The Tools: Transform Your Problems into Courage, Confidence, and Creativity - Softcover

Stutz, Phil; Michels, Barry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307360938 ISBN 13: 9780307360939

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2013

Synopsis

Now in paperback, a groundbreaking book about personal growth that presents a uniquely effective set of four tools that bring about dynamic change in the present and impart a greater understanding of the depth and complexity of the human condition over the long term.
 
The Tools addresses the most common complaint patients have about psychotherapy: the interminable wait for change to begin. Barry Michels, an LA-based therapist, was frustrated by his inability to bring his patients faster relief from the issues that plagued them. He found a mentor in Phil Stutz, a psychiatrist who years before devised a methodology that arose from a similar disenchantment. The traditional therapeutic model sets its sights on the past, but Stutz and Michels employ an arsenal of tools--exercises that access the power of the unconscious and effectively meet the most persistent problems people face--and the results are electrifying. Stutz and Michels are much sought-after--a recent profile in The New Yorker touted them as an "open secret" in Hollywood--and treat a high-powered and creative clientele. Their first work, The Tools transcends the typical self-help genre because of its paradigm-changing material, the credibility of its authors, and the instant appeal and empowerment of its message.

About this title

Review

A Letter from the Authors: What Is a Tool?
In conventional psychotherapy, we talk about “insights” or “causation” and we tend to believe that if we can uncover the deep-seated reasons behind someone’s problems, then the person will change automatically. This implies that awareness alone creates the forces that cause change. But real change, the kind of change patients in therapy cry out for, means changing your behavior, not just your attitude.

That requires much stronger forces. A tool is a technique or procedure that can generate a force that allows you to do the work of change. It is work that must be done in real time. When do we use a tool? In the present.

Conventional therapy tends to be passive and focuses on the past. It excavates a patient’s history, usually from childhood, brings it into the light of day and interprets it so as to strip it of its unconscious power. I have the greatest respect for the past. Memories, emotions, insights can all be very valuable. But my patients needed help and relief in the present and all the insights in the world weren’t going to be powerful enough to deliver that.

To control your actions you need something else: a specific procedure you can use systematically to combat a specific problem -- you need a tool.

There’s an obvious objection that arises here: Isn’t what you’re doing superficial? Sure, these tools of yours may help a patient change his or her behavior but you haven’t addressed the underlying reasons. Unless you do that they’re bound to go back to their (self-) destructive ways sooner or later.

There are two answers to this objection. The first involves a misunderstanding of how people change. Insight into the “reasons” for a problem isn’t the cause of change – it’s the result. Groups like Alcoholics Anonymous have always known this. You don’t join AA and then sit around discussing why you drink too much over a few beers or vodka martinis. You join to stop drinking one day at a time. Only after that can you look into the roots of your addiction by “taking inventory.”

The second answer goes back to our original question about what a tool is. There has been a bias in psychotherapy implying that anything that is active and involves your will is superficial; as if the deepest part of human experience can only occur inside your head. The truth is the opposite; the deepest part of human experience happens when you interact with the world outside yourself. That means you need to go beyond thinking and into “doing”—and this is exactly what a tool makes possible.

About the Author

PHIL STUTZ graduated Phi Beta Kappa from City College in New York and received his MD from New York University. He worked as a prison psychiatrist on Rikers Island and then in private practice in New York before moving his practice in Los Angeles in 1982.
 
BARRY MICHELS has a BA from Harvard, a law degree from University of California, Berkeley, and an MSW from the University of Southern California. He has been in private practice as a psychotherapist since 1980.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Canada
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0307360938
• ISBN 13: 9780307360939
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288