Lives Transformed: A Revolutionary Method of Dynamic Psychotherapy / Edition 1

by Patricia C. Della Selva, David Malan

Overview

The world has long awaited compelling and unmistakable evidence for the validity of dynamic psychotherapy. A review in the present book shows that such evidence has been accumulating over the past ten years. It comes from clinical trials, process research, case studies, and objective physiological measurements concerned with the importance of expressing emotions. This book extends the evidence. It provides an in-depth examination of therapy in action, based on verbatim accounts of the treatment of seven patients by the author, using the technique of Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy (at times extending to medium-term). This technique has been shown to be both effective and cost-effective with a wide range of patients, including some who are notoriously resistant to psychotherapeutic intervention. The raw data of psychotherapeutic sessions enables the reader to trace the origin of therapeutic effects, which occur immediately in response to the direct experience of hitherto buried feelings and impulses.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781855755116
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/27/2007
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

David Malan, Patricia C. Della Selva

Table of Contents

Overture, Technique, Literature — Overture — Introduction to the theory and technique of Davanloo’s ISTDP — The literature: empirical support for Davanloo's ISTDP — Exposition: Four Detailed Therapies — The Man Divided — The Cold-Blooded Businessman — The Good Girl with Ulcerative Colitis — The Woman with Dissociation — General Discussion — The relation between predictions and actual events — Aspects of initial evaluation — Aspects of therapy — Aspects of outcome — Recapitulation and Coda — The present work, traditional dynamic psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis — Conclusions — Coda — Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

This is a book of exceptional depth and practicality on how to work with emotion. It is both clear and full of the richest description of seven cases that one could hope to find. One learns how a therapist actually does therapy, and therefore how to do therapy. I could pay a book no higher compliment. By reading it one learns how to work with affect and somatic experience. One sees in rich and concrete detail how a therapist confronts defences, first against affect and emotional closeness, and then against unacknowledged anger and grief, which lie at the heart of much human experience and distress. The therapist promotes a full, direct experiences of these previously avoided feelings. The observed therapeutic effects provide evidence that the direct experience of emotion is the key to healing in psychotherapy.

Leslie S. Greenberg

This is a book of exceptional depth and practicality on how to work with emotion. It is both clear and full of the richest description of seven cases that one could hope to find. One learns how a therapist actually does therapy, and therefore how to do therapy. I could pay a book no higher compliment. By reading it one learns how to work with affect and somatic experience. One sees in rich and concrete detail how a therapist confronts defences, first against affect and emotional closeness, and then against unacknowledged anger and grief, which lie at the heart of much human experience and distress. The therapist promotes a full, direct experiences of these previously avoided feelings. The observed therapeutic effects provide evidence that the direct experience of emotion is the key to healing in psychotherapy.

From the Publisher