| Abstract: | Reviews the book, Experiential therapy: A symphony of selves by Richard E. Felder and Avrum Geurin Weiss (1991). This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking small volume that illustrates well the contributions, and the limitations of, experiential therapy. Defining psychopathology as a restricted capacity for experience, Felder and Weiss regard the basic objective of experiential therapy as increasing patients' capacity to experience and therefore to grow. This book embodies both the considerable virtues and the significant limitations of the experiential therapy movement. It reads in some ways as a historical document, clarifying the significant contributions made by a therapeutic orientation which established fundamentals, but remaining oblivious to the technical and systems-oriented innovations of the past decade. Today's therapist needs Gestalt techniques, Eriksonian interventions, awareness of family system factors, visualization strategies, facility in intrapsychic, couple and family conflict resolution—intervention techniques that make treatment more systematic and efficient. Still, the core ideas presented in Experiential Psychotherapy merit remembering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
