A Patient's Guide to Psychotherapy: and an Overview for Students and Beginning Therapists

How therapy works often remains shrouded in mystery for prospective patients and therapists in training, which does nothing to help either party.

Donald B. Colson, who spent his career as a therapist and psychoanalyst, makes the process user friendly with this overview of what you can expect from therapy. Taking a no-nonsense approach, he explores how to tackle problems head on and work with a therapist to solve them. Beginning students of psychotherapy, graduate students, and therapists in training will also find the text instructive.

Colson reviews the reasons someone might seek therapy as well as how to find a therapist that meets your needs. He also explains how therapy works and highlights key concepts such as the centrality of relationships, attachment, unconscious processes, defenses, transference, and counter-transference.

You'll also learn the main reasons patients seek relief, how therapists facilitate change, and the uses and misuses of diagnosis and diagnostic labels.

Seeking help from a therapist does not show weakness; it takes much more courage to confront personal problems than it takes to avoid them. Start overcoming fear, anger, shame, guilt, and troubled relationships with A Patient's Guide to Psychotherapy.

Donald B. Colson, Ph.D., was raised in Boston, Massachusetts. He worked for thirty-three years at the Menninger Clinic, serving as its director of psychology, teaching, and research. He went on to operate a private practice focusing on group and individual therapy and psychoanalysis. He is retired and lives in Southern California.