The Therapist’s Use of Self: Being the Catalyst for Change in Couple and Family Therapy

This book encourages and trains students and practicing marriage and family therapists to bring themselves into the therapy room, offering guidelines and strategies for being more present and personal with their clients. Mental health professionals are often taught and trained that therapy is serious business, to be cautious and conservative with therapeutic decision-making, and to stick to empirically supported and specific tools in sessions. What gets lost in this positivistic, formulaic, and scientific way of working are therapists’ own unique voices, their creativity, flexibility, and the sense of playfulness that make the change process fun and upbeat. The Therapist’s Use of Self equips therapists with the skills they need to deepen their alliances with clients, to liberate themselves from an overreliance on models, and to bring their whole selves to the therapeutic encounter. Chapters cover pioneers in the field before exploring ways to bring ideas from outside the therapy room, including from music, art, literature, and film. The book includes a key chapter on teletherapy, and each chapter presents major therapeutic tools and strategies, case examples, the resulting outcomes, and key takeaways. Students of psychology, social work, nursing, and marriage and family programs, as well as mental health professionals will benefit from this book with a plethora of therapeutic tools, guidelines, and strategies for catalyzing change with even the most challenging couples and families.

Table of Contents:
1. Masters of the Use of Self: Couple and Family Therapy Pioneers that Perfected the Craft of Being the Catalysts for Change-Part I 2. Masters of the Use of Self: Couple and Family Therapy Pioneers that Perfected the Craft of Being the Catalysts for Change-Part II 3. Practice Evidence-Based Wisdom: A Resource for Informing Our Therapeutic Decision-Making 4. The Therapist’s Use of Self Toolkit 5. Therapeutic Brick Walls: Trouble-Shooting Guidelines for Getting Unstuck 6. Improvisational Theater on the Screen: The Therapist’s Use of Self in a Virtual Tele-Health Therapy Context 7. Resources for enhancing Your Inventiveness and Expanding Your Therapeutic Range and Style 8. The Therapist’s Use of Self Developmental Framework: From Beginning Couple and Family Therapist to mastery and Beyond 9. The Therapist’s Use of Self and Beyond: Major Themes and Implications for the Future

About the Author :
Matthew D. Selekman, MSW, LCSW, is a couple and family therapist in private practice and the director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, an international family therapy training and consulting firm in Evanston, Illinois, USA. He is an approved supervisor and clinical fellow with the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Review :
“This book had me at the start; the analysis of the family therapy pioneers was the best I’d ever read. But then Selekman takes it a quantum leap further—capturing the true essence of conceptualizing and doing couple and family therapy, drawing on contemporary research and his own wisdom accrued from extensive experience in the trenches.” Barry L. Duncan, Psy.D., developer of the Partners for Change Outcome Management System, USA "Selekman has done it again. A book for any practitioner, chock-full of wisdom, guidance and encouragement to be more of ourselves as a therapist. After an affectionate review of the old masters of family therapy, Selekman gives us a creative and wide-ranging set of ideas to help us become more courageous as therapists. An aspiring read!" Guy Diamond, Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, USA "Matthew Selekman’s brilliant new book about the therapist’s use of self is exactly the book the field of relational and systemic therapies needs at this time. Wonderfully anchored in and appropriately paying homage to the pioneers of the field, Selekman provides the reader with a much-needed update of how to be most positively engaged and effective in these times. Building on a clear vision of the use of self in therapy that includes a very practical use-of-self toolkit, he offers inventive frameworks for therapeutic decision-making and ways of collaborating with clients to find innovative ways to resolve problems. Filled with poignant clinical examples and the wisdom of a seasoned therapist who has supervised couple and family therapy around the world, this is a book every couple and family therapist and student in the field should read and contemplate." Jay Lebow, Ph.D., ABPP, Senior Scholar and Clinical Professor, The Family Institute at Northwestern and Northwestern University, USA "As I began reading the first two chapters, my experience was of a travel along a memory lane, remembering the workshops and seminars I had the opportunity to enjoy with those incredible persons. By chapter four I was more on the transition to present time. Then I remember the time machine exercise Selekman uses. And of course, the next chapters moved me to the future use of his exercises. (And in there you’ll find the time machine) Definitely a very good book. From past, to present, to future use." Ricardo Figueroa Quiroga, President: Mexican Council for Clinical Hypnosis, Mexico