Negotiating the therapeutic alliance : a relational treatment guide /
Jeremy D. Safran, J. Christopher Muran.
- x, 260 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-254) and index.
The Therapeutic Alliance Reconsidered -- Overview of the Book -- A Brief History of the Therapeutic Alliance -- A Reconceptualization of the Therapeutic Alliance -- A Taxonomy of Interventions for Addressing Alliance Ruptures -- Fundamental Assumptions and Principles -- Agency versus Relatedness -- Constructivism and Realism -- Beginner's Mind: The Dangers of Reification -- One-Person and Two-Person Psychologies -- Interventions as Relational Acts -- Motivation and Emotion -- Affective Appraisal and Communication -- Understanding and Experiencing/Insight and Awareness -- Participant-Observation and Observing-Participation -- Intersubjectivity -- Mindfulness: The Therapist's Observational Stance and Inner Work -- Circles, Cycles, and Matrices -- Beyond Countertransference -- Multiple Selves -- The Paradox of Acceptance -- Understanding Alliance Ruptures and Therapeutic Impasses -- Hope and Despair -- Resistance: Intrapsychic, Characterological, and Relational -- Will and Responsibility -- Impasses as Windows into Core Organizing Principles -- Restructuring the Patient's Relational Schemas -- Affective Miscoordination and Repair -- Recovering a Split-Off Part of the Self -- Transitional Experience -- Optimal Disillusionment -- Subjects and Objects -- Need versus Neediness -- Surviving and Containing -- Therapeutic Metacommunication: Mindfulness in Action -- Clinical Vignettes -- Principles of Metacommunication -- Clinical Illustration -- Stage-Process Models of Alliance Rupture Resolution -- A Resolution Model for Withdrawal Ruptures -- A Resolution Model for Confrontation Ruptures -- Brief Relational Therapy -- The Dynamic Focus -- Awareness and the Focus on the Present Moment -- Termination and Optimal Disillusionment -- Case Illustration -- A Relational Approach to Training and Supervision -- Explicitly Establishing an Experiential Focus -- Mindfulness Training -- Self-Exploration -- The Relational Context of Supervision -- Audio- and Videotaping -- Awareness-Oriented Role Plays -- Supervisors as Models -- Training Illustration -- Afterword -- References -- Index. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
"A half-century of psychotherapy research has shown that the quality of the therapeutic alliance is the most robust predictor of treatment success. This practical, theoretically sophisticated book provides a systematic framework for negotiating ruptures in the alliance and transforming them into therapeutic breakthroughs. The book is grounded in recent developments in relational psychoanalysis, as well as findings from the authors' highly regarded research program. Chapters spell out clear principles of intervention illustrated with extensive clinical vignettes and transcript material. Particular attention is given to the therapist's inner processes and the role they play in resolving alliance ruptures. Other topics covered include the use of therapist self-disclosure and metacommunication; interactional patterns of successful therapist-patient dyads; applications to short-term treatment; and guidelines for training and supervision."--Publisher description.