Forms of Brief Therapy

With "accountability" fast becoming the byword of the age, psychotherapists are challenged to demonstrate both the therapeutic and cost effectiveness of their interventions. While traditionally these two goals have been considered mutually exclusive, new research on the briefer therapies appears to show that less can sometimes be more. Fewer sessions of a carefully planned, focused and well-executed short-term intervention may contribute more to positive change that protracted analysis.

Forms of Brief Therapy is the first volume to comprehensively and critically address the issue of how the element of time can be used as a therapeutic tool in psychodynamic and behavioral systems, and across individual, couple, family and group interventions. The authors put to rest the pervasive myth that there is an ideal, specific duration for most therapy. Instead, they offer a variety of approaches that combine careful examination and integration of presenting problems and patient characteristics. At times, evaluation may indicate as many as fifty sessions. In other cases, as evidenced with special force in Bloom's provocative presentation, just a single focused session may suffice. As Weiss and Jacobson put it in their marital therapy contribution, the purpose of this book is to structure therapy that is brief by design rather than by default.

The contributors to Forms of Brief Therapy are among the most renowned practitioners and thinkers in their respective fields. Their critical overviews of research, and pragmatic analyses of therapy design, will prove highly instructive to clinical researchers and teachers who wish to better understand the relationship of therapeutic structure to underlying mechanisms of change. Mental health practitioners will find this volume eminently useful in their daily work. It provides explicit recommendations for patient selection, evaluation, and choice of therapeutic techniques which are richly illustrated by case materials. Unexcelled as clinical guide and reference, Forms of Brief Therapy is also ideally suited as a textbook for psychotherapy courses.

Simon H. Budman, PhD, a leader in the development of new models for behavioral health care, is the president and founder of Innovative Training Systems (ITS) in Newton, Massachusetts. ITS provides training, consulting and new product development services to managed care companies, group practices, hospitals, community mental health centers and HMOs around the country. A faculty member of Harvard Medical School, Dr. Budman is past Director of Mental Health Training and Mental Health Research at the Harvard Community Health Plan. He is coauthor (with Alan S. Gurman) of the widely acclaimed Theory and Practice of Brief Therapy.