Mindfulness, Acceptance, and the Psychodynamic Evolution


Book Description

If you are a psychodynamic therapist interested in the growing mindfulness movement, you may be looking for resources to help you enhance your practice. More and more, professionals in the psychodynamic tradition are finding that mindfulness exercises help their patients connect with the moment and discover the underlying causes of their fears and anxieties. This groundbreaking book spotlights the similarities between these two therapeutic approaches, and shows how mindfulness in the present moment, acceptance of internal experiences, and commitment to one’s values are implicit elements of psychodynamic psychotherapy. In this much-needed volume, psychologist and editor Jason M. Stewart offers a unique perspective on client treatment that fuses psychodynamic psychotherapy, mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches, and Buddhist psychology. Using the insights in this powerful resource, you will help your clients gain greater psychological flexibility, connect with their values and goals, and create a life that is purposeful, meaningful, and vital. Recent research supports the effectiveness of both psychodynamic and mindfulness-based processes in contributing to success in psychotherapy. This book does not suggest that mindfulness practice can take the place of psychodynamic therapy. Rather, it offers powerful, evidence-based strategies to help you enhance your practice. If you are ready to take your practice to the next level, this book will be your guide. The Mindfulness and Acceptance Practica Series As mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies gain momentum in the field of mental health, it is increasingly important for professionals to understand the full range of their applications. To keep up with the growing demand for authoritative resources on these treatments, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Practica Series was created. These edited books cover a range of evidence-based treatments, such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), compassion-focused therapy (CFT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) therapy. Incorporating new research in the field of psychology, these books are powerful tools for mental health clinicians, researchers, advanced students, and anyone interested in the growth of mindfulness and acceptance strategies.




Making Room for the Disavowed


Book Description

In this uniquely integrative book, Paul L. Wachtel describes powerful clinical strategies to make room for aspects of the self that were sidetracked in the course of development. Wachtel explores how early attachment experiences can lead people to turn away from certain thoughts and feelings, building a sense of self and ways of interacting on only a limited range of adaptive resources. His approach draws on psychodynamic, humanistic, systemic, and acceptance-centered cognitive-behavioral perspectives, as well as attention to the impact of race, class, and culture. Filled with rich case material, the book illuminates how a therapeutic approach anchored in the present can help heal the wounds of the past.




Health, Happiness, and Well-Being


Book Description

Health, Happiness, and Well-Being provides readers with a panoramic view of what the best psychological science has to offer regarding how to attain physical health and optimum psychological functioning. Students, faculty, general readers, and professionals can rely on the expertise of leading scholars to assist them in evaluating claims and appreciating the influence of popular yet unsubstantiated beliefs in shaping opinions about behavioral health and psychological well-being. Packed with examples drawn from the media and scientific journals, the authors discuss why accurate, up-to-date, and valid health information is vital to achieving the good life.




Christian Meditation in Clinical Practice


Book Description

What would it look like to turn to the Christian faith to cultivate meditation practices? Presenting Christian meditation as an alternative to Buddhist-informed mindfulness, this workbook from Dr. Joshua Knabb offers a Christian-sensitive approach to meditation in clinical practice, focusing on both building theory and providing replicable practices for Christian clients and their therapists.




Essential Psychotherapies


Book Description

Acclaimed for its clear writing and stellar contributors, this authoritative text is now in a revised and updated fourth edition. The book explains the history, assessment approach, techniques, and research base of each of the 12 most important psychotherapies practiced today, along with its foundational ideas about personality and psychological health and dysfunction. The consistent chapter format facilitates comparison among the various approaches. Every chapter includes engaging clinical vignettes and an extended case example that bring key concepts to life, as well as suggested resources for further learning. New to This Edition *Incorporates important developments in clinical practice and research. *Entirely new chapters on CBT, third-wave CBT, couple therapies, and interpersonal and brief psychodynamic therapies; all other chapters fully updated. *Increased attention to multiple dimensions of diversity, the evidence-based practice movement, psychotherapy integration, and applications to physical health care.




The Research Journey of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)


Book Description

In 1986 the first research study investigating Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) was published. It aimed to determine if an early conceptualization of the ACT model could be used to treat depression. Since this seminal study, further investigations have been conducted across every imaginable psychological issue and the rate at which this research has emerged is impressive. This book describes the research journey that ACT has taken in the past 30 years. It also suggests, in light of the progress that has already been made, how ACT research should move forward in the coming decades.




The Science of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy


Book Description

The Science of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy describes the scientific approach of CBT, reviews the efficacy and validity of the CBT model, and exemplifies important differences and commonalities of CBT approaches. The overarching principle of CBT interventions is that cognitions causally influence emotional experiences and behaviors. The book reviews recent mediation studies, experimental studies, and neuroimaging studies in affective neuroscience that support the basic model of CBT, as well as those that clarify the mechanisms of treatment change. Additionally, the book explains the interplay of cognition and emotion in CBT, specifies the treatment goals of CBT, discusses the relationship of cognitive models with medical models and associated diagnostic systems, and provides concrete illustrations of important general and disorder-specific considerations of CBT. - Investigates the scientific foundation of CBT - Explores the interplay of emotion and cognition in CBT - Reviews neuroscience studies on the mechanisms of change in CBT - Identifies similarities and differences in CBT approaches for different disorders - Discusses CBT extensions and modifications - Describes computer assisted applications of CBT




Self-Supervision


Book Description

Dr. Marc Lubin and Dr. Jed Yalof invite future and current therapists, counselors, and their supervisors to construct ways to achieve a more extensive and effective self-awareness and develop a "self-supervisory self" for a deeper and more informed clinical practice. Grounded in psychoanalytic supervision literature, Self Supervision: Psychodynamic Strategies uses a vignette-based and instructional format to outline a clear theory and framework for teaching, learning, and strengthening one's reflective self-supervision skills. Lubin and Yalof address how to create and sustain settings conducive to self-supervision; multiple approaches to gathering critical data including note-taking, recall, and use of technology; recognizing and addressing resistance to self-supervision; and exemplars, practical tools, processes, and routines for self-reflection and incorporation of what has been learned into future sessions. Through this approach to self-supervision, therapists will unlock and articulate inner observations; gain self-awareness before, during, and after client sessions; and arrive at greater clarity about their patients.




Our Anxious Selves: Neuropsychological Processes and their Enduring Influence on Who We Are (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)


Book Description

Discussing the outsized role that fear, anxiety, and other distressing emotions play in forming fundamental aspects of who we are. Using recent findings from neuropsychology, this new book in the best-selling Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology shows that who we are psychologically starts with the early presence of an easily aroused fear/anxiety system. It goes on to discuss how clinicians can view people’s difficulties with self-confidence and identity, and how self-destructive patterns can be traced back to these systems and what clinicians can do to help. It also touches on intergenerational transmission of trauma, as well as people’s responses to COVID-19, PTSD, and real and imagined threats.




Freud and the Buddha


Book Description

This book investigates what psychoanalysis and Buddhism can learn from each other, and offers chapters by a Buddhist scholar, a psychiatrist-author, and a number of leading psychoanalysts. It begins with a discussion of the basic understanding of both psychoanalysis and Buddhism, viewed not as a religion but as a psychology and a philosophy with ethical principles. The focus of the book rests on the commonality between the psychoanalyst's neutrality as he listens to his freely associating patient, and the Buddhist monk's non-judgmental attention to his mind. The psychoanalytic concepts of free association, the unconscious, transference and countertransference are compared to the implications of the Buddhist principles of impermanence, non-clinging (non-attachment), the hard-to-grasp concept of the "not-self", and the practice of meditation. The differences between the role of the analyst and that of the Buddhist teacher of meditation are explored, and the important difference between the analyst's emphasis on insight and thinking is compared to the Buddhist attention to awareness and experience.