Integrating 12-Steps and Psychotherapy: Helping Clients Find Sobriety and Recovery

Integrating 12 Steps and Psychotherapy: Helping Clients Find Sobriety and Recovery presents a practical and applied approach to working with substance dependent clients. Designed to be accessible to a wide and multidisciplinary audience of helpers at all skill levels, this text helps future practitioners fully understand the clinical challenges with substance dependence, adjust their thinking and technique in order to match their client′s phase of recovery, and optimize client retention and treatment outcomes. Utilizing educator, training, and practice perspectives, authors Kevin A. Osten and Robert Switzer explore relevant theory and techniques in integrating 12-Steps across a broad range of clinical issues including: the assessment and treatment of resistant and ambivalent pre-recovery clients; boundary setting, undoing antisocial adaption; processing counter transference reactions; and the intersection between biological functioning and ability in early recovery.

Dr. Kevin A. Osten earned a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. He has worked in psychiatric hospitals for most of the past 20 years, most recently as the Clinical Coordinator of Adult Outpatient Services at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital, where he remains on staff today as an Allied Health Professional. His work in the past decade has been focused on providing clinical care to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community coping with severe mental illness and/or addictions. He became the Director of the LGBTQ Mental Health and Inclusion Center at the Adler School of Professional Psychology in 2011, where he is also core faculty in the Psy.D. program. He remains active in his private practice utilizing an integrative approach in psychotherapy.

Dr. Robert Switzer earned a BA from The State University of New York at Buffalo and a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology from the Illinois School of Professional Psychology. Since 1990, his professional work has focused on psychotherapy and diagnostics, with a focus on substance abuse and substance dependence. He has worked in inpatient and outpatient settings, primarily with adults. He has also been an adjunct faculty member at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology since 2000 and a core faculty member since 2008. He continues to be active in his private practice, where he provides individual psychotherapy using an eclectic approach including aspects of psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, rogerian and 12-Step based techniques. His interests include substance abuse and addictive disorders, 12-Step work, depression, psychodynamic psychotherapy, severe personality disorders, diagnostics, personality assessment, and a recent interest in integrative psychotherapy. Dr. Switzer is also an avid cycler and can often be found bicycling around the Chicagoland area, even during weather when he really should be indoors.