The use of dreams in brief therapy.

Suggests a general clinical framework for listening to dreams and interacting with the patient's dreams in brief therapy. Dreams may aid in assessing the quality of object relations and transference, facilitating expression of repressed affect, setting a therapeutic focus, placing dream material in reality, determining resistances, locating meaning, and implementing insight. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Investigation of what clients and counselors do not say in brief therapy.

After each session in 24 cases of 6-session therapy, clients and counselors reported thoughts or feelings that they did not say, and counselors tried to guess what clients left unsaid. Results indicated that most things left unsaid were negative. Clients did not reveal behaviors/cognitions and emotions, whereas counselors did not reveal emotions and clinical conjectures. For clients, there was a positive correlation between (1) the proportion of things with emotional content left unsaid and (2) client-rated satisfaction with therapy and change, but there was a negative correlation between (1) the proportion of things left unsaid with behavioral/cognitive content and (2) client-rated satisfaction with change. Finally, counselors were aware of only 17% of the things clients left unsaid. When counselors accurately guessed what clients left unsaid, counselors rated the sessions as being rougher, and clients were less satisfied with treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Play therapy with multiple personality disorder clients.

The use of play therapy with child alters of adults who have multiple personality disorders is explored. Various approaches to play therapy that are used with children may also be effectively used with child alters. Play may be used to help sublimate expressions of anger, recover dissociated memories, and increase communication and cooperation among alter personalities. Play therapy offers distinct advantages when working with child alters, and the play room allows for special techniques that can be used with all alters in the personality system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An evaluation of a brief group therapy for depression.

Evaluated a brief group therapy for treating 20 depressed outpatients. As an adjunct to group therapy, clients used written self-instructional materials to guide them in monitoring and increasing their frequency of pleasurable activities. Ss were randomly assigned to an immediate (IT) or delayed treatment (DT) group. Results did not support the effectiveness of IT. However, after receiving treatment, DT clients successfully increased activities and decreased depression relative to IT. (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive therapy for clients newly diagnosed as HIV-positive.

Receiving an HIV-positive diagnosis is a unique stressor which may cause significant emotional distress. Particular themes associated with the diagnosis include an altered self-view, concerns about physical health, relationship issues, a revised view of the future, and a search for meaning. To cope with these areas of distress, the individual must begin to change pre-existing beliefs and incorporate the ramifications of the diagnosis. Cognitive therapy is an effective, short-term model, appropriate for addressing these challenges. Specific therapeutic techniques for alleviating distress in this population are outlined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structured learning therapy: Training for community living.

Discusses existing approaches to the resocialization of mental hospital patients; while often yielding positive changes at the termination of treatment, they have typically failed to obtain enduring transfer of such changes into community functioning. A recently developed therapy designed to increase such transfer of training, Structured Learning, is described, and a number of tested, as well as potential, transfer-enhancing procedures are examined. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategic brief therapy in a clinic setting.

Strategic brief therapy involves defining the problem, exploring the attempted solutions, developing new solutions, and convincing the client to try them. Three cases from an outpatient clinic are presented to illustrate the use of this therapy in a clinic practice. Advantages of the approach are discussed, and modifications arising from the application of research-derived techniques in a clinical setting are described. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Short- and long-term follow-up of clients receiving insight-oriented therapy and behavior therapy.

15 clients (aged 18–55) received short-term, insight-oriented therapy, and 15 received short-term behavior therapy over a 3-mo course of treatment. Pre- and posttreatment measures included the Personal Orientation Inventory and the Truax Current Adjustment Rating Scale. Follow-up was subsequently undertaken (4 mo and 1 yr later) with the same multiple-outcome criteria. Process as well as outcome measurement was conducted. Results show positive change for both therapy types over the treatment program, and follow-up testing indicates that improvement was sustained up to the 1-yr posttest. Process measurement suggested that relational factors may be more influential in determining client change than factors such as type of technique or procedure administered. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assimilation in therapy involving interpretation of recurrent and nonrecurrent dreams.

We studied the process and outcome of one case of successful, brief (20 sessions), dream interpretation-focused psychotherapy with a dissociative client. During the therapy, a recurrent dream and 3 nonrecurrent dreams were explored using Hill's (1996) cognitive-experimental dream interpretation model. To explore the process of therapy, the Assimilation of Problematic Experiences Scale (APES; Stiles, Meshot, Anderson, & Sloan, 1992) was used to track changes across treatment in the client's level of assimilation of the core theme of her recurrent dream. This analysis revealed that level of assimilation increased over treatment, with most changes in assimilation occurring during sessions involving the interpretation of the recurrent dream. Use of the Hill model of dream interpretation with recurrent dreams and with dissociative clients is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structured play therapy: A model for choosing topics and activities.

This article presents a model to be used for structured play therapy for use with adolescents and children ages 7 yrs and older. Structured play therapy is a form of play therapy that is directive and uses planned, structured activities in almost every session. This model was developed to provide a framework for appropriate timing and sequence of structured activities. This article describes structured play therapy and how it differs from nondirective play, presents a structured play therapy model, presents specific guidelines for choosing appropriate structured activities and exercises, and presents a case study demonstrating application of the model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex with therapy clients: Its prevalence, potential consequences, and implications for psychology training.

Reviews literature indicating the prevalence and clinical consequences of therapist–client sexual contact. Ethics complaints; administrative action; therapist rehabilitation: posttermination therapist–client sexual contact; and legal consequences in the US and Canada, including the Canadian Supreme Court's Norberg v. Wynrib (1992) decision, are discussed. Recommendations for psychology to prepare students to appropriately handle sexual attraction to clients and deal with related ethical issues are offered. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of a brief cognitive-behavioral program for the prevention of chronic PTSD in recent assault victims.

The efficacy of a brief prevention program (BP) aimed at arresting the development of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was examined with 10 recent female victims of sexual and nonsexual assault who received 4 sessions of a cognitive-behavioral program shortly after the assault. Their PTSD and depression severity was compared with that of 10 matched recent female assault victims who received repeated assessments of their trauma-related psychopathology (assessment control; AC). The BP program consisted of education about common reactions to assault and cognitive-behavioral procedures. Two months postassault, victims who received the BP program had significantly less severe PTSD symptoms than victims in the control condition; 10% of the former group met criteria for PTSD versus 70% of the latter group. Five and a half months postassault, victims in the BP group were significantly less depressed than victims in the AC group and had significantly less severe reexperiencing symptoms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy with adult ethnic minority clients: A review.

Practicing psychologists may question the relevance of cognitive- behavioral treatments for their ethnic minority clients. Many cognitive- behavioral treatments are listed as empirically supported treatments by the Task Force on the Promotion and Dissemination of Psychological Procedures (D. L. Chambless et al., 1998). However, the samples in these effectiveness studies are composed primarily of White European American individuals. There is a paucity of research examining the effectiveness of cognitive- behavioral therapy (CBT) for ethnic minority clients. The author reviews the current literature on the use of CBT with ethnic minority clients living in the United States, specifically those of African, Asian, and Hispanic/Latino descent. Twelve studies are reviewed that examined the effectiveness of CBT for ethnic minority participants with a variety of psychological disorders. Recommendations for conducting and evaluating clinical outcome research that includes ethnic minority participants are provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Convergent validity of the CORE measures with measures of depression for clients in cognitive therapy for depression.

Clients (N = 77) undergoing cognitive therapy for depression were assessed before treatment with the Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure (CORE-OM), which encompasses domains of subjective well-being, problems, functioning, and risk of harming self or others, along with the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD), the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), and a measure of avoidant (Cluster C) personality problems (Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-Avoidant [IIP-Av]). The CORE-OM and the BDI-II were strongly correlated with each other and showed coherent and similar patterns of correlations with the HRSD, the BHS, and the IIP-Av. Sixty-one of the clients were repeatedly assessed during treatment with alternating versions of the CORE Short Form and with the BDI-II. Results strongly supported the convergent validity of the CORE measures with the BDI-II in across-clients comparisons of means scores and rates of improvement and in across-sessions comparisons within clients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

When hearing clients work with a deaf therapist.

Not being able to hear can present significant challenges for the therapist and for the deaf therapist/hearing client dyad. It can also create opportunities. Although the literature indicates that most culturally Deaf therapists work with Deaf clients due to their mutual use of American Sign Language, I describe (a) the background of an audiologically deaf therapist who relies on speech reading rather than sign language, and (b) this therapist's clinical work with hearing clients. Some of the relational dynamics of these treatments are identified, and I conclude by noting how attention to communication can benefit the work of all psychotherapists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encoding and cognitive therapy: Changing what clients attend to.

Suggests that changing what clients attend to is often more therapeutically significant than changing what clients say to themselves. A cognitive perceptual model of information processing is presented to demonstrate the significance of attentional allocation to the reality-construction process. This model is employed to suggest therapeutic interventions that are designed to modify faulty encoding by means of perceptual retraining. The perceptual experiment is shown to be an important method for helping clients become aware of and change what they attend to. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mnemonic instruction, with a focus on transfer.

The authors conducted 4 experiments to examine mnemonic transfer in the form of knowledge generalization, in the context of an artwork-learning task. In each experiment, college students first studied a set of painting–artist name pairs using an adaptation of the face–name mnemonic technique. Immediate and 2-day delayed performance measures consisted of (a) tests over the studied paintings (memory) and (b) new tests over sets of nonstudied, yet thematically or stylistically similar, paintings by the same artists (transfer). In all 4 experiments mnemonic instruction produced memory benefits on a direct test over the studied paintings. Moreover, Experiments 1–3 indicated that on the transfer task mnemonic students who were directed to focus on the general theme or style of the artist outperformed both nonmnemonic control students and mnemonic students who focused on details of the paintings. Finally, the results of Experiment 4 further suggested that even when mnemonic-detail students are specifically informed about the nature of the forthcoming near-transfer task, their transfer performance is not facilitated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working with multiracial clients in therapy: Bridging theory, research, and practice.

The growing multiracial population has resulted in a need for professional psychologists to become knowledgeable about unique identity issues that may influence therapy with multiracial clients. The overarching goal of this article is to provide clinicians with current theory and research, as well as particular therapeutic strategies that will be useful in their work with multiracial clients. Specifically, this article (a) provides a brief review of some prevalent models of multiracial identity; (b) discusses several common themes derived from theory and research about multiracial identity, which should be taken into account when working with this population; and (c) offers some specific techniques and strategies that may be used in therapy to develop more accurate conceptualizations of multiracial clients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An augmented model of brief psychodynamic interpersonal therapy for patients with nonepileptic seizures.

Nonepileptic seizures (NES) are one of the most common functional (medically unexplained) symptoms seen by neurologists. Although most experts consider psychotherapy the treatment of choice, few therapeutic approaches have been described in detail. Given that NES occur in the context of many different psychopathologies, it remains uncertain whether there is 1 intervention that can benefit all comers or whether it is necessary to offer individualized psychotherapy. This article describes an approach grounded in psychodynamic interpersonal therapy but augmented with elements of cognitive–behavioral therapy, somatic trauma therapy, and the involvement of caregivers and family members. The approach was developed in the setting of a specialist psychotherapy service for patients with functional neurological disorders presenting to British hospital-based neurologists. The authors have previously shown that it is associated with significant improvements in psychological functioning, health-related functioning, and a symptom count. Three case reports illustrate how the treatment can be adapted to meet different patients' needs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)