Treating Chronic Depression with Disciplined Personal Involvement

For more than a century, the psychotherapist role has been dominated by Freud’s neutrality rule: don’t become personally involved with patients! McCullough challenges this widely accepted dictum in a new treatment approach for the chronically depressed patient. He proposes disciplined personal involvement as an alternative to therapist neutrality with chronically depressed patients, describing how this approach can be used in a contingent manner to successfully modify pathological behavior. These latest guidelines expand on his pioneering work, Treatment for Chronic Depression: Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy(CBASP).

In this new volume, Treating Chronic Depression with Disciplined Personal Involvement: CBASP, Dr. McCullough describes in detail what disciplined personal involvement is and how it is administered. The book was written during a current four-year national clinical trial sponsored by NIMH involving 910 chronically depressed outpatients being treated at eight sites in the U.S.

The following topics will be covered:

- Historical review of the psychotherapist neutrality role

- Rationale for disciplined personal involvement in the treatment of chronic depression

- Training veteran psychotherapists to administer disciplined personal involvement

- Numerous verbatim case examples presented to illustrate therapist disciplined personal involvement

- Appendix Section operationalizing the CBASP disciplined personal involvement techniques and discussing needed CBASP research

McCullough’s fresh perspective and psychotherapy wisdom make this text a must read for all clinical practitioners, training clinicians in university settings, and psychotherapy researchers. Treating Chronic Depression with Disciplined Personal Involvement: CBASP offers a radically new alternative to the traditional therapeutic relationship.