Norton Professional Books (Har – serie

This text explores contemporary affect studies, focusing on the work of Silvan Tomkins, and examining their impact on the theory and practice of psychotherapy. Sections of the book cover research on affect, the theoretical implications of this information for a number of different schools of psychological and pschiatric thought, and the clinical applications of the understanding of innate affect in a variety of disorders.

Integrating strategic problem-solving, and emphasis on stories and the cultural context of meaning, this book introduces the theoretical stance of semiotic constructivism. Its main argument, illustrated in engaging cases, is that all experience is a construction of signs, and that symbolic forms such as language, myth, ritual and drama create and shape our realities, and provide useful tools for encouraging therapeutic change.

Bridging the personal and the professional, Marjorie Holiman emphasizes how violence destroys relationships while respect and love generate new connections.Like many in our society, Holiman grew up in a household where the fabric of everyday life was torn intermittently and unpredictably by violence. Later she experienced her own potential for violence, teetering on the edge between intention and action. Reaching out for help from others and drawing on her own insight and determination, Holiman turned from violence toward love. The therapist makes connections between her own experiences and those of others-the taste of fear, the intrusion of troubling memories, the impulse to hurt again, the glimmer of hope. She does not simply relate her cases; she lets the reader feel what it is like to work with people who are violent and those who have been violated-the times she struggles to understand the experiences of others and the celebrations she shares with people who are changing.After setting a context for therapy and for understanding violent situations, Holiman outlines nine therapy tasks to help people change, including attention to safety, responsibility, retribution, and forgiveness. She does not shy away from the difficult topics: clients' memories of Satanic cults, the politics of therapy and their effects on practice, and mistakes the therapist will likely make.Lyrical and moving, From Violence, Toward Love tackles one of the most difficult problems of any society with a balance of practicality and deep humanity. Readers who join Marjorie Holiman on her journey will not be disappointed.

The authors' decade-and-a-half collaboration with 'insiders' has yielded fresh answers to these life and death questions: How does a/b seduce and terrorize girls and women? Why is a/b successful in encouraging girls and women to unwittingly embrace their would-be murderer? How can such a murderer be exposed and thwarted? This book details a unique way of thinking and speaking about anorexia/bulimia. By having conversations with insiders in which the problem is viewed as an external influence rather than a part of the person, these therapists show how to bring the tactics of a/b into the open, expose its deceptions, break its spell, and encourage defiance of its tyrannical rule. These innovations enable insiders, professionals, and loved ones to unite against anorexia/bulimia rather than allowing a/b to pit a professional or loved one against an insider, and the insider against herself. Coercion is sidestepped in favor of practices that are collaborative, accountable and spirit-nurturing. The groundbreaking discoveries outlined in this book will provide new options, inspiration and hope, not only for those who suffer at anorexia's hands, but also for their loved ones and healthcare professionals.

The therapy described here helps the family understand the child's difficulties from multiple perspectives and leads to fresh understandings of often-misunderstood children. Family members work as a team, strategizing and collaborating in a child-friendly, systemically informed treatment. Action-oriented techniques engage the family through right-brain learning, and include visual imagery, metaphor, and imaginative play.

Confronted with a betrayal of intimacy, the couple’s relationship is in an extremely fragile state; the damage is often irreparable. In these trying circumstances, couples need an effective and confident therapist. Yet, cases of infidelity are notoriously difficult to treat. Therapists often approach this problem with apprehension, uncertainty, and a lack of confidence about what to do. The emotional and intellectual resources of the most skilled practitioner are severely taxed by the needs of the couple in crisis.In Treating Infidelity, Weeks, Gambescia, and Jenkins provide therapists and counselors with concepts, insights, and therapeutic plans that will allow them to work effectively with couples undergoing a crisis of broken intimacy. The authors address this severe therapeutic challenge with a comprehensive and inter-systematic approach that carefully considers the concerns of the couple, the partners as individuals, and the role of the therapist. Because it is a relationship problem, infidelity requires a flexible clinical regimen combining elements of individual and conjoint therapy within a systemic orientation. The authors have long used just such a regimen in their own clinical work with clients experiencing relational and sexual dysfunctions. Treating Infidelity presents the insights and organization of this successful clinical model, and provides a systematic and powerful way for couples to repair and recover from an affair.The multifaceted phenomenon of infidelity is explored in rich detail. The authors offer a conceptual framework that accounts for the varied contributing factors, common presentations, and the numerous consequences of infidelity. The heart of the book is concerned with recognizing when a breach in the couple’s agreement about exclusivity has occurred and assisting the couple in achieving the goal of forgiveness. Relying on their novel empirically-based approach, the authors demonstrate how forgiveness can be attained even in the most difficult cases where shame, accusatory suffering, anger, or fear can obstruct resolution. Moreover, Treating Infidelity addresses the conditions necessary for establishing the level and quality of communication that maintains a deep sense of intimacy between partners.The core of this powerful but flexible clinical approach is the understanding that there are various forms of intimacy (e.g., sexual, emotional, intellectual) and significant variations in what constitutes a breach of intimacy. Today, infidelity constitutes a more expansive category than adultery or extramarital sex. It includes any form of betrayal to the implied or stated contract between couples regarding intimate exclusivity, such as cybersex and other forms of Internet infidelity. In fact, as the contexts, forms, and consequences of infidelity grow more complex, therapists and counselors need the sort of systematic but flexible approach found in Treating Infidelity. The experience and circumstances of infidelity are unique to each couple. The authors demonstrate this necessary flexibility in their approach and convey how therapists must place the personal experience of clients at the center of treatment.

Kathryn Zerbe, after 25 years of in-the-trenches clinical work and award-winning instruction of psychotherapeutic principles, unravels the research behind eating disorders and presents hard and fast answers that practitioners can put to work with their clients. Zerbe’s approach is an integrated one, and one that emphasizes an amalgamation of interventions tailored to the needs of the patient.Filled with clinical case examples from her own years in practice, sample dialogues, and easy-to-read tables and charts summarizing important clinical tips, Integrated Treatment of Eating Disorders is an invaluable resource for all mental health practitioners. It is the first book of its kind to tackle the complex issue of eating disorders in a way that is hands-on, practical, and applicable, offering clinicians real answers to essential questions so that they may more effectively and compassionately treat their clients.

In an age when actual psychotherapeutic practice is predominantly eclectic, most psychotherapy textbooks are outdated and impractically bound in theoretical pigeon holes. Counseling and Psychotherapy Essentials incorporates into a single source the latest advances in the field and focuses on psychotherapy's core processes—rather than ideologies—to provide a comprehensive and imminently pragmatic textbook for learning integrative counseling and psychotherapy.The central lessons of this book are framed on one side by a theoretical overview in which essential therapeutic concepts and techniques are synthesized, and on the other side by a detailed review of frequently encountered concerns such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, couple/marital issues, and psychopharmacology. From the general to the specific, Good and Beitman keep their discussion grounded in the core processes of psychotherapy—engagement, pattern search, change, and termination—that facilitate therapeutic change.In Counseling and Psychotherapy Essentials, students have a textbook that seamlessly connects their classroom experience with their actual work with clients, preparing them to be effective clinicians.

Rational judgment, soothing behavior, and calm observation often go out the window when responding to stress. This book presents hypnotherapeutic skills (including breathing exercises) and other easy-to-learn techniques that help people maintain healthy responses to stress and facilitate effective clinical work and a happier life.

Attachment security and affect regulation have long been buzzwords in therapy circles, but many of these ideas—so integral to successful therapeutic work with kids and adolescents— have yet to be effectively translated to parenting practice itself. Moreover, as neuroscience reveals how the human brain is designed to work in good relationships, and how such relationships are central to healthy human development, the practical implications for the parent-child attachment relationship become even more apparent.Here, a leading attachment specialist with over 30 years of clinical experience brings the rich and comprehensive field of attachment theory and research from inside the therapy room to the outside, equipping therapists and caregivers with practical parenting skills and techniques rooted in proven therapeutic principles.A guide for all parents and a resource for all mental health clinicians and parent-educators who are searching for ways to effectively love, discipline, and communicate with children, this book presents the techniques and practices that are fundamental to optimal child development and family functioning—how to set limits, provide guidance, and manage the responsibilities and difficulties of daily life, while at the same time communicating safety, fun, joy, and love. Filled with valuable clinical vignettes and sample dialogues, Hughes shows how attachment-focused research can guide all those who care for children in their efforts to better raise them.

Whether the result of miscommunication, betrayal, abandonment, or matters of principle, relationship breaks—children from parents, friends from one another and intergenerational—are common gut-wrenching experiences that often go unrecognised in therapy. Here, therapists learn how to pinpoint the causes of cutoffs, guide reconciliation and help clients who cannot find resolution heal without reconnection.

Drawing on her study of multiple traditions and lineages—from ancient yoga practices to current neuroscientific research on yoga benefits and contraindications—Weintraub presents a compendium of guided breathing exercises, meditations, self-inquiry practices, relaxation exercises, and simple postural adjustments that can readily accompany and complement psychotherapy—no mat or difficult postures required! Therapists learn exactly how to introduce these simple practices into a session, all within the comfort of their therapy room, no prior yoga training or experience necessary.Weintraub shows therapists how to introduce and apply a full range of yogic approaches: targeted breathing practices called pranayama that meet the present mood and bring it into balance; healing hand gestures called mudras; special sounds and tones called mantras; guided imagery and affirmation; yogic self-inquiry, and much more. Clinical stories and anecdotes explore how these yoga-based interventions, rooted in a firm, evidence-based foundation, can be used as effective treatments for a particular mood or mental state.With over 50 photographs that clearly illustrate the practices and gestures, detailed, step-by-step instructions, and scripts for guided relaxation and meditations, Yoga Skills for Therapists is a practical, hands-on guide that teaches the power of basic yoga techniques to bring great self-awareness, balance, and lasting well-being to you and your clients.

Anxiety and depression are two of the most common complaints in therapy, and its not unusual for clients to suffer from both simultaneously. But spotting the co-occurrence is not easy. When one symptom picture dominates, diagnosis and treatment are pretty straightforward. But consider how fuzzy the clinical picture can become:Depression can rob an anxious client of the energy needed to control her symptoms; acute anxiety can make anyone depressed and exhausted; and what happens when anxiety masquerades as depression, or vice versa? What are the signs that this is happening?It’s hard enough to treat these two disorders when they exist on their own, and it gets even harder when they present together.In her customary practical style and conversational tone, Margaret Wehrenberg unravels the complexity of this common comorbidity, teaching therapists exactly how to tackle it.Beginning with “Where to Start?”, she walks readers through a variety of common tricks for distinguishing between anxiety and depression, and provides an assessment plan for determining which set of symptoms the client is most ready to work on.The book goes on to highlight seven common types of comorbid clients, who can be arrayed on a spectrum, from the “low energy” (depressed) on one end to the “high anxiety” (anxious) on the other, and everything in between, including the “hopeless ruminator,” the “quiet avoider,” and the “high-energy anxious and depressed” client. By organizing the book around these typical client profiles, readers are given a more realistic picture of what comorbid anxiety and depression look like and how to best help their clients.Wondering where depression ends and anxiety begins, or vice versa, and how you can most effectively help your clients when they’re struggling with both? The key clinical strategies offered in this book provide a practical roadmap forward, helping therapists and their clients to better understand the symptom picture, manage its effects, and heal.

Depression is one of the most common issues that people bring to therapy. It is also a mental health condition with several well-known and readily available medications to treat it. That said, every clinician knows that medications do not work for all clients, and even if they do work they can often come with unwelcome side effects that are difficult and hard to bear. In short, medications are not foolproof.Fortunately today, with rising interest in non-drug approaches, effective and easy-to-implement alternative strategies exist for dealing with depression in your clients, either in conjunction with medication treatments or on their own. Six of the best are presented in this book.With his characteristic mix of insightful clinical anecdote and personal narrative, seasoned therapist Bill O’Hanlon lays out six of his go-to non-medication strategies for clinicians to use with their own depressed clients. These include “marbling” (training people to intersperse happy memories with sad ones so that over time they move away from a feeling of such negativity); challenging isolation in clients (helping them to see the benefits of the social world); and understanding neuroplasticity and how it can be used to your clients’ advantage.Bill O’Hanlon writes from a place of experience. As a youth, he was so severely depressed that he contemplated suicide. His successful rise from that dark place, some 30 years ago, can be seen as the starting point for this book. Many of the strategies he used to overcome his own illness he now puts forward here, with compassion and wisdom, so that other clinicians may benefit.Every depressed person experiences his or her own variety of the illness, and as therapists we need to help our clients discover their own paths to healing. Armed with the compelling, non-drug strategies in this book, clinicians will be able to do just that, opening up a new route to health and wellness.Whether you routinely prescribe psychotropic drugs or would never think of doing so, this book may offer just the advice you need to advance your therapy work and make a real difference in your depressed clients’ lives.

As the average lifespan increases, so does the number of living generations, a recipe for some potentially complex family issues. This book offers therapeutic strategies to navigate the unique dynamics and experiences of today’s aging families, from the “sandwich generation” and caregiver burdens to divorce, bereavement, and much more.

Grove, who trained for many years with Haley, has been in this enviable position. In this book, which Haley calls "not profound, but practical", the two authors discuss cases typical of what therapists in mental health centers face: serious and chronic problems, threats of family dissolution or violence, and involvement of several systems, such as the court and protective services. Grove presents provocative questions: Should he try to reunite a couple even though the husband has been violent in the past and may be again? How can one empower a stepfather who is inept and unemployed and acts like a teenager himself? When a woman can't remember much of her childhood and so suspects she was abused, is remembering necessary? How does a couple's current sexual relationship relate to past abuse? If one partner of a divorcing couple is having an affair, should the therapist help the other partner become aware of the affair - and how? Together he and Haley devise innovative strategies for these problematic situations. While starting with individual cases, the discussion ranges widely over the dilemmas that arise in hypnotic and strategic family therapy. Haley clarifies many of his positions, shows where his position has changed over the years, and introduces new techniques. This is a marvelous chance to interact with a master of psychotherapy.

This book describes a coherent, comprehensive model of psychotherapy supervision with an emphasis on pragmatics, process, ethics, and gender and cultural influences.

Drawing together emerging trends in therapy and the human sciences, the author offers an understanding of the situated nature of human problems and a way of changing the family's culture and idioms into a common language.

Integrated primary care, now instituted in many areas of the country, isboth the service that integrates medical and mental health primary careand the practice of defining the problem brought by a patient without using "medical" or "mental" as inevitable distinctions. This volume makes the case for this approach, shows how to implement it, and describes some successful programs. It will be attractive to medical managers, plan administrators, physicians, and mental health providers.

In Pennsylvania, a commitment has been made, on a statewide basis, to serve these children and strengthen their vulnerable families through a home-based approach grounded in ecosystemic thinking and practice. This book tells the story of Pennsylvania's evolving treatment program, providing a model for other professionals who believe that a family's needs are best met through individually tailored, family-centered, community-based, culturally competent, and outcome-oriented services.This is a complete, comprehensive guide, covering everything from planning and development of home-based services through supervision and training of home-based practitioners and evaluation of treatment outcomes. Particular attention is given to the clinical challenges faced by home-based therapists working with families where children are depressed and perhaps suicidal, oppositional and defiant, out-of-control and aggressive, or hyperactive/impulsive. These families commonly have multiple problems, complex histories, and a negative view of outside "helpers."Delivered in the family's home and involving parents as partners, the services described here work to improve child and family functioning through family therapy, creation of collaborative links between appropriate community and family resources, and provision of family support funds for concrete services such as transportation, respite care, and emergencies. Home-based treatment serves both children at risk for out-of-home placement due to a diagnosis of severe mental illness or behavioral disorders and children being discharged from inpatient hospitals and psychiatric residential placements.The authors, active at every level of program conceptualization and implementation, share their wealth of experience with readers. Their advice and case studies move from the big picture to the small details of where to sit in a family's home, what to say, and how to think about a problematic situation. Several appendices of forms used for assessment, evaluation, and training add to the book's practical value. Theoretically sound and fully practical, this guide to home-based services will encourage all professionals serving children to involve their families and communities-and to meet them where they live.

This book is designed to appeal to both graduate students in counseling/health psychology and clinicians interested in learning more about working with medical populations. It covers topics ranging from pediatric health to pain management to life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and AIDS. Leaders in health psychology offer their expertise, reviewing current research and offering ideas for practice. The first editor lives in Seattle, the second in Tempe, Arizona; and the third in Chicago.

For mental health professionals, sports medicine specialists, physicians, coaches, and other sports enthusiasts, Sport Psychiatry: Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the psychological challenges and pitfalls of being an athlete. From Little League to the Olympics, it tracks the lives of athletes: their biopsychosocial development, family issues, drug use and abuse, mental disorders, performance issues, and treatment for these problems.These essays unfold basic ideas about the athlete's mind, body, and social roles. In the telling, they reveal the psychological process of becoming an athlete, the complex interactions of endocrine systems during training and competition, and the perils for the psyche of an athletic career. Such perils include some of the fundamental clinical phenomena of sport psychiatry: the variety of mental illnesses among athletes, the abuse of drugs (including performance-enhancing ones), the problems endemic to youth sports, and the common difficulties encountered by athletes in training and competition, such as choking and slump. In response to these challenges, Sport Psychiatry: Theory and Practice explains how the basic evaluation and treatment modalities of psychiatry, including psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, family therapy, and group therapy, are adapted to the athletic context in sport psychiatry.

Directed at the body's energy system and perturbed thought fields, energy psychology heals at a more elemental level than other psychotherapeutic methods. Effects are generally rapid and painless. Through a variety of protocols, this book guides psychotherapists in diagnosing and treating psychological problems using manual muscle testing and various kinesiological treatments.The book discusses theory, rationale, and practice. Chapter 1 outlines a number of the assumptions in psychological science and reviews energy meridian approaches such as acupuncture and applied kinesiology. Since diagnosing and balancing the energy system is best conducted within a solid therapeutic relationship, Chapter 2 explores client preparation and engagement. Diagnostic and treatment techniques, such as manual muscle testing, nine gamut treatments, brain balancing procedure, cross-crawl exercises, and rapid stress reduction techniques are detailed in subsequent chapters. Blocks to treatment effectiveness (neurologic disorganization, psychological reversal, and energy toxins) are discussed, as well as how to deal with them. A test and treatment points catalog specifies by way of description and photographs the various test and treatment points. The reader is assisted in precisely locating the alarm or test points used to diagnose meridian imbalance, as well as preferred treatment points used to further evaluate and alleviate imbalance within the energy system. The book closes with a look at the future of energy psychology.Clear, straightforward, and comprehensive, Energy Diagnostic and Treatment Methods will serve as a foundation as well as an important reference on this unique approach to psychotherapy.

It describes, explains, and demonstrates over a hundred cognitive therapy techniques, offering for each the theoretical basis, a thumbnail description of the method, case examples, and resources for further information.Cognitive restructuring therapy is based on the truth: If we change our thoughts, we change ourselves. It tackles, with logic, persistence, and creativity, the distorted beliefs underlying our emotional responses to everyday events. With dozens of soft, hard, and objective countering techniques, as well as methods to encourage perceptual shifts, this book is a huge toolbox for cognitive therapy practitioners.In this major revision of his 1986 Handbook of Cognitive Therapy Techniques, McMullin has added seven new chapters which explain how to teach basic concepts, how to uncover harmful schemes, and how to resynthesize historical and cultural beliefs. He directs special attention to using these strategies with addicted clients and with severely mentally ill patients. In addition, he has tripled the number of examples, dialogues, case transcripts, and illustrations.Whether they are new to cognitive therapy or have been using it for years, clinicians will find here a rich, engaging, practical resource.

Carol Wren shares compelling stories of adults with LD and ADD, whose own words reveal their anger, depression, and anxiety as they struggle to succeed in work and life. Listen, for instance, to Mary, whose metaphor provides the title of the book:'In America the philosophy is you've got to do better. Inside, though, there is that fearing, because of that 'Yes, you can, yes, you can.' And you're afraid that you're falling off a ledge on the side of a canyon and you're hanging on to a twig.'Cognitive and emotional issues often interact in very subtle ways and can affect the LD client's perception, communication, self-esteem, and personality development. These interactions have powerful external consequences as well, including strained family relationships, poor work histories, and the inability to 'read' people and form friendships. LD and ADD can also keep clients from participating meaningfully in talk therapy. Wren's framework encourages readers to listen for LD and ADD in their adult clients.Successful treatment begins with the psychotherapist's ability to understand a client's experiential world and establish an emotionally healing relationship based on that understanding. Wren's framework of personal stories and information about learning disabilities highlights this experiential world and shows professional readers how to listen for LD and ADD in their adult clients. Jay Einhorn's psychotherapeutic commentary adds specific guidance on treatment, so therapists can recognize their LD clients' cognitive limitations and their compensatory ways of dealing with the world.People with learning disabilities have complex problems that are often neglected, misdiagnosed, or simply unrecognized. Hanging by a Twig gives psychotherapists and counselors a lens to see beyond the disability and help clients frame more productive, satisfying lives.

The result is personal consultation, with a focus on conversation and inquiries that gently guide the pursuit of desire. This approach embraces a diversity of longings, goals, and ways of being in the world.The key question, underlying both the authors' research and their consultative conversations, is 'How can we create a space for dialogue and wonder, where purpose, preferences, and possibilities can emerge?'This question leads to many others, which form the basis for the chapters of the book. Each inquiry is illustrated by case excerpts that show where this approach diverges from strategic and solution-focused questioning. The situations are difficult--crack addiction, marital separation, suicidal despair, etc.--and yet the consultant's stance of being 'curious with' the client leads to signs of hope and pathways toward a better future. In this pragmatic approach, previously unspoken desires take precedence over goals set by others, and what is preferred becomes possible.

In their solution-oriented, competency-based approach to couples therapy, Phillip Ziegler and Tobey Hiller answer this question. In Recreating Partnership, an innovative, theoretically sound, and practical handbook for clinicians, Ziegler and Hiller present a bold and clinically useful concept, the good story/bad story dichotomy. The book shows clinicians how to use this narrative concept in conducting effective and efficient relationship therapy that will help couples build solutions collaboratively, invigorate partnership, and thrive, each in their own unique ways. The book covers issues such as establishing rapport with antagonistic partners; developing therapeutic goals; hosting conversations that reinvigorate the couple's good story; how, when, and whether to offer task assignments; addressing issues such as domestic violence; and how to bring therapy to a close, as well as many cogent and helpful transcripts. Written for psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and anyone who works with couples, Recreating Partnership will be exciting and useful to both the novice and experienced practitioner.

Yet even when they know what would work, partners often find that they are unable to do these things. Why is this?Provocative new neurological research suggests that old habits die hard for a reason—they may be woven into the fabric of brain states. We are wired for specific kinds of neural activations very early in life and these habitual responses are automatically activated in daily living, often without conscious awareness. Once they are set, these activation patterns (also known as response states) are likely to continue throughout a person’s life.For the most part, we don’t volunteer for these response states; we simply find ourselves under their influence. When any one of them is activated, we may lose the capacity to choose freely our thoughts and actions. It’s as if, at that moment, someone else is in charge. For these reasons and others, people in relationships may find it extremely difficult if not impossible to change how they respond to their partners. No matter how much partners want to change, their wired response states oppose their intentions.Part 1 of this book is a tour of the revolutionary discoveries emerging from neurobiology and the science of intimate relationships. Atkinson shows readers the implications of these discoveries for those who seek to change interpersonal habits and improve intimate relationships. These neural operating programs may also help explain why psychotherapies often fail to promote lasting change.In Part 2 readers will find a remedy for this problem. Atkinson introduces Pragmatic/Experiential Therapy for Couples (PET-C), a step-by-step approach to working with couples that facilitates relationship change by promoting increased levels of neural integration in each partner. In PET-C, partners learn to identify mood states which perpetuate outmoded thoughts, attitudes, and habits of interaction. Once identified, clients are then assisted in the process of "re-wiring" these states for more flexibility and then activating alternate states which support new avenues for thought and action.Extensive case examples and ample illustrations of therapeutic dialogue demonstrate for readers the ins and outs of implementing PET-C with their clients. This book is supplemented by a companion CD-ROM titled Developing Habits for Relationship Success. The CD-ROM has two workbooks—for clients with male partners and clients with female partners—that can be personalized with the client’s name and printed out on demand. The workbooks contain dozens of take-home exercises designed to help clients identify troublesome response states and then develop new emotional habits.The discovery and understanding of the brain’s neural operating systems is of huge importance for anyone who seeks to make sense of troubled relationships and understand why partners often persist in self-defeating interactions. Emotional Intelligence in Couples Therapy is essential reading for anyone working with couples and seeking a new way to approach and understand human interactions.

Written with a minimum of jargon, this book will be of use to clinicians who practice standard psychotherapy and those who have more thoroughly integrated hypnosis into their practice. Hypnotic Techniques, the companion volume to the acclaimed Handbook of Hypnotic Inductions, introduces the wealth of hypnotic applications for dissolving resistance and moving ahead in therapy. Broad in scope and flexible with respect to theoretical bases, this new work by Gafner and Benson assists clinicians in bringing the power of hypnotic techniques to bear in an extensive variety of therapeutic contexts.How do therapists establish a directive in traditional psychotherapy? In the first section of Hypnotic Techniques, the authors explain how to set up a task for a client by the skillful use of hypnotic language, supported by 'seeding' the intended target ahead of time and buttressing it afterward with metaphor, story, or anecdote. Story construction, embedded suggestion, metaphor development, mindfulness-based group anger treatment, ego-strengthening, and combining direct and indirect techniques are among the many topics addressed that borrow from hypnosis and are widely applicable in standard psychotherapy. Therapists are encouraged to 'think hypnotically'—to look for junctures in therapeutic sessions where hypnotic techniques are applicable, to select the most appropriate technique, and to discern and understand the client's response to the applied technique. The aim is not to make clinicians into hypnotic therapists but to show all clinicians the efficacy of specific hypnotic techniques in the context of their current practice.In the second half of Hypnotic Techniques, the authors address formal hypnosis in depth. Beginning with an examination of the limitations of evidence-based treatments for clinical problems such as anxiety and mood disorders, relational problems, and anger, as well as for medical problems, chronic pain, and habit control, Gafner and Benson propose a collection of alternate, hypnotic means. Many of these techniques can be used in isolation from standard evidence-based treatments, while others are designed to augment standard treatment. Weaving dozens of stories and therapeutic anecdotes into rich clinical vignettes, the authors demonstrate such techniques as 'short-burst' and metaphorical ego-strengthening, the uses of amnesia and other hypnotic phenomena, alternating stories, unconscious problem solving, and exposure-based and indirect hypnotic applications in treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Hypnosis and hypnotic techniques are strong tools for assisting clients in moving beyond their resistance to therapy. In the hurry-up world of managed care, Gafner and Benson find that hypnotic techniques are particularly valuable because they require a slower pace in initial sessions when creating connections to both the conscious and unconscious minds of clients. Somewhat paradoxically, by moving slower and establishing bonds to the conscious and unconscious, resistance is more effectively overcome and both therapist and client move ahead more steadily toward the therapeutic goal.