Formulation as a Basis for Planning Psychotherapy Treatment

New
Hardcover
1997
$62.76

To help their patients, clinicians must make accurate diagnoses and devise effective treatment plans. These plans often involve psychotherapy with goals that include symptom reduction, the prevention of relapse, and helping patients recognize and remove impediments to more effective functioning. Formulation as a Basis for Planning Psychotherapy Treatment presents a formulation system that combines concepts derived from psychodynamic, interpersonal, cognitive-behavioral, and family system approaches. In a step-by-step manner, illustrated by plentiful case examples, this useful guide shows psychiatrists, residents in psychiatry and psychology, social workers, and marriage and family counselors how to plan treatment after the initial diagnosis. After an overview of psychological change processes, each of the five steps in the formulation process are covered systematically. Case formulation is begun by the careful selection and description of a patient's symptoms and problems. This information is then grouped into states of mind, an approach that allows for multiple presentations of a patient, avoids static descriptions of observations, and places many observable features into meaningful clusters of co-occurrence. Subsequent chapters explain how all of this information can be used to focus the treatment and identify defensive controls that may interfere with treatment. The author describes how to infer deep beliefs about the self in terms of views of relationships with others. The book teaches how to formulate plans for interventions during psychotherapy.

Synopsis

To help their patients, clinicians must make accurate diagnoses and devise effective treatment plans. These plans often involve psychotherapy with goals that include symptom reduction, the prevention of relapse, and helping patients recognize and remove impediments to more effective functioning. Formulation as a Basis for Planning Psychotherapy Treatment presents a formulation system that combines concepts derived from psychodynamic, interpersonal, cognitive-behavioral, and family system approaches. In a step-by-step manner, illustrated by plentiful case examples, this useful guide shows psychiatrists, residents in psychiatry and psychology, social workers, and marriage and family counselors how to plan treatment after the initial diagnosis. After an overview of psychological change processes, each of the five steps in the formulation process are covered systematically. Case formulation is begun by the careful selection and description of a patient's symptoms and problems. This information is then grouped into states of mind, an approach that allows for multiple presentations of a patient, avoids static descriptions of observations, and places many observable features into meaningful clusters of co-occurrence. Subsequent chapters explain how all of this information can be used to focus the treatment and identify defensive controls that may interfere with treatment. The author describes how to infer deep beliefs about the self in terms of views of relationships with others. The book teaches how to formulate plans for interventions during psychotherapy.

$62.76

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 144
Publisher: American Psychiatric Association Publishing
Published: 30 Apr 1997
ISBN 10: 0880487496
ISBN 13: 9780880487498
Book Overview: Formulation as a Basis for Psychotherapy by Dr. Mardi Horowitz, our most eminent psychoanalytic clinician scholar, is a unique and extremely creative approach to a crucial aspect of doing psychotherapy -- making accurate diagnoses and effective treatment plans. He demonstrates in a cognitive-psychodynamic synthesis how to use his 'states of mind' concepts to achieve effective and powerful change in personality disorders. This book will be highly useful to both trainees and practitioners in the entire mental health field. Robert A. Nemiroff, M.D., Clinical Professor and Director, Residency Training Program, Department of Psychiatry, University of California-San Diego School of Medicine, La Jolla, California I heartily recommend this book: it is lucid and clear, the ideas are systematically conveyed through interesting and vivid case examples, and the method of formulation will help clinicians at every level of experience from beginner to expert. It is a truly integrative work, bringing a tone of scholarship and convergence into an area that has previously been both murky and disputed. Marc Jacobs, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Director of Residency Program, Department of Psychiatry and Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California-San Francisco This intellectually challenging work really does justice to the complexities of therapy and formulation. Dr. Horowitz's approach to formulation is uniquely flexible, in that it provides tools to start formulating a case right away, soon after meeting a new patient, but also remains useful along every step of the way. As therapy becomes more complicated, his model offers more and more layers of tools. I highly recommend Dr. Horowitz's book to new and experienced therapists alike. New therapists will learn a solid and stimulating approach to understanding patients. Experienced therapists will find their ideas and working styles enhanced in rich and intellectually rewarding ways. Adriana Feder, M.D., Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Assistant Director, Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Program, Department of Psychiatry, Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California This book will be an excellent teaching source for work with trainees because it goes step by step and describes the markers at each decision point. I look forward to its publication. Nancy Kaltreider, M.D., Director of Medical Student Education, Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California

Media Reviews

Overall, the book offers a refreshing way of perceiving and utilizing clinical material. -- Readings: A Journal of Reviews and Commentary in Mental Health

It is written clearly in an informal prose style and is free of the complexities or ambiguities of theory or the clutter of empirical evidence. The style is confident and the constructs and arguments presented have immediate common sense validity.... [T]his book may well fin a place in the reading lists of psychiatry training programs. -- Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry

In the present volume, Formulation as a Basis for Planning Psychotherapy Treatment , Horowitz... has succinctly and elegantly outlined and richly illustrated a conceptual system for constructing the psychological component of case formulations.... I am equally confident that journeyman as well as novice therapists will be delighted to find that the author, in addition to providing helpful guidelines to case formulation, has included many specific suggestions for the implementation of formulations in treatment. He also offers clinicians the necessary wisdom that ultimately personal change in beliefs and behavior are up to the patient. -- The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

Author Bio

Mardi J. Horowitz, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Center on Stress and Personality at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, University of California, San Francisco, California.