Books for Therapists on Therapy in General
This section approaches themes that are common to every therapy orientation, discussing concerns, advice, and strategies to enrich and model the psychotherapeutic process. These eye-opening publications will assist you in understanding the life-changing potential of therapy, and how to achieve real change.
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“Developing Your Theoretical Orientation in Counseling and Psychotherapy” by Halbur
Appropriate for mental health counselors, psychologists, social workers, school counselors, substance abuse counselors, psychotherapists, and peer helpers, Developing Your Theoretical Orientation in Counseling and Psychotherapy helps readers find a theoretical orientation aligned with their personal values and worldview. Theories are presented in the text in a way that allows the reader to identify quickly the philosophical and cultural foundations of the theories while also accessing the theories’ goals and techniques.
“Deliberate Practice for Psychotherapists: A Guide for Improving Clinical Effectiveness” by Rousamiere
This text explores how psychotherapists can use deliberate practice to improve their clinical effectiveness. By sourcing through decades of research on how experts in diverse fields achieve skill mastery, the author proposes it is possible for any therapist to dramatically improve their effectiveness. However, achieving expertise isn’t easy. To improve, therapists must focus on clinical challenges and reconsider century-old methods of clinical training from the ground up. This volume presents a step-by-step program to engage readers in deliberate practice to improve clinical effectiveness across the therapists’ entire career span, from beginning training for graduate students to continuing education for licensed and advanced clinicians.
“Facilitating Emotional Change: The Moment-by-Moment Process” by Greenberg, Rice, and Elliott
While emotions are often given a negative connotation, this book demonstrates that emotions are organizing processes that enhance adaptation and problem solving. Within an experiential therapy framework, the volume shows how to work with moment-by-moment emotional processes to resolve various psychological difficulties. Exploring the interrelationships among emotion, cognition, and change, the authors develop a powerful, clinically relevant theory of human functioning. The book also offers a detailed treatment manual, providing step-by-step directions for six specific types of interventions. Excerpts from actual transcripts exemplify the various methods, illuminating the moment-by-moment process for both the client and the therapist.
“Systems of Psychotherapy” by Prochaska and Norcoss
Comprehensive, systematic, and balanced, Systems of Psychotherapy uses a wealth of clinical cases to help readers understand a wide variety of psychotherapies – including psychodynamic, existential, experiential, interpersonal, exposure, behavioral, cognitive, third wave, systemic, multicultural, and integrative. The book explores each system’s theory of personality, theory of psychopathology, and resulting therapeutic process and therapy relationship. Through these explorations the authors clearly demonstrate how psychotherapy systems agree on the processes producing change while diverging on the elements in need of change. Additionally, the authors present cogent criticisms of each approach from cognitive-behavioral, psychoanalytic, humanistic, cultural, and integrative perspectives.
“Treatments That Work” series by Oxford Press http://www.oxfordclinicalpsych.com/page/307/
The Treatments That Work series is a compilation of books that shares well-known and research-based behavioral interventions in healthcare. Each book addresses a different and successful intervention to a specific problem, like ADHD or depression, posing as an accessible and sure way to improve clinician’s practices.
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“The Heart and Soul of Change” by Duncan, Miller, Wampold, and Hubble
Updating the classic first edition of The Heart and Soul of Change, editors Duncan, Miller, Wampold, and Hubble, have created a new and enriched volume that presents the most recent research on what works in therapeutic practice, a thorough analysis of this research, and practical guidance on how a therapist can truly ‘deliver what works in therapy’. This volume examines the common factors underlying effective psychotherapy and brings the psychotherapist and the client-therapist relationship back into focus as key determinants of psychotherapy outcome. It also demonstrates the power of systematic client feedback to improve effectiveness and efficiency and legitimize psychotherapy services to third party payers.
“Science and Pseudoscience of Clinical Psychology” by Lohr, Lynn, and Lillenfeld
This valued resource helps practitioners and students evaluate the merits of popular yet controversial practices in clinical psychology and allied fields, and base treatment decisions on the best available research. Leading authorities review widely used therapies for a range of child, adolescent, and adult disorders, differentiating between those that can stand up to the rigors of science and those that cannot. Questionable assessment and diagnostic techniques and self-help models are also examined. The volume provides essential skills for thinking critically as a practitioner, evaluating the validity of scientific claims, and steering clear of treatments that are ineffective or even harmful.
“The Science and Art of Psychotherapy” by Schore
Focusing on the hottest topics in psychotherapy―attachment, developmental neuroscience, trauma, the developing brain―this book provides a window into the ideas of one of the best-known writers on these topics, Allan Schore. The book is the third volume of a series, and as in the first two volumes of this series, each chapter represents a further development of the theory at a particular point in time, presented in chronological order. The book is divided in two parts, Affect Regulation Therapy and Clinical Neuropsychoanalysis, that contains chapters on the art of the craft; and Developmental Affective Neuroscience and Developmental Neuropsychiatry, that addresses the science that underlies regulation theory’s clinical models of development and psychopathogenesis.
“The Basics of Psychotherapy: An Introduction to Theory and Practice” by Wampold
This book presents essential background necessary for understanding the role of theory in psychotherapy practice, and shows how understanding psychotherapy theory is the first step to becoming an effective therapist. The author provides a thorough but concise overview of the history of psychotherapy, the evolution of psychotherapy theories, and research on the effectiveness of various psychotherapies in general practice and for treatment of specific common disorders. The book is an accessible, handy resource for students training to be psychotherapists and practitioners seeking to reevaluate theories and corresponding therapies.
“Einhundert Meisterwerke der Psychotherapie: Ein Literaturführer” von Pritz
This book guides its readers through the jungle of new publications. It provides inquisitive beginners as well as experienced psychotherapists a well-founded overview of the most important books on the human soul and its treatment. The publisher is president of the World Association for Psychotherapy and was supported in the selection of psychotherapists.
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