Psychodynamic-Interpersonal Therapy
A Conversational Model
- Michael Barkham - University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
- Else Guthrie - University of Manchester, UK
- Gillian E. Hardy - University of Sheffield, UK
- Frank Margison - Manchester Royal Infirmary
This book presents for the first time, a practical manual for psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy. Drawing on forty years of research, teaching and practice, its expert authors guide you through the conversational model’s theory, skills and implications for practice.
Part I sets out the model’s underlying theory and outlines the evidence for its efficacy with client groups.
Part II guides you through clinical skills of the model, from foundational to advanced.
Part III offers practical guidance on implementing the approach within a range of settings, and for developing effective practice through reflection and supervision.
‘Long-awaited’ does not do justice to the celebrations which this comprehensive account of Psychodynamic Interpersonal Therapy (PIT, aka ‘Conversational model’) compiled by its master-practitioners will evoke. PIT is a miraculous blend of art (metaphor and the Romantic poets), science (robust outcome-process studies of depression, Medically Unexplained Symptoms, and Borderline Personality Disorder) and existential-Self psychology (from passivity to activity; more secure and reflexive sense of Self). Like PIT itself, the book is highly practical, experience-near, transparent, and well-structured. Concise and indispensable, it will help psychotherapists of all stages and stripes to become better therapists -- perhaps even better people!
At a time when many clinicians feel that research is irrelevant, alien and yet imposed onto their work, this book offers a much-needed pathway of rapprochement between practice and science. Expanding upon a treatment manual that has been vetted in several studies for many clinical problems, and resting on rich conceptual foundations, it describes therapeutic skills that are essential to clinicians of all levels of experience. It also provides insightful treatment guidelines, helpful tools, and extensive clinical examples that could only have emerged from the expertise and wisdom of accomplished researchers, practitioners, and trainers. With this book at hand, I cannot think of a clinician who will not learn how to conduct psychodynamic-interpersonal therapy, get better at it, master it, teach it – or simply become a more effective therapist.
