Strategies of Psychotherapy (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Strategies of PsychotherapyTherapists may range from indignation to squeamishness in their reao tions to the notion of deliberately manipulating the patient as presented in the section on directive therapy. I would caution those who have not tried the kind of techniques Haley describes, or that I have described in another publication, to either try this kind of intervention or speak to a friend who has weathered such an encounter. When Freud discovered transference, he discovered that the patient and therapist were involved in an interactional game that required skill on the therapist's part if both he and the patient were to benefit by the encounter. If the therapist is genuinely interested in helping the patient, and if he is experienced so that he can bring his skill to bear in at least a partially predictable way, then the style of the game he plays with the patient can vary widely and still be helpful. Therapy becomes manipulative, in the opprobrious sense of this term, only when the therapist is using the patient for various covert financial and/ or power reasons that have little to do with the pa tient's best interests.It is an honor to have been asked to write the foreword to this book especially since I believe it to be unique. We have all been in need of it for some time.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.