Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change

The prevailing view among therapists as well as clients is that a more vital life can be attained by overcoming negative thoughts and feelings. Yet despite efforts to achieve this goal, many individuals continue to suffer with behavior disorders, adjustment difficulties, and low life satisfaction. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a unique psychotherapeutic approach that addresses this issue by altering the very ground on which rational change strategies rest. Within a coherent theoretical and philosophical framework, ACT illuminates the ways clients understand and perpetuate their difficulties through language. The book shows how interventions based on metaphor, paradox, and experiential exercises can enable clients to break free of language traps and make contact with thoughts, feelings, memories, and physical sensations that have been feared and avoided. Detailed guidelines are presented for helping clients recontextualize and accept these private events, develop greater clarity about personal values, and commit to needed behavior change. Providing in one volume a scientifically sound theory of psychopathology and a practical treatment model, and illustrated by a wealth of clinical examples, this is an important resource for practitioners and students in the full range of behavioral health care fields.

Steven C. Hayes, PhD, is Nevada Foundation Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of 15 books and more than 250 scientific articles, his interests cover basic research, applied research, methodology, and philosophy of science.

Kirk D. Strosahl, PhD, is Research and Training Director for the Mountainview Consulting Group, where he provides consultation and training on integrative primary care medicine, outcomes management in applied delivery systems, clinical management of the suicidal patient, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Kelly G. Wilson, PhD, is Associate Director of the Center for Contextual Psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno. He has directed a National Institute on Drug Abuse grant since 1993, examining both Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and 12-Step facilitation treatment of substance abuse.