Key Competencies in Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy or Ahead of the Curve

Key Competencies in Brief Dynamic Psychotherapy: Clinical Practice Beyond the Manual

Author: Jeffrey L Binder

This unique book identifies the core competencies shared by expert therapists and helps clinicians-specifically those providing brief dynamic/interpersonal therapy-to develop and apply these competencies in their own work. Neither an abstract theoretical guide nor a cookbook of particular techniques, the book illuminates the ways one learns to engage in effective therapeutic inquiry, intervene flexibly and creatively, and improvise-on a basis of sound theoretical and clinical knowledge-to facilitate progress toward therapeutic goals. Important psychotherapy research findings are interwoven with rich descriptions of the skilled therapist's mental processes and moment-to-moment experiences. The volume's highly accessible style, wealth of illustrative examples, and fresh insights on how learning can be enhanced for both therapist and client make it an ideal professional resource and text.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Gary B Kaniuk, Psy.D. (Cermak Health Services)
Description: This book describes competencies related to brief dynamic psychotherapy. It goes beyond being simply a cookbook of techniques, discussing how the therapist uses intuition and common sense. The author emphasizes the importance of procedural as well as declarative knowledge.
Purpose: According to the author, the purpose "is to reduce the extent to which these essential characteristics get buried during training and to accelerate their recovery, when needed. It aims to accomplish these goals by reducing the gap between the way competent therapists actually think and act while they are conducting psychotherapy and the way their thoughts and actions are formally depicted." The book definitely meets the author's objectives.
Audience: According to the author, "for students who already have learned basic psychodynamic therapy concepts and principles, this book is meant to serve as a guide on how to apply these concepts and principles practically and in a time-limited format. Practicing therapists may find this book to be a useful aid in fully recovering and using their common sense, technical flexibility, and interpersonal skills in their practice of therapy." Dr. Binder is professor and department head of the clinical psychology program at the Georgia School of Professional Psychology of Argosy University, Atlanta. He has been involved in both inpatient and outpatient clinical settings and has published extensively on brief psychotherapy and psychotherapy training in the last 30 years.
Features: The book describes five clinical competencies that are associated with good dynamic-interpersonal psychotherapy including: competency in understanding personality functioning and therapeutic process; competency in problem formulation and focusing; competency in tracking a focus; competency in applying technical strategies and tactics flexibly and creatively; competency in relationship management. The book's clinical illustrations are extremely helpful. Chapter 9 on training describes how psychotherapy can be taught to trainees. Dr. Binder writes passionately of the importance of transferring theoretical knowledge to applied, procedural knowledge with patients. He feels that training programs should be revamped, linking education much more closely with practice.
Assessment: This is an excellent book. It is very readable and thoroughly describes the five competencies introduced in the first chapter. It is geared toward those interested in dynamic psychotherapy, but therapists of all traditions will benefit from Dr. Binder's years of wisdom and practice. One can sense his earnest desire to train future generations of therapists with his no-nonsense, practical approach.

Rating

4 Stars! from Doody

Interesting book: Supervising for Success or Steal These Ideas

Ahead of the Curve: A Commonsense Guide to Forecasting Business and Market Cycles

Author: Joseph H Ellis

How to Read the Signs of Economic Change-Before They Impact Your Business and Investments

Economic and stock-market cycles affect companies in every industry. Unfortunately, a confusing array of anecdotal and conflicting indicators often renders it impossible for managers and investors to see where the economy is heading in time to take corrective action.

Now, a thirty-five-year Wall Street veteran unveils a new forecasting method that will help managers and investors understand and predict the economic cycles that control their businesses and financial fates. In Ahead of the Curve, Joseph H. Ellis argues that the problem with current forecasting models lies not in the data, but rather in the lack of a clear framework for putting the data in context and reading it correctly. The book explains critical economic indicators in nontechnical language, identifies and documents the recurring cause-and-effect relationships that consistently predict turning points in the economy, and provides the tools managers and investors need to position themselves ahead of cyclical upturns and downturns.

Economic events are not as random and unpredictable as they seem. This book will help readers recognize and react to signs of change that their rivals don't see-and win a sizeable competitive advantage.

Author Bio: Joseph H. Ellis was a partner of Goldman Sachs and was ranked for eighteen consecutive years by Institutional Investor magazine as Wall Street's #1 retail-industry analyst.