Empowered Psychotherapy

Robert Langs, M.D., is well known as the author of many books on the subject of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, including 'The Technique of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy' (2 volumes), 'Psychotherapy: A Basic Text' , 'A Primer of Psychotherapy ' and 'Decoding Your Dreams'. He is currently Executive Director at the Program for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Beth Israel Medical Center, New York; Clinical Professor with the Department of Psychiatry, Mt. Sinai Hospital and School of Medicine, New York; and Visiting Clinical Investigator at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, New York.

'Over two decades have passed since Robert Langs set out on his lonely, almost quixotic Journey to bring renewed vision, clarity and integrity to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and to right the seemingly un-rightable wrongs that he found dormantly festering there. Considered at first an enfant terrible on the fringe and then a disquieting superego to the analytic establishment and to most practicing psychotherapists, he finally has come to enjoy a noteworthy acceptance and credibility for his then revolutionary ideas.'Perhaps the following would suffice to give the briefest idea of the thrust of his ideas: beginning with the concept of the bipersonal field and culminating in the evolution of "communicative psychotherapy" and now "empowered psychotherapy" through "self-processing", there runs a red thread of continuity through the various evolutions that have characterized Langs' thinking. I believe that this red thread is that of a pragmatic idealist who has been attempting to reinstitution such ideas as truth, ethics, humility and ontological security in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.'In fact, Langs seems to believe that the frame psychology is the essence of treatment! Even if the reader is skeptical, he/she will come away from reading this book with an enhanced realization of the importance of his/her frame awareness. I certainly have.'- James S. Grotstein, M.D., from the Foreword

• Foreword -- Introduction -- Background Perspectives -- The goals of self-processing therapy -- The evolution to self-processing -- Communication: Listening and Formulating -- The surface message -- The implications of manifest contents -- Symbols and isolated encoded meanings -- Trigger decoding -- The Techniques of Self-Processing -- The Modes of Self-Processing Therapy -- The frame of the self-processing class -- Initiating the self-processing class -- The first class -- The focus on resistances -- The origination narrative -- Guided associations -- Self-indicators and triggers -- Linking triggers to themes -- The self-processing tutorial and personal self-processing