable material for assimilation." --"International Journal of Group Psychotherapy" "This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature on short-term therapy: it can be highly recommended." --"American Journal of Psychiatry" "In seventeen original articles by various experts, the inherent strengths, appropriateness, efficacy, and good fit of various forms of brief therapy to patients' needs and circumstances are expounded, quite apart from the time is money' pressures. Individual, couple, family, and group therapy are covered." --"Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic" "This is a very good volume for the therapist who is attempting to determine if brief therapies are appropriate for them or are looking to explore further therapeutic alternatives. It is an excellent basic text and, especially for the theoretical background of brief therapy, is to be highly recommended." --"American Archives of Rehabilitation Therapy" "The major emphasis is theoretical, but most contributions are enriched by illustrative case material. These presentations are detailed enough to provide the traditionally trained therapist with immediately useful new techniques and approaches to psychotherapy....The reader [will be] well introduced to these fiscally practical, clinically powerful' methods of brief therapy." --"The Journal of Urban Psychiatry" "Social workers with a psychodynamic orientation, especially those who have had difficulty accepting short-term therapy, and practitioners interested in short-term therapy with groups will find this book instructive." --"Social Work" "A book of considerable substance and excellent scholarship....I have nohesitation recommending this book as a high priority for all psychiatrists." --"Contemporary Psychiatry" "Budman has edited a remarkably comprehensive and well-organized overview that is now the best single compilation of articles on brief treatment." --"Hospital and Community Psychiatry" "Provide[s] a current, comprehensive overview of the brief therapies....It is of value to those who practice brief therapy as part of their armamentarium and to those who have an interest in the wide range of therapeutic modalities that are available." --"The Psychoanalytic Quarterly"